Relentless Pursuit (31 page)

Barr reckoned that his plan could be adopted across the district, transforming forty-six large failing high schools into five hundred discrete high-performing schools within a decade. He argued that nineteen billion dollars in bond money recently raised for new school construction in Los Angeles could be used to finance the incubators and to renovate existing sites to accommodate the new autonomous small schools. When his offer was rebuffed, he was unbowed. He pledged to reform Jefferson anyway. He announced that he would be opening small incubator schools around the Jefferson campus and filling the seats with the kids who would have been Jefferson's incoming ninth-grade class.

Barr got everyone's attention—Chad's included. The union, school board, superintendent, and mayor became locked in a heated battle over Jefferson, at just about the same time that Chad was reaching the boiling point at Locke. When Chad made contact, Barr was eager to see him, and this time the meeting was quite short. After a four-minute interview, Barr offered Chad a job as principal of one of the six new charter schools he intended to open in the fall of 2006. He knew that Chad had been conflicted about leaving Locke the first time he offered him a job. He sensed that joining the shock troops outside the district walls would still be a painful decision for Chad. Barr respected that and felt honored by it.

Chad didn't officially accept the job right away. But he did talk to the six teachers he wanted on his dream team. His first pick was Josh Hartford as vice principal. The rest were other key members of Locke's School of Social Empowerment. Chad got the sense they felt much as he did. They were all ready to jump.

He gave Wells the heads-up a few weeks later. It was late on a Friday when he stopped by the principal's ground-floor corner office before heading home. Chad told Wells that he had been asked to apply for an administrative position with Green Dot, had done so, and had been offered a principalship. When and if he accepted the job, he said, Frank Wells would be the second person to know.

Wells didn't skip a beat. He told Chad it sounded like a great opportunity and he would support him if he decided to accept it. But then he sounded a note of caution.

“I would like you to consider the ethical implications of taking your entourage with you,” he said, noting that the new Green Dot schools would no doubt have a wide pool of qualified applicants from which to draw. (In fact, eight hundred teachers—many of them TFA alums—ended up applying for eighty-five positions.) “It doesn't seem right or fair that you would take some of the best teachers in this school with you.”

Chad didn't respond. He couldn't trust himself to speak. He objected to Wells's use of the word “entourage,” and if Wells wanted to talk ethics, well, he was the one who had an ethical obligation to keep and continue to attract good teachers based on the vision he'd established as principal.
If they leave, it won't be because they blindly follow me; it will because they've made an informed decision based on their experiences here.
Still, it was hard to dismiss Wells's admonition not to poach Locke's best teachers. Chad didn't like the delivery, but he saw his point.

So the internal dialogue he had been conducting for weeks continued:

I would be taking only six people…But others might leave, too, once they see the SE exodus.

I care about Locke and I don't want to steal teachers away…

But a lot of them would leave anyway, and I could offer them an opportunity that could change the face of public education in Los Angeles.

I'm not hassling them; I only told them I'm interested if they'd like to consider coming on board. If they come, it's their decision…But if I hadn't approached them, would they really leave?

Wells is right, there are other qualified candidates in L.A. besides my entourage…But I want the most capable people working with me. I'd be remiss not to ask the people I know and have worked so well with.

         

While key members of the so-called Chad entourage were contemplating the abandonment of the small school they had just built at Locke, Vanessa Morris was planning to create a new one. At that point, Locke had six small schools, only a few of which were actually functional. SE was by far the most successful of the lot, and Morris, the nationally board-certified science chair, thought there was plenty of room at the top. Her idea was to give birth to a technology-heavy small school that would better prepare Locke students for college by offering three years of both math and science, a requirement for admission into the University of California system. She knew the administration would be hard-pressed to refuse her. Kids at Locke tested better in science than in any other subject; 5 percent even scored advanced, an admittedly small number but one that made Morris proud and gave her clout.

