Relentless Pursuit

by Donna Foote

  Hrag felt like he had been sucker punched. Sure, TFA had said it would be hard. But no one had explained that it would be this difficult. Nobody had warned him that the job would take over his life and rob him of his youth. What about the others? Why were they drawn to this Mission Impossible? Two thousand had signed up with Hrag, and nearly nine times as many had applied. He knew why he could never quit. Why were the others still hanging in there?

  He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something about the people in TFA that set them apart. At first he thought it must be a religious thing. There seemed to be a lot of Mormons and Christians in the program. His roommate at institute had been a missionary. Dave Buehrle, a TFA English teacher assigned to Locke, was an unabashed Christian who had attended Calvin, a midwestern Christian college, and had stayed on a Christian missionary base while on a two-month internship in Hong Kong. Elissa Salas, a new special ed TFAer, had actually lived in a convent while doing social justice work in Washington, D.C., the previous summer.

  And there was Phillip Gedeon, the new TFA geometry phenom. Hrag didn’t know Phillip well, though they worked in the same wing on the third floor. Phillip, too, was a Christian. He believed it was his life’s work to teach—that God had ordained it. That certainty was one of the arguments Phillip presented to his single mother when he informed her that he was moving across the country to teach in Los Angeles. She didn’t like the idea of losing her only child, but it was hard to argue with God’s wishes. Back east, Phillip belonged to the Evangelical Covenant Church. In the early months at Locke, he sometimes traveled with other TFA Christians to area churches. He kept God out of the classroom, but he enjoyed those Sunday-morning journeys in search of a religious home.

  Hrag didn’t know it, but TFA alum Chad Soleo, the “dean” of the Teach For America teachers at Locke, was also a Christian, though increasingly less faithful and more angry with the God who presided over Watts. Soleo had been baptized a Catholic and attended Catholic schools, but had never practiced after grade school. He was “born again” when he moved to California and became reacquainted with his extended family there. They were Evangelical Christians, and they took him in as one of their own. Though it meant a long commute to Locke, Chad decided to live with them in an Orange County suburb. During the summer between his first and second years at Teach For America, Chad traveled with his California family to China as a missionary. Officially, they were all there to teach English, but the deal was that they were free to speak about their faith to anyone over the age of eighteen. Chad’s work during that crucial summer break had a profound effect on his decision to remain in education and to assume a leadership position at Locke. Because he was the only teacher among the small group of fellow Christians giving English-language instruction that summer, the others naturally deferred to him. He liked mentoring them. And they seemed happy to follow him.

  Hrag himself was a sub-deacon—a tbir—in the Christian Orthodox Church. He was ordained during his sophomore year in high school. Though he had not yet joined an Armenian church in Los Angeles, he and his family were active congregants at the weekly two-and-a-half-hour services at home. He wasn’t fanatical about his faith—in fact, he considered himself more spiritual than religious. But a cross hung from the windshield of his red Ford Focus. He was a believer.

  Of course, not everyone at TFA was. Some had no real ties to organized religion at all. Taylor Rifkin described herself as Jewish “light,” though she was actually raised without any religion. Her mother was Episcopalian and her father was Jewish. Her baby boomer parents had attended a Unitarian church for a while, but Taylor found Sunday school hokey.

  Rachelle Snyder belonged to no organized religion, unless being the youngest member of Greenpeace counted. Her parents, both lawyers, were attached to social justice causes, not churches. But they, too, had searched for a religious identity for their two kids. Rachelle’s mother, Lynne Lasry, came from a family of Sephardic Jews, and her father, Allen, was raised Protestant but no longer practiced. They tried bringing their kids to a Unitarian church, but Allen couldn’t suspend his disbelief. Now, as a young adult, Rachelle thought of herself as a spiritual person. She subscribed to what she believed was the message of all religions: to be honest, sincere, good, and just.

  No, Hrag decided. There was something else going on with these TFAers. It wasn’t necessarily an abiding belief in God. Maybe what drove them was an overwhelming sense of duty. A sense of passion. Or perhaps it was hubris—the unwavering conviction that no problem was insurmountable, that anything was possible. Hrag found himself studying his colleagues for clues. What is it about these people?

  To be sure, there was a kind of postcollege Skull and Bones club feel to the organization. The idea that this was an exclusive society, a many-are-called-few-are-chosen-type deal, accounted for some of the attraction. The summer institute only added to the mystique. Everyone referred to it as boot camp. And TFA did little to discourage the notion. The long hours, the hard work, the sleep deprivation, the code of conduct, the constant critical feedback—it all fed into an almost cultlike feel. TFA even had its own acronym-laden language. Corps members were CMs. “Teaching as Leadership” was TAL. Corps member advisors were CMAs. Locke staffers hired to mentor corps members were FAs, faculty advisors. Student Achievement Plans were SAPs. TFA staffers assigned to monitor CMs during the school year were PDs—program directors.

