Chapter 9: Survival

Principal Lawrence rarely smiled. During that first year, I don't think I ever heard her laugh. She didn't appear to know student names, nor did she care to. The one thing she did seem to care about was data, and it's one of the only things I ever heard her talk about. Even at the start of the year, when she showed us an inspirational scene from the movie Here Comes the Boom, she centered it around the importance of improving student test scores, around being those kinds of teachers who could ensure that 100% of students passed 100% of their tests 100% of the time (or at least something close to that).

There were rare times when she appeared to be lighthearted, but most of the time she presented a rather intimidating demeanor, full of frenzied anxiety, all her own and yet ready to pass on to teachers, that caused me to want to avoid her at all costs. I didn't feel comfortable around her, and most of the time felt a deep sense of anxiety when I talked to her -- anxiety that never allowed me to be myself in her presence.

Perhaps it was me. Considering, however, that other teachers felt the same anxiety and our first assistant principal left after mere weeks at the school, I don't think it was all me. I found out later (years later, when I actually talked to her about it) that our original assistant principal chose to leave shortly after the start of the school year because working with Principal Lawrence, and the associated environment, was simply too much to handle. They had very different ideas about how to run a school, how to treat teachers and students, and even how to motivate teachers and students. This assistant principal told me many stories about her few weeks at the school, but said her final straw was when she left briefly to grab a coffee from the McDonalds down the street, only to return and be written up by Mrs. Lawrence because she hadn't signed out of the building. We're talking about an educational professional here, only a few years away from retirement, written up by a younger principal for not signing out when she went to get a coffee.

So we received a new assistant principal, but she also left after a month or so. For a while, we had a couple of interim assistant principals who were kind of "subbing" in the position until a permanent one could be hired.

The office clerk (who was accused of, and later absolved of, stealing money from the school) didn't enjoy working for her. Even the night janitor used to vent to some of us teachers about her. So, although my issues with Mrs. Lawrence as a boss and leader could have had something to do with me, it would be wholly unfair and insufficient to suggest it was all to do with me. But more on that -- and her -- later.

My struggles during those first few months of teaching did not end with Mrs. Lawrence. I still struggled with understanding and covering all of the standards I was supposed to teach that year, and I struggled with preparing lesson plans that centered around them. We were required to post all lesson plans to a drive that was specific to our school (this drive was available for the school to view, and checked regularly by admin). I struggled to keep up with my grade level, who consisted of three other teachers (Jordan, of course, and also Aisha Walker, who was about to begin her first year of teaching, and Donn Gallon, who was formerly with the military and beginning a new career as a teacher). I always felt like these three had it "together" far more than I did, and I struggled to, as Christy put it, "fake it 'till you make it" so that I at least appeared that I had it "together," too.

One of the first pieces of data that we teachers needed to gather was Discovery Education data, or DE, as we called it. I didn't understand it at first, but it didn't take too long to catch on. DE was a test that students took on computers, online. Computer lab times were scheduled so that teachers could have their entire class take the test at the same time (since each of our classrooms had about four computers to share among our 30 or so students), so that data could be produced quickly and accurately. I didn't realize, as my students took it for the first time, how important this data would be. Mrs. Lawrence, and our school in general, considered DE data predictive of how our students would score on the CRT (our huge, end-of-year standardized test).

After the DE test, therefore, admin and school strategists accessed the scores and posted the data by grade level. Our 5th grade data board, then, was soon full of our DE scores. Bar graphs showed that Jordan and Aisha's classes both scored over 60% proficient, and mine and Donn's classes both scored just over 40% proficient. I looked at those scores and my heart dropped.

Jordan, though, assured me that my scores were fine. "I would almost prefer having lower scores right now," he told me. "There's more room to grow for the later tests."

It made sense, but his reasoning didn't make me feel any better. It did make me, however, more determined to make sure that our next round of DE tests showed tremendous growth from my class -- despite being the lowest percent proficient now, I vowed to be the highest by the end of the year. (And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how "teaching to the test" begins.)

There was another standardized test that we gave our students early on. It was called Aimsweb and, like DE, measured a student's level in both reading and math. There were two sections in reading -- RCBM and MAZE -- that students had to complete, and two sections in math -- MCOMP and MCAP. The RCBM test required students to read a passage for one minute, and their fluency was scored based on how far they were able to get (with minimal mistakes) during that one minute period of time. The MAZE test featured a passage with missing words, and students had three minutes to circle the appropriate word for each blank in order to demonstrate comprehension. For math, the MCOMP was an eight-minute test in which students had to demonstrate understanding of basic math operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division). The MCAP was another eight minute test designed to assess students' knowledge in other mathematical areas, such as data and measurement, fractions, and elapsed time.

