Relentless Pursuit (25 page)

Instinctively, he began to think critically about what his niche was. Samir had the most CMs to attend to, but his were also the most clustered. At Locke alone, he managed twenty-two teachers. He realized that the teachers at Locke had many more resources available to them than most other CMs. The Locke crew had access to a specially hired new-teacher coach and attended compulsory professional development meetings with literacy coaches from UCLA. Plus, they had a lot of TFA alums still teaching at Locke—and they had one another. Samir's advice, then, was not always necessary. If CMs needed something, they could get it down the hall. Samir decided that he had to be more interactive with his Locke teachers. He needed to be more encouraging on the front end, to relate to them more and critique them less.

         

Samir was not alone in feeling demoralized. Typically, teachers begin to pull out of the disillusionment phase after Christmas. For many in the Locke contingent, that wasn't happening.

Taylor had spent much of her extended break “awfulizing.”

It didn't really make sense, because she actually ended 2005 on a high. The vibe in her classroom was cool; the energy was good. The kids were really into her. Taylor found it strange. She wasn't that much older than her students—she almost wanted them to call her by her first name. The girls especially liked to hang out in her room, and she liked talking to them. They wanted to know all about her, and the world from which she came. They asked about her boyfriend and about college, and if she went to football games and parties. She told them all about the beer-keg stands at USC where students, suspended by their legs, drank beer upside down. She wanted to be honest with them. She decided she would answer any question they asked. Except one. If they wanted to know about ditching, that was another story.

She was getting lots of positive feedback from the school. One assistant vice principal, Mr. Yette, had asked her to take over a twelfth-grade English class from a longtime tenured teacher. It was all hush-hush. He said that he wanted to make sure that all the seniors had portfolios and would graduate in June. Taylor took that as a compliment. The two UCLA literacy coaches also saw the promise in Taylor and took her under their wings. Chad Soleo was happy to hear all the good reports. One of his trusted colleagues literally gushed whenever she visited Taylor's bungalow. Taylor knew it was tough to keep new teachers, and she appreciated all the kudos, but even she thought it was all a little over-the-top:
I could tell them I'm gonna write “shit” and “fuck” all over the walls and they might say, “What a good idea!”

Samir was the exception. He spooked her. When she saw him at the one-hundred-days celebration at the Hollywood nightclub in early fall, he had a drink in his hand and was talking and laughing. Not long after that, he came into her classroom, said two words, and left after forty-five minutes.

She was giving a grammar lesson the day Samir came in, and even as she was lecturing, she knew he'd be tripping out about it. The lecture was too long, and the lesson that followed wasn't thematically linked. She couldn't bring herself to read the e-mail he sent afterward. She knew it would get her down, and then she wouldn't want to meet him for the follow-up. Samir was pretty amazing. His notes were minute-by-minute, and he'd write things like “12:35, student's head on desk.” It was scary and nerve-wracking whenever anyone came in to observe her. But when it was TFA, she felt like the weight of the world and all the poor children of America were resting on her performance. Again and again she thought:
TFA is the parent you cannot please. You can jump through hoops and still not get there and not know what to do to make them happy. What if my numbers don't go up? What if they go down?

On the day before school let out for Christmas, Samir brought his supervisors into Taylor's room to observe
him.
He had called at twelve-thirty that day to warn her—and to ask Taylor to e-mail her data and fill him in on what she wanted to talk about. When they showed up at three-thirty, she was listening to Prince at full volume and the room was abuzz with kids coming in and out. Samir walked in looking like the consummate professional and proceeded to do a great job. He was so smart and so articulate! He was able to pinpoint things Taylor hadn't even thought of, and he gave her very concrete, very specific things to do. She was so grateful for his help. She talked him up to his bosses. He was an amazingly talented guy. He was growing on her.

That night she was scheduled to meet the man who had “adopted” her through Teach For America's Sponsor a Teacher program. Sponsor a Teacher is one of TFA's major fund-raising efforts directed at individuals and small companies, and it accounted for 16 percent of the organization's funding base in 2006. SAT, as it is called, requires a donation of at least $5,000 to help defray the annual $12,500 cost of recruiting, selecting, training, and supporting a corps member. During summer institute, corps members had been asked if they were willing to be sponsored. Taylor signed right up. Based on a short spiel she wrote about herself, TFA had matched her with John Wong, a young guy who worked for the Capital Group, a giant investment management firm based in Los Angeles.

Taylor had looked forward to the meeting with Wong. It was being held at Loyola Marymount. Taylor knew exactly how it would go. Like everything else that TFA did, it would be professional—indeed, beyond professional. The affair would start on time and end when scheduled. There would be drinks, food tables, and the obligatory speakers. From there, it would be a sorority rush. Having been a Greek at USC, she had the rush down. She knew exactly what was required of her. It was a connection thing. She understood that the donor wanted to see her, in the same way that people who send money to some poor kid in Africa or Asia always want a photograph. And if they could converse with her, all the better. One of the L.A. coordinators had called and then e-mailed the major talking points to her. TFA wanted to keep everyone on message. The sponsor would want to hear all the good things his money was doing; the teachers should try to accentuate the positive.

