Relentless Pursuit (6 page)

Even without the new law, poor-performing schools have little control over the quality of the staff, because beggars can't be choosers. Without a large pool of applicants seeking tough inner-city posts, principals have had no choice but to take less experienced—and often less effective—teachers.

Ironically, TFA represents both the problem and the solution to one of the thorniest issues facing Locke. On the one hand, in 2005 TFA had become the school's primary hiring source, supplying nearly 20 percent of the teachers on staff. On the other hand, by the end of that year, nearly a dozen TFAers at Locke had resigned. Two never completed the first year of teaching; eight others left after fulfilling their two-year commitments. In one fell swoop, some of the school's most capable educators were gone. TFA fans and foes alike acknowledged the loss.

Dr. Wells felt betrayed. “TFA teachers are leaving in large numbers,” he said bitterly. “The other teachers are always telling me to forget TFA; they are not committed to the community. I used to brush it aside as jealousy. But you invest in them, get them to a level of skill, and then they leave. I have to look for stability at the school. Last year I hired all TFAers for my vacancies. This year, I'm going to be looking for a significant number of non-TFA teachers.”

Things didn't work out that way. Wells ended up gobbling up as many TFA teachers as he could at the Teach For America hiring fairs over the spring and summer. Reason trumped anger. He found the quality of the thirteen new TFA candidates he hired to teach in 2006 much higher than that of those from other, more traditional credentialing programs, and he thought the passion they displayed for the mission could not be faked.

Wells began to rethink his take on TFA. He started to see it as the educational equivalent of the U.S. Army. Enlistment in the military was for a finite period, he reasoned, but that didn't mean the country's highly trained volunteer army wasn't successful in battle. Quite the contrary. The United States boasted the finest fighting force in the world. TFAers were like soldiers: carefully selected volunteers who were well trained and, for the most part, highly effective—often more effective than the lifers. Wells decided he could live with the fact that he got them for only two years, as long as he knew there would be another crop of highly skilled, bushy-tailed recruits to replace them.

“Teach For America has literally saved this school,” he said, acknowledging that recruits were among Locke's best teachers. “If it were not for TFA, Locke would be a school the state would refuse to take over, and be nationally recognized as the epitome of why public education doesn't work. TFA teachers fill the holes and offer kids the kind of rigor that allows the students to grow academically. If you took all the TFA teachers out of Locke, we would have forty percent roving subs and mass chaos. We would not be able to survive.”

CHAPTER THREE

You're in the Army Now

In 1990, the New Teacher Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz, published an article that Teach For America still refers to today. Entitled “Phases of First-Year Teaching,” it describes the stages new teachers move through during their first year.
Anticipation,
the short period that usually begins during training, comes first. The beginning teacher looks forward to the new career with a mix of excitement and anxiety.
Survival
follows close on its heels, soon after school starts. The overwhelmed teacher struggles to stay afloat. This period normally lasts six to eight weeks but can go on indefinitely. Then there is
Disillusionment,
a phase of profound disenchantment when new teachers question both their commitment and their competence.
Rejuvenation
eventually follows. For the lucky ones, it begins after winter break and continues well into spring. For the not-so-lucky, it can take weeks, if not months, to kick in. Finally, as the school year winds down, there is
Reflection,
the final phase of the cycle, in which the teacher begins to envision what the second year in the classroom will look like.

Some new teachers find it hard to imagine finishing the first year. Teaching in a low-income school right out of college is a shock to the system—like getting really old really quickly, if you ask some TFA recruits. You shed your old skin, the one you were so comfortable in. A new skin develops and a new person emerges, one who is completely different from the old person. When you're twenty-two, that takes some adjusting.

The article is illustrated with a graph. The line charting the five-stage cycle starts high, dips very low very fast, and then slowly, slowly rises—unevenly. There's nothing balanced or tidy about the drawing, and that's probably apt. The first year of teaching is messy, misshapen, lopsided. And that's if you've been in a traditional university-based credentialing program complete with student teaching and peer mentoring. Teach For America corps members become teachers of record after five weeks of training.

For most of the 2005 recruits, the anticipation phase was just a blur marked by hard work, long hours, and little sleep. It started almost as soon as the candidates accepted the TFA offer—when the institute six-course curriculum (called the six-pack), plus the independent classroom-observation assignment, arrived in the mail. The package of pastel-colored, spiral-bound texts covered everything from diversity and classroom management to literacy, learning theory, and TFA's central thesis, Teaching as Leadership (TAL). Before arriving, recruits were expected to read the texts and complete nine written exercises based on observations of experienced teachers at work. Many corps members (CMs) dispensed with the prep work; they arrived for their summer training cold.

