Relentless Pursuit (42 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The End

Hrag really liked teaching. One day, toward the end of the year, he had one of those “moments.” It happened while he was doing a PowerPoint on sickle-cell trait and paused for a moment. When he looked around, he realized that every single kid in the classroom was looking right back at him.
Wow! They're listening!
The idea was so ridiculous to Hrag that he burst out laughing. And he couldn't stop. He tried, but they were all still watching him, and that made him laugh even harder. It got to the point where he couldn't breathe. The kids didn't know what to make of it. And the more they stared, the more he laughed. Finally, he composed himself. But it took him a while, because the thought that he was teaching and they were listening was such a mind blow:
How are they listening to ME?

Lots of people listened to him. They had to. He didn't hold back when he had concerns. Whenever the counseling office dumped more students into his room—and they were doing it up until the end of May—he went right downstairs and did something about it. Same thing with the increasing number of lockdowns and block scheduling in the spring. If administrators knew ahead of time that there would be double periods—as they must have known before the well-telegraphed May Day walkout by Hispanics—then they had an obligation to warn the staff so they could be prepared. Then there was the Chad thing with Green Dot. Dr. Wells thought Hrag was a grouch. Hrag considered himself one of the lone voices of reason.

He wasn't shy about calling out Teach For America's shortcomings, either. Hrag argued that new corps members needed to be armed with standards-based lesson plans when they entered the classroom; it was hard enough learning
how
to teach without having to spend time figuring out
what
to teach.

Until then, TFA had subscribed to the Chinese proverb “Give a man a fish, you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and you have fed him for a lifetime.” Handing over lesson plans to recruits like so many pieces of fish ran counter to the organization's culture. Planning lessons was something every teacher had to learn in order to succeed. The subject was covered during institute; recruits were expected to execute in the fall. But Samir agreed with Hrag and began to work on developing standards-based curricula and assessments for teachers in the L.A. region. He credited Hrag as inspiration for the initiative.

By the end of the 2005 school year, Samir predicted that Hrag would be taking a leadership role in the new School of Math and Science. In fact, Hrag had already stepped up. He and Taylor had worked on the original proposal for the school and helped write the application for its first grant. Hrag enjoyed running some of the early meetings, and he helped shape both the policies and the vision.

After he got over being angry about Soleo's defection—and the fact that he was taking three dynamite science teachers with him—Hrag decided he wanted some control over how the next year would go. So he asked Morris and Chad if he could accompany them to the Teach For America hiring fair. The science department alone was looking for as many as ten new teachers for the next year. Hrag told them he could offer good insight into the mind of the TFA teacher and help identify the ones best suited for survival at Locke.

The placement fair was held at Bethune Middle School, the same school TFA used to stage its monthly teacher-development workshops. Sometimes the Saturday-morning sessions, which were organized by content area, were helpful. Often they were seen as yet another drain on the new teachers' time. The English teachers at Locke were lucky. Chad Soleo led a professional development session just for them. He was obviously a gifted teacher, and he completely understood the problems they faced. Chad helped Taylor and the others write their assessments so that they mirrored the format of the state's standardized tests, and then reviewed them for rigor. But the quality of the other sessions varied. Phillip was frustrated because the math sessions were not divided by grade—middle school teachers and high school teachers were lumped in together, and their needs were much different. For him, one of the best things about the mandatory classes was that it gave him a chance to catch up with friends he had made during institute.

The setup for the first of the TFA hiring fairs looked pretty much like the one Hrag remembered. When he arrived, there were about thirty CMs seated outside at picnic tables, waiting to be called into the auditorium for their school interviews. They were the first bunch of candidates, and they were on top of it. They had applied early, had taken the CSETs early, and were gung ho on Teach For America. (They also happened to live locally.) TFA didn't want to complicate the hiring process by giving schools too many choices, so it kept the fair small to ensure a better placement rate. And it offered up only one or two math or science teachers at a time, knowing they'd be scooped up the moment they were on the block. Placement was a finely tuned process. Principals came with their needs, and TFA played Let's Make a Match.

Samir was in charge of putting the first two fairs together at the same time that he was wrapping up the last rounds of Co-Investigation for all fifty of his CMs. The L.A. office was understaffed, and he was strapped. It was important that TFA get as many corps members placed as early as possible. The previous year's placements had not gone smoothly; about a third of the corps had left institute not knowing where they would be teaching. This year the goal was to place 80 percent of the CMs before the end of summer training. Samir and the L.A. staffers assigned to placement had done a few mock run-throughs. As busy as he was, Samir wanted to hit the target.

At the front of the interviewing room was TFA's workstation, with the names and the status of the prospective hirees color-coded on a computer: red for
hired,
orange for
holding,
and yellow for
being interviewed.
CMs were called into the cavernous room and directed to one of the tables where personnel from the interviewing school were seated. If the interview went well, the CM was hired on the spot. The school and TFA then signed an agreement; TFA would not send the teacher on any more interviews, and the school would not fill the position with another candidate. If the CM was not hired (which was unusual), he returned to the holding pen to hope for a better outcome from the next interview.

TFA offered Locke several candidates to interview. Chad, Morris, and Hrag sat at the Locke table, pencils poised over their notepads. Before the interviews began, they had agreed that a bull's-eye drawn at the corner of the page would signal an acceptance. A negative sign would mean a rejection. Hrag came prepared with questions. And they were tough. He wanted to know how the CMs coped with stress, how they would handle themselves in a confrontation, if they had even been in a situation remotely as challenging as teaching in an urban classroom. And even as he was asking the questions, he knew they were kind of unfair; the kids hadn't even been to institute. But he persisted. He really wanted to get a handle on how they would react when their backs were against the wall. Of course, Locke desperately needed teachers, and both Chad and Morris were huge fans of TFA. So they had their bull's-eyes down almost immediately, while Hrag would still be holding out, hammering the prospect with questions. Chad and Morris treated Hrag with the utmost respect. They just sat there, waiting for his bull's-eye. Finally, he would relent, figuring if those two were convinced, who was he to give a thumbs-down. All three candidates were hired. It kind of bothered Hrag. He didn't think any of them was ideal. Then it dawned on him.
Whoever steps up and seems semicompetent will get the job. Why am I here?
He decided his services were no longer needed.