She had observed the SE team as they built their school, so she knew the key to success: good teachers. Morris herself was a graduate of UCLA's well-regarded Teacher Education Program, a two-year urban ed master's program. But she was a huge fan of TFA. Over her five years at Locke, she had had only positive experiences with TFAers. They shared her concern for social justice, and they were, without exception, energetic team players. Some of them, like Soleo and Hartford, had become close friends. They had her back and she had theirs. Without them, she wasn't sure how long she would have lasted at Locke. During the week they all worked like crazy; on Fridays they ranted and raved like crazy. Morris considered Friday-night happy hour her form of therapy. In fact, it was better—more fun, and a lot cheaper. So when she went casting about for teachers, it came as no surprise to anyone that she looked to Teach For America first. When she had finally assembled her team and introduced them at a faculty meeting, one teacher quipped: “What is this? A TFA school plus Morris?” Four of the eight were TFAers. Among them were Taylor and Hrag.

Taylor was excited to be joining the team. Morris had invited her and a handful of others to the Olive Garden restaurant for an exploratory meeting, which turned out to be a three-hour working dinner. It had been exhilarating. Ideas were flying around the table, and a vision of what the new school could be took shape. At the end of the night it was decided that the school needed to have a cheer—and a motto. And while they were at it, they joked, maybe they would schedule all the PDs for the new School of Math and Science at the beach. Taylor was hooked. She told Morris she'd do anything she could to help. How could she not? She loved her colleagues, and she really loved teaching. What she didn't like was the disorganization, the chaos, the constant feeling of impending doom waiting outside her classroom door. With a leader like Vanessa Morris, maybe that would all go away. Maybe they could make their little school work.

The ninth-grade academy, the school Taylor was in, sure didn't. It was divided into two “houses,” and the classrooms were located in the rows of tacky trailers at the back of the campus along Avalon Boulevard, a big gang thoroughfare. The ninth-graders had been segregated from the rest of the school for the past few years—the gates to the back lot were actually locked shut during the school day and opened only for lunch and the passing time between periods. The thinking had been that the ninth-graders were the biggest at-risk population in the school; they were the hardest to manage and the cohort most likely to drop out. Separating them from the upperclassmen might ease the transition from middle school to high school, foster a better class culture, and keep them at Locke.

The experiment was a nonstarter. There was no coherent leadership, no shared curriculum, and no proven academic benefits. Kids were still dropping out like flies, and the ninth-grade teachers were so disaffected that many didn't even bother showing up for the weekly meetings. As far as Hrag was concerned, they were like every other meeting at Locke: people sat around, argued for a bit, and left. Nothing ever got done. And there was no downside to being a no-show, because there were no consequences. So Hrag ditched the meetings. The only reason Taylor attended was that they were held in her classroom during the lunch hour. She had nowhere else to go.

Morris had conducted her talent search primarily in the ninth-grade houses because she did not want to antagonize other small school leaders by poaching their teachers. But she would have gone trolling in the back lot anyway. That's where many of the TFAers were clustered, because that's traditionally where most of the openings were—veteran teachers preferred not to have to deal with ninth-grade challenges. Morris scooped up Taylor, Hrag, and his roommate, Mackey, along with first-year UCLA grad Jinsue and second-year TFAer Josh Beardall.

Choosing Taylor was easy. She had been teaching only six months and already had a reputation as one of the best English teachers in the school. Taylor was in a state of constant panic—she sweated all day long and had trouble sleeping. But the doubts she harbored about her efficacy in the classroom weren't obvious to her more experienced colleagues. Mrs. Jauregui, who oversaw the two ninth-grade houses, was almost deferential to her, treating Taylor as if she were the head of the ninth-grade English department. Jauregui sent Taylor to special professional training sessions, and when Taylor announced that she wanted to do more literature-based instruction, Jauregui happily ordered the books. Taylor could tell she was getting little perks that the other teachers didn't—like unlimited access to paper—and she suspected she had Jauregui to thank.

