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A Class All Their Own

A closer look at how our veteran teachers are
making the classroom a long-term career

By Seth Kugel (N.Y.C. ’92) and Ting Yu (N.Y.C. ’03)
Photographs by Jean-Christian Bourcart and Marina Berio

Becoming a career teacher wasn’t necessarily Sylvia Corona’s plan when she graduated in 2000 from Concordia University in Irvine, Calif., with a degree in English. As an undergrad, Corona developed a taste for social justice, working as a tutor and volunteering with a voter registration program that served her local Latino community. When she joined Teach For America, her placement as a fifth grade teacher at Norwood Street Elementary, a low-income, predominantly Latino school in Los Angeles, was a natural fit. “It was an amazing school,” she says. “It wasn’t one where you had teachers who were very apathetic.” The school’s strong professional culture buoyed Corona during the tough early years. “Being able to find colleagues as motivated as you are,” she says, “whether they’ve been in teaching awhile or not, is a huge motivator. Having other people to bounce ideas off of is a strong reminder that you’re not alone, that this isn’t as much of a lonely profession.” She estimates that 10 of her Norwood colleagues had earned their National Board Certification, which, she notes, “says a lot about them wanting to pursue teaching as a profession as opposed to a job.” By the end of her first year, Corona says, she was hooked on teaching: “I fell in love with the idea of doing it as a career.”`

Eight years later, she is still in the classroom.

Like every other Teach For America corps member, Corona faced the end-of-corps decision: Stay in the classroom or take another path? The options are myriad, of course. Some remain in education but merge onto the administrative or nonprofit tracks. Others take jobs in the private sector or head to grad school to pursue previously mapped-out careers in law, medicine, or business.

A third group—the one Corona ultimately joined—is choosing to make a mark in the classroom beyond the two-year corps commitment. According to the 2007 alumni survey, close to one-third of Teach For America’s 14,000 alumni are still teaching in K-12 classrooms. Of respondents from the 1990-94 corps—those at least 14 years into their careers—16 percent have remained as teachers.

Outside experts have found similar results; a recent study by the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education showed that of more than 2,000 alumni from the 2000 through 2002 corps, 60.5 percent had stayed in teaching beyond two years, and 35.5 percent stayed beyond four.

“Most people assume that TFA teachers are in and out of their schools in just two years. It turns out that many choose to stay in their low-income schools and in teaching much longer,” Harvard professor and PNGT director Susan Moore Johnson said when the study was released. “For them, teaching is more than a stint of public service. As with all new teachers, however, workplace conditions and pay prove to be crucial in their decisions to stay or leave.”

A literature review on teacher retention conducted in 2005 by PNGT, “Who Stays in Teaching and Why” (Johnson, Berg, Donaldson), also cites career development opportunities and school community as important factors in teacher satisfaction and retention. In addition, the review found that low pay and poor working conditions—from deficient facilities, equipment, and supplies to large class sizes—can lead teachers to “feel discouraged or insulted as professionals.”

For many of the alumni interviewed for this article, staying in teaching isn’t a one-time decision. Rather, the commitment to teach is one they revisit again and again over the course of their careers. For many, one of the most important questions they ask themselves is, “Where can I have the most impact?” Those who answer, “In the classroom,” tend to share certain experiences that foster longevity in any career: taking on new challenges to remain motivated, working with a supportive administration, and feeling part of a team of like-minded peers. By contrast, those who felt they lacked autonomy, who found the workload exhausting, or who believed their efforts would have more impact elsewhere, left the profession.

Alumni who remain in teaching 5 or 10 or 15 years after their corps commitments are carving out intellectually dynamic, professionally sustainable career paths. They have found ways to move up without moving out of the classroom, exercising a high level of agency in defining what long-term teaching means to them.

* * *

For Dave Prugh (R.G.V. ’02) staying driven and inspired for the last six years at his placement school has been a creative endeavor. “What I get out of teaching is the constant change,” says Prugh, who teaches math and pre-engineering at Ringgold Middle School in Rio Grande City, Texas. In addition to his regular duties, this year he directed his drama-club students in an award-winning one-act play and, over spring break, took six students to London’s West End to experience Les Miserables and Wicked. (“It was fantastic to be there just watching their eyes burst open with the amazement and the awe,” he says.) He also attended NASA’s Texas Aerospace Scholar Program last summer and, with two other teachers, developed an interdisciplinary unit on Mars for his six pre-engineering classes.