When Taylor got the cue (a look from one of the coordinators), she turned it on. She told Wong all about her TFA experience at Locke, regaling him with classroom anecdotes and showing him pictures of her kids that she had taken with her cell phone. She told him the reason she had joined—that she had wanted to do something meaningful, something that would give her a lot of responsibility and make her proud. And she asked about his reasons for donating. She was touched by his humility. He confided that he wished he had done something similar, that he was in awe of what she was doing. Taylor was perfectly capable of faking her enthusiasm, but she didn't have to. She spoke from the heart. She was genuinely interested to meet someone who had given five thousand dollars—not because he needed a tax write-off, like so many people she knew in Santa Barbara, but because he had found a cause that he truly believed in. She invited her sponsor to come to Locke to see her teach and meet her kids, and she thanked him for his generosity.

Afterward she met Mackey, Hrag, and Rachelle at Sharkeez. She had recently been hanging out with Mackey some—they both worked in the bungalows on the edge of campus and shared a lot of the same students. And she had always liked Hrag, though she had heard he was a bit of a ladies' man. But it was the first time she had ever been out with Rachelle, and she really enjoyed getting to know her. Rachelle seemed to have it all in perspective. She worked hard, but she made it look easy. She wasn't obsessively driven like so many other TFA women Taylor knew. So it was fun. Taylor had given up drinking—she suffered from vertigo and alcohol made her feel sick—but the others had a few. Taylor thought that Mackey might have a little crush on Rachelle, but it didn't seem to be going anywhere. When Mackey said he wanted to leave, Hrag drove him back to the apartment they shared in Hermosa Beach, just down the road. Taylor went along for the ride, and Rachelle headed home. Taylor ended up spending the night on Hrag's couch. And her car, which was parked illegally, got towed.

But it didn't matter. It was the last day of school before break. She tied her mane of chestnut hair in a ponytail topped with a black headband, put on a festive red velvet jacket, and turned every one of her classes that day into a Christmas party. It was probably a no-no as far as TFA was concerned, but she decided not to teach. She wrote “MERRY CHRISTMAS” across the whiteboard, put on some music, and watched as her kids had dance-offs. She felt great. The karma in room A22 was good, and she was leaving the next morning for a family vacation in Mexico.

But over the break, the ebullience gave way to anxiety. She couldn't sleep at night. When she was able to rest, she woke up with her heart racing. She was thinking bad thoughts, generating awful, negative emotions. A lot of it was eating-disorder stuff—wanting to be perfect and not being able to let go of that. She didn't want to have that negative thinking in her head. It was such a weight. But there it was: she was awfulizing.

Thinking back, she realized things had been tough for her since Halloween. She had been waking up at 4 a.m., unable to breathe and worried about what would happen when she got to school. She had weird dreams. One time she dreamed that they had bused a whole bunch of white kids into Locke; she was teaching white kids! In her real life, she couldn't imagine ever teaching white kids. How could she?

Her dad talked her down. He was the person she spoke to the most—about everything. Having been a teacher himself, he empathized with her situation and was a font of wisdom. He was the one who told her early on to draw a line between her professional and private lives. He told her not to bring work home—even if it meant staying at school until five or six to finish up. And when she was worried that she wasn't improving her kids' reading levels, he was the one who said, “Look for the smallest successes and hold on to them.” So, during the break, when she was driving to see her boyfriend and awfulizing all the way, she turned to her father for help. Over the car phone, he reminded her that
she
was creating the anxiety, that
she
was generating the awful ideas. She could also generate positive ideas. “You need to find the positive and make that your reality,” he advised. “Every day go in there and find something that makes it work for you.”

Her best friend since first grade, Allisha, said just about the same thing. She suggested that Taylor start reciting daily affirmations. She needed to ask for peace and give her fears to a higher authority. She needed to “let go and let God.” She recited the AA prayer, and suddenly it made sense: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” It was like an epiphany:
I should focus on what I can control and see where the chips fall, and I am going to be happy and not let it get to me.

From then on, she did her affirmations every day. She would walk around her apartment saying out loud: “Today I choose to have peace in my life. I do not choose fear. My students need me. I'm happy.” And by the time she got to school, she would be okay. She was more than okay: she was very happy. She loved the job. She was doing a good thing—not perfectly, but it was the right thing for her.

Phillip could have done with some of the same bucking up. He felt like he had PMS. He was depressed, and he found himself tearing up easily. It happened to him every two months or so. He would spiral down and feel awful for some days, then cycle back up and feel good for weeks on end, only to inevitably fall again into another short depression.

When he returned to school after the Christmas break, he thought he was well rested. But, in fact, he came back burned out. And the kids seemed rowdier than usual. Over the break, graffiti artists had been out in force. The entire façade of the school entrance had been tagged. Inside, Phillip caught kids gambling in the hallways. It probably had something to do with it being the end of the semester—the kids figured they didn't have much to lose. The bells were bonkers, too. For some periods they would ring three times; for others they didn't ring at all.

He had a lot to accomplish before the end of the semester. He had slowed down instruction to help with comprehension and retention, but that came at a cost. His classes were behind. Even so, he determined to push ahead with his plan to do more activities to promote hands-on learning. On the first Tuesday back, Phillip introduced a lesson on corresponding parts by giving each student a protractor, a work sheet, and a triangle. As the kids chattered, he warned them that there would be no more activities in the future if they couldn't come in, be silent, and follow directions.

“I want you to put your hands together,” he said. “I didn't say put your lips together! When we're talking about corresponding parts we're talking about the relationship between two things—matching up. When you put your hands together, what's matching up? Corresponding fingers! Are all your fingers identical? Do they all match up the same size?”