Institute began on a sunny Sunday in early July, when some six hundred Teach For America recruits streamed onto the campus of California State University, Long Beach. They were dressed in tank tops and jeans, board shorts and T-shirts—some emblazoned with the TFA logo and the words corps 05. Gucci and Burberry bags could be spotted here and there, but most inductees toted suitcases or hauled huge backpacks. The famous blue pyramid, a campus landmark, towered in the near distance. It all felt very much like the first day of college as CMs found their dorm rooms and the shortest route to the cafeteria.

But any illusions corps members had about the rigor of the training to come were dispelled when they were given a thick three-ring binder with a letter of introduction and the institute calendar. A quick perusal of both made clear that institute would bear a much greater resemblance to boot camp than to a college orientation program. Gone was the most basic of university freedoms—the right to manage time. In its place was a carefully choreographed sixteen-hour day—every minute of which would be accounted for. There would be no more waking at nine or ten and pulling on a T-shirt and jeans for a midmorning class. Under the TFA regime, the working day began at dawn and went pretty much until midnight. There was a grown-up dress code, too. For men, that meant a button-down shirt, tie, and slacks. For women, it was a skirt or dress of “reasonable length,” or slacks with a blouse.

Breakfast was served each morning beginning at 5:45. Big yellow buses packed with bleary-eyed CMs clutching red lunch totes left the Long Beach campus about an hour later, headed for school sites. On-campus training lasted the length of the school day—from 8 a.m. until 4:05, when the buses ferried exhausted CMs back to the dorms for a break and dinner before the evening sessions began at 6:30. The day didn't end three hours later when the nighttime workshops were wrapping up. After that, CMs were expected to prepare a lesson plan for the following day. Few got to bed before midnight, many not at all.

Locke was the school assignment site for 139 TFA recruits. The Locke cohort was divided by teaching subjects into nine groups of fourteen to sixteen CMs, each headed by a corps member advisor (CMA). Each CMA group was further divided into four-person teaching teams. The recruits bonded quickly. TFA encouraged this with various ice-breaking exercises, but it would have happened anyway. There was an up-against-the-wall mentality to the Locke institute—and a gallows sense of humor.

The first week was devoted entirely to curriculum course work. By the second week, recruits were working in classrooms with summer-school students. The TFA teacher-prep program stood the traditional student-teaching model on its head. Instead of having a student teacher shadowing a veteran educator at work, the TFA rookies took turns teaching while a paid faculty advisor (FA) from Locke's staff observed from the back of the room. In the mornings, team members taught summer school; in the afternoons they received feedback and sat in on specific curriculum tutorials, like “The Five-Step Lesson Plan” and “Building a Culture of Achievement.” During week four, each recruit got to teach an entire day solo. By the end of the five-week crash course, student teaching was over. Each CM had spent the equivalent of about three full school days teaching. The next time they stood in front of a classroom of students, they would be the teachers of record.

         

Hrag Hamalian, toting his lone suitcase, arrived at Teach For America's summer institute dressed in a wife-beater T-shirt and shorts and thought:
Wahoo! It's L.A.!
Days later, he was sitting in slacks and a dress shirt at the welcoming ceremony, astonished at the turn his life had taken. Hrag, along with the other corps members assigned to do their teacher training at Locke High School, had rehearsed a cheer for the evening. It was like a rap:
Stop. Locke. Time to teach, Open up shop.
He was surprised—and not a little embarrassed—to be rapping during institute, but that hardly prepared him for the spectacle that was unfolding in the auditorium of Wilson High School in Long Beach. The gathering of all 639 trainees felt like a football rally, or even a religious revival—not a meeting of smart and serious college graduates and soon-to-be professional teachers.

For the welcoming ceremony, the L.A. institute corps was organized into groups, each representing a different training campus or permament-placement site. In they marched, bands of cheering coeds, each lot shouting louder than the last, until the noise was literally deafening. Standing in front, watching it all, stood Teach For America founder Wendy Kopp. Fifteen years before, she had presided at the first TFA institute just miles away. Corps members were clapping and chanting “TFA!…TFA!…TFA!” then, too. She had found the spontaneous enthusiasm disconcerting in 1990; the eardrum-piercing cheers and the near hysteria of 2005 were no less unsettling. She knew there was a fine line between exuberance and disillusionment. If she were a new CM, she mused, she would have been turned off. She wondered if others here felt the same way.

She might as well have been reading Hrag's mind. He didn't feel plugged in to the crazy energy that emanated from the hall. He did absolutely believe in the central TFA dogma—that all children deserve an opportunity to attain an excellent education—and he was impressed with Wendy Kopp's welcoming speech. When she stepped up to the podium, dressed in her customary well-tailored pantsuit, her long, light brown hair parted down the middle like a schoolgirl's, the hall was dead quiet.