“I feel empowered,” Prugh says of his ability to define his career. “I don’t feel stuck in one path or [in] teaching one subject. I think what drives me is the thought that, well, if I’m not doing it, where is the outlet for students? I’m excited when the drama kids have a great sense of accomplishment. I enjoy doing complicated math with younger students who are excited to be there. That gives me energy.”

Still, Prugh has had to maneuver over the years to keep teaching his way. For his first two years at Ringgold, he taught language arts; he was appalled when his principal approved a curriculum that effectively halted the reading of novels in favor of test-preparation passages. With fellow teacher Erin Bauer (R.G.V. ’05), he started a monthly Sunday book club for students to discuss classic works from 1984 to A Wrinkle in Time. “My biggest frustration as a teacher,” he says, “has been watching test scores improve yet feeling as if the students weren’t learning more. The critical thinking was being lost.”

Prugh managed a move to the math department, and found inspiration in an extraordinary group of sixth grade students. “They’re going to make a difference in their community, in the state, in the world,” he says. Determined to continue teaching them, Prugh applied to lead Gateway to Technology, a rigorous sixth through eighth grade pre-engineering program being piloted by three schools in the district.

The program—for which his students designed greenhouses, replicated Martian soil, constructed rockets, and communicated via webcast with NASA astronauts—re-energized his teaching and his students. “I think about potential Mozarts, or Da Vincis, or Einsteins possibly being my students,” he says. “And I have to ask myself, do I want to be presenting the material in such a way that this kid is bored with school and shuts down and decides that education is not for them? I don’t want to see kids give up on learning. I’m really looking to spark their curiosity. I don’t want them to think literature is a three-page story with multiple-choice questions.”

One of his students, Yoli, who moved to the United States from Mexico in third grade, has been in Prugh’s classes for three years now. Each year she has placed first in the regional interschool math competition, and Prugh hopes to write her recommendation when she applies to M.I.T. in a few years.

By that time, he will likely be teaching at another low-income school in the Boston area—closer to friends— where he’ll move after taking a year off to travel. “I believe enough in the mission of TFA—that you want all children to have a quality education one day,” he says. “If that’s going to happen, they have to have good teachers working in the difficult schools.”

* * *

But sticking it out in tough schools and agitating for change from within may not be viable for everyone, says Jason Kamras (Metro D.C. ’96), 2005 National Teacher of the Year and director of human capital strategy for D.C. Public Schools. “You’ve got to do what’s right for you,” he says. “I’m definitely not a believer in the martyr complex—that you need to beat your brow and just do it because it needs to be done. If it’s going to be Sisyphus rolling the stone over and over again, maybe it’s not right.”

For some, like Lisa Morehouse (Georgia ’92), it wasn’t. After two years as a corps member and then two more leading Teach For America’s efforts to launch the Phoenix corps, Morehouse returned to the classroom. She spent the next 10 years teaching English, creative writing, and journalism at Balboa High School, a high-need school in San Francisco. “I really thought that was it. I thought I would retire from Balboa,” she recalls.

But as she approached the decade mark, Morehouse struggled with the long hours and ideological differences with her administration. “I knew there were other schools more aligned to my values, but those were mostly charter schools or new small schools,” she says. “Big [district] schools will continue to exist, and those are going to have the least-served kids. So I thought it was really important for me to stay in this school and try to make great things happen.”

She sought out dedicated veteran teachers to find out how they survived. “I was asking, ‘How do I do this in a balanced way?’ To be an outstanding teacher for more than a decade, how do you do it without losing yourself to the profession? The people I asked didn’t know. They had sacrificed themselves, relationships, health, their children’s time.” She left in 2006 and is now a freelance journalist who writes regularly about education.

Morehouse stands behind Teach For America, but also criticizes the organization for not being as supportive of alumni who remain in tough classroom settings as it is of those who pursue educational leadership or other professions. She was disappointed to discover that the panelists in a session about sustainable teaching careers at the 2005 National Alumni Summit had been teaching for fewer years than she had.