We were supposed to use Aimsweb data to assign our students reading groups, and we were also supposed to use it to decide which students would be a part of our RTI group. Now, RTI was a huge deal at my school, and there was a lot of paperwork involved -- in fact, we had an entire staff development day (designated days taken by the entire district, in which students stayed home and staff came in, so that teachers could be trained in various areas) dedicated to the development of our RTI groups. RTI stands for Response to Intervention, and is supposed to be used as intensive instruction before a student is referred to special education testing.

The criteria for selecting an RTI group at our school, as I mentioned before, involved only choosing our six "lowest" scoring students on the RCBM test. After that, we were supposed to use their scores to calculate goals, and we had to set up an entire folder for each student. The folder would contain their Aimsweb data, parental consent (which needed to be sent home and returned as soon as possible) for participation in the RTI group, various other forms filled out by the parent and the teacher, and then, later, a daily log of what was taught each day during the RTI session and how the student responded to the intervention.

It was a lot to handle for someone who'd never even heard the term "RTI" before. I still, years later, don't entirely understand the dynamics of how it's often used -- there's an interesting article that explores how RTI as a requirement has fallen short of the promised results, and has not helped students in the ways it was supposed to. Looking back on my own school during my time with TFA, it always seemed as though RTI was less about intervening on behalf of low-level readers, and more about maintaining shitloads of data on students so that we could remain "compliant" with the state of Nevada's RTI requirements.

But anyway, back to my initial issues with RTI. After perusing my Aimsweb data I approached one of our strategists with the knowledge that my reading scores actually seemed pretty good, whereas my math scores were very, very low. She took a close look at the data with me, and replied that it might be a good idea to provide a math intervention group instead of a reading one. She wasn't sure if this would be all right with Mrs. Lawrence, though, so she said she would check with her and get back to me.

She never did get back to me, but in the interim I put my intervention group on hold. This proved to be detrimental later on, as I was supposed to present my RTI folders to show what I'd done about halfway through the year and, of course, I didn't have anything to show. I tried to defend the fact that this strategist had essentially told me to keep the RTI group on hold until she found out whether I could provide math instead of reading, but in response to this the strategist threw me under the bus and denied such a thing had happened. So I wound up in hot water over having no RTI data a few months into the year and shouldered it on my own.

I did start attempting to provide RTI lessons, but the truth was that I had no idea what I was doing. So some days I would gather my students around the kidney table and we would do a reader's theater script. Or, on other days, we would take turns reading from a leveled book. But I didn't know the first thing about what the group was supposed to look like and basically did the best I could.

A few months into the school year, however, I did start to learn a bit more about how reading groups and such were structured, as Mrs. Lawrence decided to send a number of us to Reading Academy. This course, which occurred once a week for about six weeks, taught us the ins and outs of literacy instruction, and it was actually helpful. It took me from a place of knowing absolutely nothing in regards to what I was doing (in terms of reading instruction, anyway) to a place of knowing at least the basics of teaching differentiated reading. During this time, however, I had to get a substitute once a week (I think I went to Reading Academy every Wednesday), which kind of staggered my week in a way that was either detrimental to my classroom or else good for my mental health (and I couldn't decide which was more likely to be true).

So, as the weeks went on and Reading Academy continued, I returned to my classroom feeling only slightly, rather than utterly hopeless when it came to reading groups and RTI. I left Reading Academy each week with great ideas, but I still struggled to utilize them in the classroom. Despite the fact that I tried, it was hard to decide which of my students needed which of the 5 main "pillars" of reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension -- as 5th graders, most of my students needed fluency and comprehension, and as English language learners [ELLs for short], many of them needed vocabulary, too). It was also hard to decide how to teach those things to my students, and also how to break up groups so that each student was getting exactly what he or she needed (this is what's called "differentiation," and it's required of all teachers, since classes these days are usually comprised of around 30 students who all fall on different areas along the ability spectrum). I had students with high school reading levels who needed literature circles; I had students on grade level who needed grade level material; I had students far below grade level who still needed to be exposed, according to the district, to grade level material, but with extra assistance; and I had students who were not on grade level due to a disability and needed different types of instruction and intervention. Just because I was, technically, a 5th grade teacher did not mean that I was simply teaching 5th grade -- the levels of differentiation needed in order to assure that all students were able to access the 5th grade material presented to them meant that my 5th grade curriculum needed to extend well beyond what is considered to be "5th grade material" on a daily basis.

