Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Ken Roberts brings a special interest in students who do not fit the mainstream mold to the School Board.
Roberts, 55, is one of four new board members who began serving in July. He retired from Sweet Home Junior High as a teacher in 2003. He worked in Sweet Home for 17 years and spent a total of 26 years in teaching.
“All of my teaching has been in small communities,” Roberts said. He started as a teacher in Veneta. He later taught at Carlton Elementary School. Sweet Home is probably the largest of the towns where he has lived. He also worked two years as an administrator at Sweet Home Junior High.
Roberts earned his master’s degree in curriculum and instruction at the University of Oregon.
Born and raised in Portland, Roberts entered the U.S. Air Force and worked in finance.
“I began coaching, and so I was around kids,” Roberts said. “I mistakenly took working with kids in sports as being something akin to teaching.”
He soon moved into teaching and coached often while working as a teacher. He has mostly coached basketball, football and volleyball.
Teachers are so busy trying to improve, Roberts said. “A lot of times, because of the intense teaching requirements of teaching in general, you don’t have time to really explore the things or initiate the ideas you think should be taking place.”
As a principal, it’s a day-to-day job where it’s hard to make changes, Roberts said. “I always had opinions, but I never had a chance to investigate whether they could be turned into reality.”
He is more interested in education than things such as finance or bargaining after sitting on both sides of the table. He would favor the state taking over and not get bogged down by negotiations because it is so divisive, with big issues, like pay.
“It’s too divisive, whether it be Central Office and teachers or School Board and teachers,” Roberts said.
Though Roberts has a wide background in education, he said, “I’ve got a lot of things to learn.”
His first objective is to get out and visit schools and talk to people, principles and students in an attempt to examine what the district can do to improve education outcomes.
“Part of that is deciding what should be an education outcome,” Roberts said. “For some, what we do is great.”
It can be tough for those who struggle or don’t fit in somehow, Roberts said. As a result, they choose behavior that is destructive to them or to others.
“I hope there is a way to find out what their strengths are and teach to their strengths so that they’ll begin to look at life in a different way,” he said.
Roberts is concerned about drugs, drinking and other self-destructive behavior, he said. He said he’s not sure how that behavior interrelates with liking school, but he does know they are interconnected.
More needs to be done, Roberts said, but he isn’t sure that more government is the answer.
“I won’t be the only one coming up with a solution,” Roberts said. “I think the first thing you have to do, you have to gather data.”
He wonders what the actual number of students is within the district who have these kind of issues, Roberts said. They need to be tracked consistently. His goal is to make sure they can graduate from high school with some skills. He expects that many of these students need a hands-on learning style.
“I think a lot of times, you behave because you fit in,” Roberts said. “The problem with some of society’s values is that it always tries to put everyone into groups, and people get their sense of worth from being in a group.”
“Everybody needs to feel they are capable of something,” Roberts said. “Why put a kid through the pain of just reading tasks or language-oriented tasks when that’s not their strength?”
He isn’t sure what the answers are, “but we’ll investigate it,” Roberts said. “It takes common sense. Evaluate your own experience. Evaluate the situation you presently face, and then come up with stuff.”
Roberts is single. He has two sons, Brandon and Adrian, both in their 30s.