“I understand that we need people who have experience on the ground in high-needs schools to be in politics and to be in business and to be in school leadership and all those things—I definitely understand that,” she says. “But I think the organization has made a commitment to those other areas and has missed an opportunity to have a commitment to people staying in the classroom.”

In part because of input from alumni like Morehouse, Teach For America this summer launched the Teacher Leadership Initiative to support the professional development of career teachers. The initiative is headed by Tamara Arroyo (N.Y.C. ’98), a 10-year teaching veteran with experience in traditional public and charter schools.

* * *

The initiative will be looking to learn from the experiences of veteran alumni teachers like Andrew Kuhn (Houston ’94). Fourteen years in, he’s showing no signs of burnout—largely because of his resolve in finding just the right environment. “I was very deliberate in the kind of school I was looking for,” he says, “a place that was racially diverse, and had students who needed intervention and students who were going to Ivy Leagues.”

By the time he left Texas in 2003, he had worked in three schools: his placement school, an alternative school, and an elite public school where he taught honors history to gifted and talented students. Cheltenham High School, where Kuhn now teaches 11th grade social studies, is a diverse, mixed-income school outside of Philadelphia that seems to be a combination of the previous three.

Kuhn has taken on a dizzying variety of leadership roles to stay challenged, including chairing the social studies department, coaching girls’ and boys’ soccer, running the Constitutional Scholars program he founded, and serving as principal of the district’s summer elementary program. Not to mention that the switch to a better-resourced school has made teaching sustainable. “Moving to the Northeast made a career in the classroom financially viable, due to the decades of effective union work,” Kuhn says. “I can make my career in teaching because of the substantial pay and benefits in this region of the country.”

Other alumni are finding success in challenging schools. LeAndrea Baltimore (Greater Philadelphia- Camden ’03) has taught for five years in two low-income, mostly African- American schools in Philly. She says she has always felt that teaching is her calling; when asked at her Teach For America application interview what might cause her to leave the classroom, Baltimore remembers answering, “If the school burnt down.”

Her classroom is a vibrant place full of “spirit checks” and students singing mnemonic chants about the eight parts of speech. On a visit in May, her fifth graders were concocting their marketing plans for imaginary businesses. There was a lively buzz around the room as the proprietor of Summer’s Sweets (a girl named Summer) plotted against her competitor, Candy Land. Chantrea was planning a Kool-Aid stand, and Julisa was explaining that her business, the Cell-ary, sold cell phones, not vegetables.

Baltimore, who has coached cheerleading, leads a spelling bee club, and is planning the fifth gradegraduation ceremony, is nothing short of exuberant about her work. “Some days I wake up two hours early, and my heart is racing because I just can’t wait to get in there,” she says. “What drives me and motivates me and sustains me is being able to reward my kids and give them what they deserve.”

But the school itself is a work in progress. The hallways are chaotic, with loud kids and grimacing teachers. One prominent banner soberly acknowledges the school’s past performance by No Child Left Behind standards: Thomas
G. Morton Elementary School: We Made Adequate Yearly Progress in 2004.

Does Baltimore ever think about changing schools? “I feel the challenge— especially when I see teachers that I’m close to and they’re moving to suburban districts, making more money, and they brag about the resources they have,” she says. “I stay because I see me. I see myself in them. In every class, I find myself in the students. Just as there were teachers who cared for me, I have to care for them. To be honest, I can’t leave.”

Some days, Baltimore admits, she comes home “beat down,” but recharges by spending time with her accountant-to- be fiancé Reggie. “On the weekends we drive to New York, Maryland, and New Jersey to visit friends and family,” she says. “In Philadelphia, I go to church, we hang out in the Old City, try new restaurants, go to Sixers games. I don’t think I would continue to teach if my personal life suffered.”

Another huge advantage is having a principal whose views are closely aligned with her own. It is a welcome change from the “friction” Baltimore previously experienced working with an unapproachable administrator who, she says, was “closed off from suggestions.”

Her current principal is innovative, Baltimore says. “She wants to see our school change. She wants classrooms that are data-driven with tracking. That’s why we get along so well, because we both want to see our kids move forward.” This shared vision means Baltimore can operate with a large degree of autonomy when it comes to new ideas. “She’ll try anything. I came to her about a writing program I wanted to start, brought in new math strategies, and she’s like, ‘Awesome!’ She’s open to all those things. She’s a ‘by any means necessary’ principal.”