This is the kind of thing that comes with practice, but during the first part of that first year, it was beyond hard. On many days, I felt like I was attempting an almost impossible task.
And that was just reading -- math wasn't any easier. Because of the way my day was set up -- three hours of teaching in the morning, then back-to-back lunch and prep for 80 minutes, and then a nearly two hour block of teaching in the afternoon -- I taught ELA (English and Language Arts) in the morning and math in the afternoon. My problems teaching math were very similar to the ones I faced teaching ELA; that is, I didn't know how to interpret the standards all the time or how to teach them well (this was before I had a decent grasp on how to use Curriculum Engine, and a year before it became the truly useful resource it is now).

So I often found myself using lunch and prep periods to plan for my math lesson. I would try to plan well in my lesson plans, but I always wound up panicking right before the lesson anyway, trying to figure out how to teach a specific standard.

For example, 5th grade math standard 5.NBT.B.5 (NBT standing for Numbers and Operations in Base 10) states that students will "fluently multiply multi-digit whole numbers using the standard algorithm." On the day I was to teach this standard, I would think, All right, I can do this. I know the standard algorithm!" And I would then stand in front of the class and use the standard algorithm to solve a long multiplication problem. Again and again. I'd ask various students what my next step should be and allow them to guide me, and then I'd release them to do problems in their textbook.

Later, I'd learn that appropriate elementary school instruction involves manipulatives, collaborative work among student groups, multiple avenues to the same answer, videos and music, interactive notebooks, and a number of other strategies and resources that make learning interesting and accessible to young people. During the first part of that first year, I knew none of this -- I only knew that I was to teach certain things, and my only experience teaching (in a college classroom) involved a lot of lecturing and in-depth discussion (in other words, things not always suitable for 5th graders).

Mrs. Lawrence told me this, too. After observing a science lesson in which I used a PowerPoint to introduce students to Newton's laws of motion, she commented, during our post-observation conference, that I couldn't lecture and use PowerPoint presentations the same way I did when I taught college. "The students need to talk to each other," she told me. "You need to get them working together and talking more, and you need to talk less."

The principal wasn't the only one in my classroom offering advice. The strategists -- we had three of them at our school -- were constantly in there as well, to either model a lesson or to just sit and watch, to offer me advice in terms of keeping Mrs. Lawrence happy. "Make sure you write your standards and objectives on the board," they told me. "Don't forget to re-address the standard in your closing. Make sure students know why they're learning what they're learning."

Christy popped into my classroom quite often as well, and although her first few visits consisted of watching my lessons and leaving positive sticky notes on my desk, I soon began to realize that these "visits" were more like observations. She'd come in, assess my lesson plans, talk to students (she'd ask them what they were doing, whether they knew how to do it, why they were doing it, and so forth). She'd tell me that, according to the TAL Rubric used by TFA (that I mentioned in a previous post), my students were "unruly and/or apathetic." There were too many students off-task, she said; too many of them were bored or confused, or didn't even know what the hell was going on in the lesson. I knew that I was struggling, but I honestly didn't think my classroom was that bad.

It became difficult just to get through each day. Each day that I dragged myself to work, the only thought that kept me going was the understanding that, in eight hours or so, I'd get to go home and watch Netflix with my son and drink wine. On most days, though, even that didn't happen because of how much time I spent at school trying to stay above water. I arrived at that building before the sun came up, and often didn't leave until after the sun had gone down. And all the while, I was feeling like a fake teacher, like I sucked and my students deserved so much more; I felt like, no matter how hard I tried and how much effort I put in, I was sincerely bad at what I did. I felt constantly beat down by everyone with the power to lift me up and like I just had to get out because it's hard to feel beaten and broken down every day.

My life became a cycle of drowning, then coming up for air with some great ideas in mind. These ideas would refresh me for a day or so, but I'd soon find myself sinking yet again. With 5 weeks of training, I was simply unprepared to manage my own classroom. I'd spend hours on my lesson plans, trying to figure out how to teach lessons (as I mentioned above), but also how to fit everything into each day. I had to figure out how to meaningfully assess my students. I needed weekly grades for reading, language arts, math, science, social studies, and speaking and listening, all while planning six small reading lessons for my reading groups, making sure I had meaningful centers for my other students to be working on during those small groups, and an intensive RTI lesson. It was so much -- too much -- and I had no idea how to juggle it. Despite trying, my proverbial balls kept dropping, and it became harder and harder to pick them back up again. Most days, I felt like I was failing at everything. Further, because TFA sets itself up on the idea that their teachers are all superstars, I felt like an isolated failure. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Was I not smart enough, not adamant enough, not persistent enough, or did I not work hard enough? The waves swallowing me were laden with guilt, shame, and extreme burnout.