Kopp's remarks could have been mistaken for those of a commanding officer sending troops off to battle. She started by saluting the corps members for choosing to dedicate the next two years of their lives to teaching in underserved schools. “This has to be the road less traveled,” she said. “There had to be other options for you that were supported by family and friends.” Kopp went on to recite the dreary statistics underscoring the achievement gap between the richest and poorest students in the nation all along the education continuum. Among children in low-performing American schools, she said:

• Fourth-graders read at a first-grade level.

• Once they reach high school, there is only a 50 percent chance that they will graduate.

• If they do graduate, they will leave school with the same skills as an eighth-grader.

“Education is the key to having choices, well-paying jobs, and participating in a democracy,” Kopp said to a sea of upturned faces. “Our success depends on your remembering our fundamental purpose: to eliminate educational inequity. Your success depends on retaining a sense of
outrage
over those inequities. When you encounter your biggest challenges, remember the high stakes for your students. Remain centered on the fundamental purpose of Teach For America. Retaining a sense of purpose, outrage, and urgency is the foundation of creating a successful classroom.”

Kopp reminded the recruits that the organization talks about teaching as leadership; that successful teachers possess the same skills and attributes as any effective leader. Then she suggested three things to help CMs center themselves in the coming months: “Really get to know your kids. Remind yourself constantly of the stakes. And take care of yourself.”

Kopp's address was the final speech of the evening. Earlier, Jason Kamras, a 1996 TFA alum who had just been named National Teacher of the Year, spoke of his transformative experience as a corps member. Next up was a patented TFA production in which five institute staff members stood in a row across a darkened stage, heads bowed. Suddenly, a single speaker stepped forward into a spotlight, head now raised, and began to read from a diary chronicling the personal travails and triumphs of a TFA recruit. The short but moving presentation, called a “spark” in TFA-speak, concluded with the refrain “Why I Teach For America.” When finished, the speaker faded back into the darkness and the light was trained on the next teacher, whose equally stirring testimonial also ended with the words “Why I Teach For America.” On it went until each bowed and darkened head had been illuminated, and each person had shared a personal epiphany that underscored the need and urgency of the battle—not to mention the quiet satisfaction attained from joining it.

Hrag had found Wendy Kopp convincing. But the stage show was a bit too scripted, the canned “Why I Teach For America” mantra cheesy. He wasn't the rah-rah type, and he thought the notion that as individuals they could revamp a broken education system was skewed. He surveyed the scene with growing dismay.
What is going on? What am I doing here?

Across the country in River Vale, New Jersey, Manuel Hamalian didn't have to attend the welcoming ceremony to understand what his son, Hrag, was doing there. Manuel was the one who had opened the TFA acceptance envelope that Hrag received that spring. He had carefully read the contents and called his son to tell him the news that he was in. Hrag didn't know if he would accept the offer, but he felt honored that it had been extended.

“They recruit on merit,” Hrag had told his father. What he was really saying was:
I am one of the elite.

“That's not it,” his father had countered, speaking as always in his native Armenian tongue. Manuel had emigrated from the Middle East nineteen years earlier, bringing with him his wife, Baizar, his aging parents, and his two small children, Gareen and Hrag. Manuel held a degree in public health from the American University of Beirut, but in United States he commuted four hours each day to his job as a manager of a freight forwarding company. Baizar, who went by the American name Claire, was a nurse; she worked the night shift at a local hospital. Together they literally labored around the clock. The kids were never denied. They had everything they needed, even the things the family couldn't necessarily afford. Manuel's parents, both refugees from the Armenian genocide of 1915, stayed at home and babysat.

The Hamalians had high expectations for their children. They wanted them to find careers that would give them stability and security—and enable them to enjoy the pleasures of life that they themselves had often had to forgo. So far, the kids had not disappointed. Hrag was graduating from Boston College with a 3.56 GPA. Gareen had graduated from Columbia University and was attending Tufts School of Medicine.

Gareen was well on her way. Hrag was not. Not yet, anyway. The Hamalians were mildly concerned. Manuel and Claire feared that a two-year stint with Teach For America could sidetrack their only son.

So Manuel had not shared Hrag's enthusiasm about the TFA acceptance letter. He was cautious, and he wanted his son to be, too. “They are really judging you on your character,” Manuel had told Hrag over the phone. “They're looking for your type of person—someone who will make a commitment and not leave it.”

Hrag had felt his anger rising. His parents had always been sparing in their praise. He had just won a spot in one of the most prestigious post-grad programs in the country. Only a few of the eleven who interviewed with him had been offered a position.
Everyone else knows Teach For America looks for the highest-achieving graduates. Why can't you see that?