  There were even more acronyms at headquarters. EDs were executive directors of specific TFA regions. RDs were recruitment directors. RAs were recruitment associates. SAT stood for the fund-raising program Sponsor a Teacher. AKC stood for “awareness, knowledge, consideration”—TFA marketing terms for the levels of TFA infiltration on college campuses. POCs were “people of color,” CSOPs were “career-specific one-pagers”—campus flyers. DLs were “deadlines” POPs were “pockets of potential” PDBs were “performance dashboards” SPS meant “structured problem solving.” The organization itself was TFA—Teach For America. CMs joked that TFA reminded them of two books: 1984 and Brave New World. Not everyone was kidding.

  The question of who these fellow TFAers were and what exactly made them tick consumed Hrag. Whenever he went for a drink with the TFA teachers, the conversation revolved around work—the mission, the kids, the gap. Most times Hrag remained silent, hoping that the conversation would turn to something like college football or the war in Iraq—anything to escape being sucked into the TFA vortex. But it rarely did. So as the others nattered on, Hrag found himself thinking: Do they really mean it? Do they really believe that the achievement gap is closable and that they will be the ones to close it?

  He was always shocked by his own conclusion: Yes, they do. They really do believe.

  Teaching had always been in the back of Taylor’s mind. It was kind of the family business. Her mother, Andrea, had a thriving career as an independent guidance counselor for high-paying, college-bound high school students. Her father, Fred Rifkin, had earned a lifetime teaching credential years before.

  Taylor was in her teens when her dad was elected president of the Santa Barbara School Board. In 1998, he made the national news with the district’s decision to scrap bilingual education. The public debates that preceded the vote were ugly. Opponents accused board members of racism, declaring the decision tantamount to ethnic cleansing. On the night of the historic vote, school board members were provided police protection. But the board stood fast. They had crunched the numbers. The Latino kids in Santa Barbara couldn’t pass proficiency tests in English or Spanish. Bilingual education wasn’t working. It had to go.

  Taylor was fully engaged in the debate. She tutored Latino kids after school and found that they never wanted to speak to her in Spanish. They begged her to use English. So she knew her father was right. But she attended Santa Barbara High School, where the cultural and socioeconomic divide between white and brown students was huge. The debate over bilingual education only widened the gulf.

  Life at home
was stressful. Fred Rifkin was suddenly a media star—it seemed his face was on TV every night and in the papers every morning. He received a death threat. And Taylor became anorexic. The thing she remembers most clearly from that time is sitting alone one night with her father as he cried and cried.

  Education may have been in her blood, but during her senior year at USC, fear of the future was on her mind. She couldn’t sleep. She was terrified that she would end up at a desk somewhere, bored silly. She dreaded graduation. What would she do with her life? She had already had a taste of Hollywood as a college intern at E! Entertainment TV. She knew then that writing press releases for the next J.Lo was not going to do it for her.

  When she heard a presentation at USC by a TFA corps member, she was totally sold. It wasn’t so much the inequity issue that resonated with Taylor. For her, it was the idea that she had something to share. And because her family was well-off, she could afford to be a low-paid humanitarian. So she figured she would join TFA for two years, with luck do some good, and worry about what to do with the rest of her life later.

  She made TFA’s first cut—the written application. But by then she had decided she didn’t want the job. Her aunt told her she’d be miserable. Her brother Ryan warned her she wouldn’t stand a chance of surviving in an inner-city school. Taylor had visions of working in dungeon-like conditions with staplers flying at her head. Because she was fairly susceptible to other people’s opinions, she talked herself out of caring whether or not she got accepted. But as the date for the interview approached and she began to read over the materials, she remembered the reason she had applied in the first place. She believed in the mission; she felt moved to action.

  Of course, she was terrified on the day of her interview. She knew TFA was very competitive. There were fourteen other applicants with her at USC that day, all vying for a spot. She automatically assumed there was no way she would get in. What she didn’t take into account was the fact that she had been on TFA’s radar ever since she had attended the USC recruitment event. She was one of about twenty campus coeds who had been invited to a special TFA lunch that year, long before she had even decided to apply.

  Taylor sized up the competition and began to gauge her chances. The mini-lessons were telling. Some people completely bombed—one girl taught for two minutes about how to write the letter M. Some had no stage presence. But others were clearly talented and put together really impressive lessons. Taylor adapted hers, on the U.S. Census, from a website; she put the finishing touches on her presentation at 3 a.m.—after partying in Hollywood. Still, she was comfortable in front of large audiences. The lesson went well.

  She was chary of the next exercise—the group discussion. She knew she had to demonstrate presence without appearing to be a bully, and that would require a careful balancing act. The chat was about overcoming the achievement gap. One candidate insisted that parental involvement and after-school activities were key to raising student achievement. Taylor countered that parental involvement was problematic and that instruction had to take place within school hours, while students were a captive audience. She argued for double blocks of math and English and suggested cutting out electives until students were up to par on the basics. When the group broke for lunch at the end of the discussion, Taylor had decided she really wanted to teach for America. She was going to kick ass in the private interview.

  She did. In fact, she had been impressing the selectors all day long. She ended up receiving 3s on all but two of the competencies. Her overall score gave her the highest rank possible, and an automatic green light for admission. She had no idea that she had scored so high, but she did know before she left that day that she would be offered a spot. When the interviewer invited questions at the conclusion of the one-on-one, Taylor didn’t hesitate to use her favorite job-interview tactic.