Dr. Wells was an unabashed fan, too, though it was unclear to Taylor if he actually knew her name. He called her “lady.” When he mandated an intensive after-school CAHSEE prep for seniors, he handpicked the teachers he wanted to lead them. Half were TFAers, among them first-year corps members Phillip and Taylor. Phillip politely declined the offer. Taylor felt like she was ready to take on something new. Only one kid showed up for her first class (she never had more than a handful of students attend), though she sent out a bunch of flyers and phoned the kids on her roster. She thought the CAHSEE prep was a total waste of time, but she got paid two thousand dollars for it, and God only knows how many brownie points she scored. During the presentation of the proposal for Morris's new school, Dr. Wells stopped her and said, “You know, I really like you,” to which she replied, “I like you, too.”

The literacy coaches from UCLA had spotted Taylor's talents right away. They told her she had the makings of a great teacher, and they took her along to a conference of English teachers out near Disneyland. She had never been to a conference like that before, so she had no basis for comparison. But it made her not want to be an English teacher. The conference was packed with old ladies who taught English, and every time they stood up and read in their English-teacher voices, Taylor winced.
Oh my God! Is that me? That can't be me!

But she
was
an English teacher, and a pretty good one at that. She had the numbers to prove it. At the end of the first semester in late January, she made her kids retake the Gates-MacGinitie test she had given them in the beginning of the year. Her average student had started ninth grade reading at a fifth-grade level. She was hoping that in the six months they had been in her classroom, they would have advanced two whole grades. The day before the test, she gave her kids a pep talk; they needed to come in the next day with their game faces on. That night she was so nervous she could hardly sleep. The results came back twelve days later. They had done it! Her kids had made what TFA considered “significant gains” by advancing between one and a half and two years in reading.

She was so proud of them—and they basked in the glory. A few weeks later, on Valentine's Day, Taylor got to feel the love. The Locke campus exploded in a profusion of red and pink—some girls hauled giant teddy bears to class; others paraded around campus clutching balloons and flowers and candy. The kids showered Taylor with cards and gifts, and they watched to see if she had any other admirers. They were always curious about her love life; every male teacher who walked into the room was assumed to be a suitor. One girl gave Taylor a valentine written on lined notebook paper, with hearts drawn around the name Miss Rifkin and an arrow pointing down to the name Mr. Brown. Mackey taught in one of the trailers nearby, and it was true that Taylor had been spending a lot of time with both him and his roommate, Hrag. Taylor's college romance had recently ended. Days after the breakup, she and Hrag met for dinner. The following weekend, she invited Mackey and Hrag to join her on a trip home to Santa Barbara. Mackey begged off because of work. Hrag took her up on the offer. Together, they met up with a few of her friends and camped high on the cliffs north of the city, overlooking the ocean. They clicked.

Hrag and Taylor realized they had a lot in common. Both were struggling to find a balance between their professional and private lives. Both believed in the TFA mission, but neither, it turned out, wanted to be martyrs to the cause. And that's how they were feeling—like they were sacrificing their youth on the altar of social justice. They wanted to have fun—to enjoy life. Hrag felt like he had really aged. It struck him one day early in the second semester when he saw his reflection in a store window on his way to work: he was sitting in his little red Ford with a thermos of tea in one hand and a banana in the other. He burst out laughing at his own image:
What a nerd! If my college buddies could see me now, I'd never hear the end of it.

Taylor's father had advised her early on not to bring work home—he insisted it was important that she maintain a divide between work and leisure. Hrag had figured that bit out on his own. He, too, needed a total disconnect, but it was hard to avoid the carryover. Once, when he accidentally brought home the PAID stamp he used for marking work completed, he totally freaked out. He couldn't bear to look at the thing, so he ended up hiding it until it was time to go to school again. Another time, he didn't realize he had the stamp in his pocket until he was in the school parking lot and ready to take off. Rather than carry it home, he trudged all the way back up three flights of stairs and stashed it in the classroom. When he left at the end of the day, he didn't want to have to think about Locke again until he walked back in the next morning. He and Jinsue no longer spent hours on the phone planning lessons. Now Morris gave them the general outline of how the week should unfold, and they worked it out together at school. That left Hrag's nights free. He took up guitar again and got back to reading. And he went out nearly every night. Even so, school wasn't that easy to shake off. It was always on his mind. And that really bugged him.