Emergency Teacher (5 page)

It may seem unbelievable that someone could simply walk off the street and into a classroom, but in Philadelphia and many urban districts, this was exactly what was happening.

The thriving economy of the late 1990s drew potential teachers and college graduates into other, higher-paying jobs. This occurred just as birth patterns gave rise to a massive increase in student enrollment. At the same time, an aging workforce meant that scores of teachers were retiring. This perfect storm in the education employment world led to one of the periods of greatest demand for new teachers in thirty years. An estimated seven million new teachers would have to be hired between 1997 and 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

In 1999, Philadelphia was the fifth largest public school district in the nation, with 210,247 students, twelve thousand teachers, more than two hundred schools, and a $1.6 billion annual budget. Like most big urban areas, the school system had turned abysmal in the 1970s—correlating with the disappearance of big industry and white flight to the suburbs—and hasn't turned around since. These days, 78 percent of eleventh-graders couldn't even complete basic-level work in any major subject, according to scores on the SAT-9, the city's standardized test.

City officials had been trying for decades—without success—to turn the system around. The latest trend strove to make schools run like businesses, an approach that was gaining in popularity in urban districts across the country. In the spring of my year teaching, the school board fired its school superintendent and replaced him with a “chief executive officer,” using a business title to indicate their intention to bring corporate-style accountability to a public system. Plans were afoot to turn dozens of schools over to for-profit companies. Voucher programs, in which children use public money to attend private schools, were also being pushed by the governor's office. So were merit pay, teacher accountability measures, and teacher recruitment.

Missing from this list were proposals to improve teacher recruitment and training. The city was desperately trying to recruit hundreds of warm bodies, and yet leaving us to prepare for the job without guidance.

To meet demand, schools hired “emergency certified” or “alternative certified people.” These were candidates who didn't have a university degree from a college of education; neither did they have a major in the field in which they planned to teach, such as chemistry, math, or English. They also didn't have to take any state or school district teacher exams. In the case of Philadelphia, all teachers typically had to take the Praxis exam, designed by the Educational Testing Service. It's a battery of tests to assess prospective teachers' basic knowledge of math, reading, and writing. Emergency certified teachers would not have to take that test until after three years on the job.

By 2000, forty-five states and Washington D.C. allowed for emergency certified teachers, and their ranks were growing. In Texas, one in four new teachers was emergency certified. In Detroit—the city with the greatest numbers—one in three teachers was uncertified. In poor rural and inner-city schools, their numbers are even greater.

Many people opposed the idea of emergency certification, pointing out that the equivalent in medicine would be to solve a hospital's doctor shortage by doing away with medical school and board examinations. Yet others said that looser standards allowed people to change careers and go into teaching without having to go back to school for three years. In these instances, schools benefited from diversifying their teaching ranks with successful professionals, such as scientists, mathematicians, entrepreneurs, and writers. One popular national program, Troops to Teachers, gave former military commanders emergency certifications to become teachers and eventually school leaders. Teach for America was another popular national program that recruited college graduates, placed them in underprivileged school districts, assisted them in getting their emergency certifications, and ran training courses. It also acted as a support for new teachers in their first year.

These programs gave between one to six weeks of summer training, but new teachers like me, who applied directly to the school district, often received less. I would receive only a few days. Supposedly that was enough to take on a classroom of the city's toughest-to-teach children.

In 2003, a Philadelphia think tank found otherwise. When Philadelphia's emergency certified teachers finally did take the basic licensure tests—the Praxis exam—the think tank uncovered: “Less than half of the emergency certified teachers passed the basic mathematics test.” Only two-thirds passed the reading. Only 60 percent passed the writing.

“Their inexperience makes classroom management a problem,” stated the report titled “Once and for All” by the “Learning from Philadelphia's School Reform Project.” In math, science, and bilingual classrooms—the areas that were the hardest to find teachers for—half of all new teachers were uncertified. This meant a child in Philadelphia's public schools had less than a 50 percent chance of getting a math teacher who could do basic math.

The report concluded: “The data makes clear that students in Philadelphia have not been able to count on getting a teacher who has mastered basic academic skills.”

“I was just about to call you,” Eppy said. “You're scheduled to come in on Thursday, September 9. Bring all your things, and then hopefully we'll process you to start by the following Monday.”

That was a week after school starts! “I thought I was ready to go,” I said.

I'd been sitting on a completed application for at least a month now. Meanwhile, thirty-three kids would show up to an empty classroom—all because of a delay in processing? I had also heard from another new teacher that the school district was running a one-week induction program for new recruits, which I had missed because Eppy hadn't told me about it.

Eppy encouraged me to
calmate
, Spanish for “relax”. “You're a Type A personality, Christina. You need to relax or you'll never make it through the first year teaching.”