* * *

Although there isn’t much empirical data yet to show that collegial contact with principals and peers positively impacts teacher retention, there is growing evidence that teachers increasingly value these relationships. The National Education Association, which administers a survey to a random sample of teachers every five years, has found, since 1996, that teachers have identified “cooperative/competent teacher colleagues/mentors” as the top factor in helping them teach well.

Neil Dwyer (Greater Philadelphia- Camden ’04), for one, has found that when a mind-set of openness and collaboration pervades a school’s staff, the benefits can be exponential. After his corps commitment, Dwyer moved to Mastery Charter School, a 7-12 school in South Philly where his fellow alumni include several teachers and principal Jill Dunchick (S. Louisiana ’98). “I wanted to stay in education,” Dwyer says, “and I knew if I stayed at my [old] school I would just burn myself out.”

In contrast to the every-man-for-himself mentality at his former school, teaching at Mastery is a “community effort,” Dwyer says. “There’s a belief that what we’re doing in our classrooms is for the greater good of our students. It felt like I was fighting against the system at my other school.”

Every Wednesday teachers in the same department are given school-sanctioned time to convene and write lessons, develop tracking plans, and share what’s working with which students. Dwyer, who teaches eighth grade math, believes this spirit of school-wide collaboration amplifies his impact. “Everything we’ve done this year, we’ve done together,” he says. “It wasn’t me inside my four walls, it was us working together.” Perhaps the best part is the continuity for the kids. “I know that the next teacher is going to use the exact same language,” Dwyer says, “because we’re [planning] it together. What I’m doing is going to impact them even further because they’re going to continue to get excellent instruction.”

So ingrained is the principle of collaboration—with every Mastery teacher expected to do peer observations—that it is built into the very architecture of the school. “Every classroom has a huge glass window,” Dwyer says. “The whole idea is, we’re an open school and everyone should be able to see what the kids are doing and what the staff is doing, and to be able to develop and learn from that.”

In the three years since Mastery opened its doors, student proficiency on state exams has shot up, from around 30 percent of students testing proficient in math and reading to 67 percent in math and 68 percent in reading. The school’s goal, Dwyer says, is to surpass the state average of 68 percent in math and 75 percent in reading, and then to match the achievement scores of students in Philly’s affluent suburban districts.

“People want to be valued, and when there’s that collegiality, you know everyone’s working toward the same goal,” he says. “When you accomplish something, you did it for yourself, for your kids, and for your team.”

* * *

Corona, the teacher placed at Norwood Elementary in Los Angeles, knows that feeling of loyalty to students and colleagues—it kept her at her placement school for five years and made her decision last year to leave for a charter school particularly wrenching. Corona began thinking about moving on after taking a series of inspiring summer seminars at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University. “I started feeling that itch of ‘There’s got to be more I can do,’ ” she says. “With pressures of meeting the pacing plans and the pressures of test after test after test . . . Norwood was not going to offer me the opportunity to grow.”

She took a position at the Odyssey Charter School in Altadena, Calif., where the leadership welcomed the progressive instructional methods she studied at Columbia. But she had made a demographic sacrifice, transferring to a school whose students were financially better-off, a mix of African-Americans and whites. “Leaving my school was one of the hardest decisions for me,” Corona says. “I loved the community I worked with; I loved being able to have access to the Latino community. But I knew that the best thing for serving a certain population or group was to make myself the best kind of teacher that I knew how.”

After next year, Corona is strongly considering leaving Odyssey to go back to Norwood. The principal, who is retiring, has assured her that she’ll have more freedom to teach the way she wants. But Corona is waiting to see who replaces her.

Does she ever consider stepping into that role herself? Corona has often asked herself—and had others ask her—if she would consider moving into administration. “I’ve always said no,” she says. “One of the things, in all honesty, that it comes down to is a sense of hope. The thing that’s keeping me in teaching is the idea that I’m having an impact on people who will grow up to make decisions in this world. I’m not 100 percent content with everything that happens in this society, and I can’t go out there and fix everything. But one thing I can do is have an impact on students and their way of thinking.”

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