And in the midst of all of this, I was also a full time graduate student at UNLV. TFA, as I've mentioned before, sets its corps members up with a local university so that each person is earning a master's degree in education while they're completing their two years of teaching with the corps. This first semester, as I was beginning teaching, I had a class in literacy assessment and a class in TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language). This, of course, made it even harder to keep up and stay afloat, as any tiny bit of free time I managed to find went straight to my graduate coursework. I attended classes twice a week, and they began at 4:30. Since work at my school ended at 3:30, I would often have to drive straight from work (with my son, no less) in heavy traffic to the university, where I would spend the next few hours in class before returning home and collapsing in exhaustion.

But my never ending exhaustion wasn't just due to admin and strategists and TFA and teaching and planning and grading and grad school and whatnot ... it was, at times, the students as well. My class was filled to the brim with various personalities, some of which I meshed with naturally, and others I did not. I cared about each of my students as individuals, but some of them were certainly more challenging than others, and for different reasons. Some of them would shut down on most days because of personal issues, and would not talk or respond to me. Others lived in poverty and dealt with hunger, or their electricity had been turned off, or they wore the same outfit all week long or, as in the case of one boy, would fall asleep in class because his brothers stole the covers on their shared mattress all night long. Others, still, did not know how to handle anger, and they'd explode in class.

For example, one boy responded to a disagreement with another student by breaking a pencil, and when I quickly enforced that breaking items was never appropriate, he responded by calling me a stupid bitch.

Not fun. Not easy.

I did consider quitting. It's possible, I think, that I considered quitting at some point at least every day. At one point, however, I drove by a branch of the bank that I'd worked for in California, and I immediately felt a newfound sense of determination that kept me going despite my inner turmoil. I might have been miserable each day in my new work -- I might have been completely overwhelmed and broken down all the time -- but at least I was miserable with a salary, I reasoned. At least I was miserable with a dependable paycheck. At least I was miserable with benefits that covered my insulin and thyroid medication. At least I was miserable with a set schedule that granted me weekends and holidays off (basically, the same schedule as my son, which was no small thing). No matter what was going on, I told myself, I was better off now than I had been before.

As much as I told myself this, I started to grow more depressed by the day. I retreated into myself and became quiet during meetings and such, hoping not to be noticed or asked questions or talked to. I noticed negative changes in my health, too -- my glucose levels (I am a Type 1 diabetic) were consistently high, and this led to extreme lethargy (which, I'm sure, led to even poorer attempts at teaching). I had consistent urinary tract infections, too, which were so uncomfortable that it was difficult for me to stand let alone teach.

I began to wonder if I'd ever make it to winter break, the two weeks of pure bliss that I would have off of work at the end of December. I'd enjoyed Halloween with my students (we had a costume party in the classroom, complete with cupcakes that had previously been forbidden by Mrs. Lawrence), and we'd made fun crafts for Thanksgiving (I spent most of a day letting my students complete those due to a urinary tract infection that kept me off of my feet), but it was the winter holidays that I was looking forward to the most -- and it was mostly because of those two weeks off.

Somehow, winter break arrived. On the last day of school before the break, I felt so excited to leave that building I could hardly contain myself. I knew that I would have to do some work over winter break -- there was lots of planning and grading to do, and I needed to work on organizing my reading groups -- but in that moment I had two weeks ahead of me to worry about it, and I knew that I could take at least the next few days to simply relax. Jordan was excited, too; as well as he hid it during the school year, I could tell that he was happy and relieved to have made it to winter break. I saw him after school and he wrapped me in a huge hug, lifting me off of the floor, proclaiming, "We did it!"
We had done it, I realized. I'd made it through my first few months of teaching, my first semester at UNLV, and the first segment of my Teach For America commitment. And, although the thought of returning in January was enough to cause mild panic attacks, all that was on my mind that particular afternoon were the two weeks ahead of me ... two weeks, I thought, to regroup and hopefully gain some of my sanity back.