GRIEGO: These young teachers believe they can

Published September 10, 2007 at midnight

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Fifty-eight of the nation's recent top college graduates have come to Denver this year to teach in some of our struggling schools. Two of them moved in across the street from me.

Welcome to the neighborhood, I say, and, pleasantries thus dispatched, I pepper them with questions. Such is the pitfall of living across the street from a newspaper woman.

Krista Trofka is from Wisconsin, a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a geography degree. Anna Kwan is from Oregon. She graduated with her degree in Chinese studies from Willamette University, where the motto is "Not Unto Ourselves Alone Are We Born." That saying could apply to the Teach for America program to which my new neighbors and their 56 compatriots belong.

Teach for America is a New York-based nonprofit founded in 1990. For a sense of its philosophy, consider its Web site greeting:

"Of the 13 million children growing up in poverty, about half will graduate from high school. Those that do graduate will perform on average at an eighth-grade level.

You can change this."

Eighteen thousand college graduates responded to that challenge this year. Krista and Anna were among 2,900 selected. They are 20-somethings, which is accurate enough for my purposes and vague enough for theirs. They don't want their students knowing their ages.

Krista is teaching American literature to North High School sophomores. She's one of five TFA corps members at the school. Anna is teaching fifth-graders at McGlone Elementary in Montbello. Neither considered teaching right out of college, but Krista began working with American Indian high school students and found she loved it. On the West Coast, Anna was drawn to TFA's desire to help close the achievement gap as a matter of social and economic equality.

The pair were bombarded with teaching material from the moment they signed up. All spent six weeks teaching summer classes in South Central Los Angeles while also attending teacher training classes. Twelve-hour days were the norm. "Grueling" is the description used by Anna and Gavin Goodall, a University of Florida graduate from Jamaica now teaching algebra at North.

Was that the point where you wondered what you were getting into, I ask Gavin.

"No," he says. "It was the point I knew I was in the right place. When you're there, you realize how much help the kids need. The achievement gap is real."

Anna, Krista and Gavin are smart, energetic and determined. They are also newly minted, which gives me pause. I love the idea of applying these bright young minds, all this energy, to what I consider the nation's most serious problem. But, I also know how far their students lag. They are the kids most in need of help, with the least amount of time to lose, and it long has been true that such students are assigned inexperienced teachers.

It is also true, as I have written before, that hordes of energetic, talented, experienced teachers are not beating down the doors of our most difficult urban schools. Hordes of energetic, talented people are not becoming teachers. Still, I run my concern by Sara Blasing, a TFA regional communication director, and she says that year after year, independent, external surveys of principals in its partner schools come back with high marks.

The latest, June 2007, found 90 percent of principals said they would hire a corps member again; 92 percent said corps members are as effective as their overall teaching faculty when it comes to student achievement; half said they are more so, and nearly all report that TFA training is at least as good as that of other beginning teachers.

North principal Joann Trujillo-Hays is equally pleased so far. She says corps members have brought "passion and energy to North. They are very serious about what they're doing. Their focus is student achievement."

In these first few weeks of school, Krista and Anna have been tested by classroom discipline issues, with absences and tardies and, perhaps more trying, they have been introduced to the mysterious and sluggish ways of educational bureaucracy. The learning curve, Anna says, is steep. Krista started the year assigning her sophomores five-paragraph essays only to be reminded during a professional development meeting that she needed to stick to the curriculum, to find ways to be creative within it.

"I got slapped a little bit," Krista says. "I'm trying to be humble, to respect what veteran teachers are telling me because I am new. If they tell me what I'm doing is wrong, I'll change it. You kind of have to swallow your pride."

The mantra of "high expectations" has been drilled into every corps member, and it seems to me that their toughest task - and one I often wonder how I would respond to - will be to maintain those expectations when, for example, freshman students are still struggling with elementary school math. Krista says both she and Anna have had what she calls an "oh, crap" moment when they realized just how wide the gap is.

"I used to think, 'I'm going to teach a love of learning,' " Gavin says. "But at this point, yeah, I want them to love learning, but what's more important is proving they know the material. They need to know they can do it. They need to prove it to themselves and the rest of the world. You want to know why I am here? Student achievement. That's it."

Krista invited me to observe her class Friday. She's a light bulb, engaging and encouraging, and her students responded well. They're so smart and creative, she tells me; they just need the tools to express that.

She tells the students that if they need help she will meet them after school or on Sunday at a nearby Starbucks. She gives them her cell phone number. Two students call. One shows up at Starbucks to tell her he is stupid and failing.

Krista recounts this as we wait for another student to show. He never does. She runs down some of her teaching ideas for the next week. She grades homework. I leave her to her work.

griegot@RockyMountainNews.com

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