Driving home, he thought about what it was like when he had interviewed. Back then, he had this cocky attitude. He figured if they didn't like him, he probably wouldn't like them, so he wouldn't want to work for them anyway. Hrag was one of the first people called that day, and when he was hired, everyone congratulated him. He was like:
Of course I got it. Why would I not?
Looking back now, if he had been the person interviewing him, he probably would have thought:
Okay. This kid has no idea what he's getting into. I'm glad he's psyched now.
Because that was sort of the way he was thinking about the kids he had just questioned. One of the candidates was this really sweet girl, completely oblivious. When she was hired and everyone was giving her high fives, Hrag was smiling, thinking to himself,
You think you just got this great big “first” by being hired, but not really. They were gonna take you anyway.

Hrag didn't believe anyone could really predict who was going to be a successful teacher. He thought of the guy across the hall from him at Locke. He was really nice, reserved, almost timid, someone you would think the kids would eat alive. But no. They
loved
him. Then there would be these hard-asses who you would expect would shut the kids down, and the opposite happened. It was weird what they responded to. But he thought he had finally figured it out. He had spent the whole year trying to hide who he was from his students. But if you really wanted to succeed with them, you had to be genuine. You had to be you.

         

For Chad, the guilt would not go away. But he had a contract with LAUSD that he intended to fulfill, and that meant he still had to work with Wells, who was obviously feeling betrayed. It was tough, and it was only going to get worse as June progressed and the year came to a close. He didn't know how he was going to make it through the senior prom. He didn't even want to think about graduation.

There was plenty to do. Locke had been identified as one of ten schools eligible for a one-million-dollar federal grant to help implement small learning communities. The district needed a sixty-page school-impact report—immediately. With just weeks of school left, Chad was put in charge of it. Ideally, he would not be writing a report of that magnitude on his own. But that's pretty much what it had turned into. The coordinators of most of the small schools showed no interest in helping out, and he didn't want to take teachers out of the classroom. So Vanessa Morris, Josh Hartford, and a few others helped him before and after school. And he worked flat out every day from seven in the morning until eight-thirty at night. In the meantime, he had lots of stuff to do for Green Dot. His new small school was supposed to open on August 25, and they still didn't have a site. But Green Dot would have to wait. Chad couldn't let Locke miss out on a million dollars. Even though there was a good possibility that the money would be squandered, he had to do the work.

Alone in his office, he stewed:
Why am I putting myself through this, driving myself crazy to get this in on time, when it's for them, for their own small schools? Why don't they step up? Because they know I'll sit here till eight-thirty every night writing the damn grant, and if I need help, I'll call on the people I have relationships with. Well, good luck to whoever gets this job next year, because the people who do all the work at Locke are leaving; the people doing the work to hold the school together outside school instruction are going to be gone. Locke is headed for a big crash.

It would have been nice to have Wells's support. When Chad told him the report was much more work than he had anticipated and would require a substantial amount of time, Wells just told him to go ahead. But Chad didn't hear Wells saying: “Go ahead. I'm the principal, and it's a million-dollar grant, and I'm gonna help you on this.” It was nothing like that. Wells had announced the grant at two or three meetings and said that “we” were pursuing it. That was really galling to Chad because: (a) “we” weren't pursuing it, Chad was; and (b) the grant was by no means guaranteed.

Chad was resigned to doing his own thing, and it was apparent that Wells was resigned to moving on without him. As part of the SAIT intervention, Wells had a principal coach who had asked the VPs to fill out a survey on his performance. There was no way Chad was going to fill it out. It wasn't his job to help make Wells a better principal. It was Wells's job to make Chad a better VP, to mentor him. If Wells wanted to have an exit interview with him on his way out the door, fine. Chad had lots to say. But he wasn't going to fill out some anonymous survey.

For a while it looked as if he might be having that exit chat sooner than he thought. Though Chad did the work of a VP in charge of small schools, he had never been given the job. Knowing that Locke was still owed the position, and knowing how important the grant was, Chad asked Wells if he could get someone in that spot for the last weeks of the year. It would tie the person in to the grant and allow Chad to help with the transition.

Wells said no, he didn't think so. Then he laid a bomb in Chad's lap. He suggested that Chad look into getting an early release from the district.

“I know it's only human nature to look forward to the next thing you're going to do, and you're probably starting to check out,” said Wells. “Find out if Green Dot will pick up your salary.”

Chad was flabbergasted. He didn't know what to make of what he had just heard. If someone else had spoken those words to Chad, he would assume that the person was saying in the nicest possible way: “Get the hell out of my school, and I'll arrange it for you.” But with Wells, he wasn't so sure. There was no other AP on campus available to write the grant. Wells would have to be crazy to show Chad the door in the middle of the process.

Chad left the meeting and went straight to Green Dot. “Look,” he said. “I can't read him. He could be an empty barrel making noise, or he could be talking to the district and arranging a transfer because he can't fire me under the administrators' contract. I think what he's saying is ‘This is the beginning of the end; I'm gonna make your life hell.'” Green Dot was cool. If Chad wanted to quit, they would pick up his salary. If he wanted to see it through to the end, that was okay, too. He had nothing to worry about. Green Dot would support whatever he wanted to do.