On September 2 Julia de Burgos held a welcome-back day for all the teachers, and I decided to turn up despite my lack of a formal assignment. I felt uncomfortable, but Mrs. Jimenez looked pleased to see me. She probably knew I hadn't been hired yet, but we both acted as though I had so I wouldn't miss anything. Everyone hugged and talked about summer vacation and about children. The library had elegant architecture, with sixteen-foot-high ceilings, original wood trim, and grand windows and wooden tables. I saw teachers had hung student projects on the walls. Mrs. Jimenez told me the teachers were divided into six Small Learning Communities, like teams, and mine would be the TV/Communications Team, also called the Bilingual Team. I found a seat at their table.

There were seven other teachers, all from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela, all in their thirties and forties. They wore lots of gold jewelry and had long, painted fingernails. They spoke in Spanish to one another. They spoke English to me.

We played some get-to-know-one-another exercises, in which we interviewed the teacher next to us, and then we each had to stand up and say one nice thing about the person we spoke to.

“Christina learned Spanish in high school and then lived in Chile for a year after college,” said Marjorie Soto, the English to Speakers of Other Languages teacher next to me. Everyone smiled.

A woman entered and everyone fell silent. For a few minutes she stacked and restacked the papers on the podium, as though relishing her ability to command silence. A few wisps of short, grayish brown hair clung to her forehead, and her conservative business suit hung unevenly off her round frame. She had thin grayish lips and wore large, thick eyeglasses. Silently, she passed around her resume and a mission statement that said, “All ye who enter here prepare to succeed. Failure is not an Option.”

Her resume said she was a career school administrator but for a brief stint of teaching in the 1970s. This was her first job as principal. The teachers began to gossip about her in Spanish: Assigned at the last minute, she was the school's third principal in four years. She was a
gringa
, in a school whose students were 85 percent Hispanic and 15 percent African American. And she did not speak Spanish. Judging by the stiff body language of the teachers at my table, the principal was not going to be popular.

“It's hard to believe, but only two weeks ago the superintendent of schools called me himself. I was on the beach on vacation with my family at the time. He asked if I would be willing to be principal here.”

She laughed a little to herself. “Two weeks is hardly enough time to prepare an entire school for a new year. I've been working hard each day from 5 AM until 6 PM. I am committed to moving this school up.”

She walked from behind the card catalog in a sweeping manner, as though on stage in a grand theater. Her words sharpened.

“We have nowhere to go but up,” she began. “Julia de Burgos is one of the worst middle schools in all of Philadelphia. It has the lowest test scores of any other middle school. Student attendance is 70 percent. Teacher attendance is not much higher.”

Another teacher shook his head, as if to say her numbers were not correct, but the new principal was looking to the back of the library, as if speaking to an amphitheater of people. She continued to tick off offenses.

“The number of violent incidents here each year is inexcusable. The state is investigating the school for problems with its special education students. Starting this year, no teacher will be allowed to suspend special education students,” she said. “We'll find a way to deal with them.”

This sounded ominous. Was she hinting at grade inflation? That would be a major story for the
Inquirer
, but of course I didn't work there anymore. No one there even realized I had become a schoolteacher. Most people looked at me strangely when I told them. A few weeks earlier, I was chatting with a police officer in Rittenhouse Square, and I mentioned my new job. He was happy for me until I revealed the location at Eighth and Lehigh Avenues in North Philly.

“Whaddaya, nuts? That place is a toilet,” he said. “We get called in there every day.”

Glancing around the library, I tried to imagine hardened city cops arresting the kids. The principal rambled on, and teachers stared stone-faced or rolled their eyes toward the high ceiling. I wondered how often they'd heard this “there's-a-new-sheriff-in-town” speech.

“Failure will not be an option. I will work until they spread my ashes in the Poconos to turn this school around,” she promised.

The principal gave a thirty-minute speech about her life growing up and what motivated her as a principal. She said she had moved among twelve foster homes, and although she was gifted, she also had undiagnosed dyslexia, which many teachers interpreted as stupidity. It was a moving speech.

“I know what it feels like to be alone,” she said. “I don't want any child at this school to ever feel alone. Find a way to have magic in every child.”

We received the school-year calendar, and the veteran teachers huddled together, laughing, pulling out red pens, and circling each holiday with flourish. There were two days off for Thanksgiving, a week for Christmas, Martin Luther King Day, Presidents' Day, spring recess, Good Friday, Memorial Day—by June 15 it was all over. That totaled five weeks of vacation out of a ten-month work year. I couldn't believe it. That seemed like a really generous benefits package.

The Venezuelan teacher happily flipped through the calendar. “Another holiday here,” she said, drawing a big red circle around each day she'd have off work. She looked up to see me staring at her.

“Believe me, you're going to be doing this,” she chuckled.

No, I'm not, I thought. I looked away.

The Venezuelan teacher nudged the teacher next to her. They rolled their eyes and shared a knowing look.

Later, one of them volunteered to be my mentor, which the Philadelphia School District provides for all new teachers. I was grateful and thanked her. Then she told me we'd spend exactly six sessions of forty-five minutes each together, and each time I'd have to sign a piece of paper so she'd get paid.

“Oh, okay,” I said.

I was the only new teacher on our team.