  “What kind of a candidate do you think I am for this job?” she asked, figuring the evaluator would be caught off guard and would have to answer truthfully.

  “You are remarkable,” came the response. “We rarely come across people like you.”

  After those words of high praise, summer institute should have been easy for Taylor. It wasn’t. She felt totally unqualified. And she found that the competition to get into TFA didn’t end with admission. All the new recruits were overachievers. They were all perfectionists. The five-week training blitz turned into a 24/7 academic decathlon.

  It didn’t help that every week each CM was given the equivalent of a report card. By then, Kopp’s leadership principles had been codified into the TAL rubric: teachers had to establish ambitious goals, invest students to attain them, work relentlessly, and constantly improve. Those four objectives were further broken down into twenty individual skills deemed necessary for mastery. So, for example, to show mastery of TAL objective number one, establishing ambitious goals, a teacher would have to be proficient at two skills: setting a big goal that was measurable, and exhibiting high expectations for student achievement. Each week recruits were expected to master an increasingly larger basket of skills.

  Like every part of the organization, the institute had its own big goal and objective ways of measuring mastery—for the individual CMs, the CMA groups, and the region as a whole. The institute goal was that every CM would rate either proficient or exemplary in 80 percent of the TAL skills. At the end of every week, CMs were assessed on each skill and given a grade ranging from 1, for “beginning proficiency,” to 4, for “exemplary.” The grades were fed into a computer, which then spit out an analysis. CMs who failed to make adequate progress were put on an individualized Corps Member Improvement Plan (CMIP) and monitored closely.

  The CM’s ranking and percentile vis-à-vis other CMs in the same CMA group were also calculated and stored. The data collected and analyzed each week was posted on the organization’s internal dashboard so that comparisons on progress could be made region to region, training site to training site, corps member advisory group to corps member advisory group. As the results came back at the end of each week, the institute staff looked for trends and fine-tuned upcoming instruction to specifically address problem areas.

  The CMs were all looking for good grades. Several of them went into bitch mode to get them. During one session with a particularly pedantic curriculum specialist, the CMs almost mutinied. The prof squelched the rebellion. She sternly admonished them for “crossing a line” and launched into a “teacher knows best” lecture. She urged them to look for the value, the application, in the instruction she was offering. The CMs pushed back. They insisted that they were being asked to do too much in too little time, or, conversely, that they were being forced to spend too much time on exercises of too little value. They were tired and frustrated from working ridiculously long hours on precious little sleep. They had been selected for their leadership qualities and yet were being asked to be passive participants in their training. They were being treated like sheep, not shepherds.

  Taylor’s was one of the lone discordant voices. She argued that it was unrealistic to assume that TFA would change the schedule or the courses. “I feel it, too,” she said to a hot, stuffy classroom filled with irritable CMs. “Sometimes you think, ‘Oh, this is tough.’ It’s like getting a shot. Just do it. Air the complaints and then let’s rock and roll. We’ve got to do it. Let’s just suck it up!”

  The discussion went on for a few minutes more, during which the instructor assured them that “this dark time” would soon pass. But Taylor’s against-the-current comments had broken the tide of dissent. Things continued to be tough at institute, but for the most part complaints were made in private.

  By the time institute concluded, Taylor had had enough. After a great start, her Locke faculty advisor was now blowing hot and cold on her. Things weren’t going that well with her CMA, either—they had sparred several times over the weeks. At one point, her CMA objected to the tone of Taylor’s voice in the classroom. Taylor didn’t defend herself; instead, she thanked the CMA for her ad
vice. But she didn’t buy it: They’re fourteen-year-old kids. When they’re adults, I’ll talk to them like adults. Toward the end, it seemed like all-out war with her CMA and the members of her teaching team. Taylor got into a disagreement with one of her co-teachers and, unbeknownst to her, a meeting was called to hash things out. Taylor felt like she’d been ambushed; the CMA justified the group therapy session by reminding Taylor that teaching can be emotional at times. Taylor thought it was supposed to be professional.

  She went AWOL. She left the meeting in tears, and instead of returning to the TFA dorms in Long Beach that night, she drove to her grandmother’s house. She needed to calm down and get some sleep. Taylor didn’t want to be on anybody else’s roller coaster; her own ride was rocky enough. But the conflict didn’t end there. The CMA took the problem further up the chain of command. The institute director ended up taking Taylor aside and asking if he could do anything to help. She was embarrassed. And angry. The incident had been blown out of proportion. Why am I getting into trouble over this?

  The whole thing turned her off. She wasn’t about to quit Teach For America, but she sure would have liked to leave its summer camp. She skipped the closing ceremonies, opting for a nap instead. She told herself she wasn’t the typical TFA type anyway. The confrontation made her wonder: What did I get myself into?

  It was a question she would ask herself again and again over the course of the year. But as September crept closer, the thought rarely left her mind. She was nightmare scared. Again, she couldn’t sleep. I’ll quit. I won’t make it. I’ll die here at Locke High School. I know I will fail. Her thoughts were terrifying. What made things worse was that she fully expected them to be realized; she expected to fail.