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'I didn't really know how good I could be'

By Nancy Mitchell, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 17, 2007 at 12:30 a.m.

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Bridget Newman grades student papers during her more than two-hour bus ride from West Denver Preparatory Charter School on South Federal Boulevard to her home in Boulder. Frustrated after her first teaching job in New Jersey, she says this job made her realize she wanted to stay in teaching.

Photo by Javier Manzano / The Rocky

Bridget Newman grades student papers during her more than two-hour bus ride from West Denver Preparatory Charter School on South Federal Boulevard to her home in Boulder. Frustrated after her first teaching job in New Jersey, she says this job made her realize she wanted to stay in teaching.

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IN HER OWN WORDS: BRIDGET NEWMAN

Bridget Newman, 25, began teaching this fall at West Denver Preparatory Charter School, a college prep middle school on South Federal Boulevard. It's her second job in teaching. She taught for two years in a traditional public middle school in Camden, N.J., not long after the city was named the most dangerous in America. Her experience there nearly turned her off teaching. West Denver Prep changed that. She spends more than two hours a day on the bus, commuting from her Boulder home to the school. Here's why she believes it's worth it:

"At my former school, I didn't feel like student achievement was the focus of the school. It might have been about keeping jobs for people, it might have been about what was easiest for teachers, what was easiest for administrators. But it wasn't about the students.

"I saw a lot of students fall through the cracks, and I saw a lot of students that a lot of teachers had basically written off, and I just couldn't deal with that anymore. I wanted to be at a school where there was a commitment to all of the students.

"(Right away here) I just felt so at home and I was just so relieved to be in a place where it was, 'This is how we make sure every student achieves,' and 'This is the extra tutoring that we give students,' and 'This is the kind of structure we have in our classroom.'

"What was really refreshing to me as a teacher was to hear, if there's a student that you have already given a consequence in your classroom and they're still disrupting your teaching, you send them out. At my former school, you could send a kid out, say for even getting into a fight with another student, and they could be back in three minutes.

"The expectations of teachers are definitely higher here. But I've really liked that.

"Before I came here, I didn't really know how good I could be. If it's enough to come in at 8:30, leave at 3:30, and if your kids are quiet, and that's the main expectation, you don't really know everything you can do. . . .

"Here, we're actually treated as professionals, professionals who can design their own curriculum, professionals who went to college and know a lot about their subject matter.

"At my old school it was very common to have the entire school, say 100 teachers together in the library, and a PowerPoint presentation about how you should do things. The language would be, 'OK folks, we have to raise test scores' or 'Some folks aren't coming to work every day; well, you have to come to work every day.' It just felt not inspiring.

"I really like being on call at night. It is a little bit of extra time, but I'm not getting 20 homework calls a night. I maybe get two or three, and I think it's really good that kids know they have that lifeline.

"Sometimes I am tired. I get up at 5 o'clock in the morning to get a 6:10 bus that leaves for Denver, and then I take another bus to come here. But I think . . . I must really like doing this because I can't think of anything else that I would even want to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and go do.

"When I was teaching in Camden, I was about 99 percent sure that as soon as I was finished teaching, I wanted to go to grad school.

"But once I visited this school, I realized that I really did want to stay in teaching. I actually ended up turning down several grad school offers. . . .

"I don't think there's anything more important or anything that fits my skills and interests better than helping to make sure all kids have opportunities."

Comments

  • December 17, 2007

    6:09 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    jane writes:

    Will Bridget be able to keep up that pace when she has a family of her own? The vast majority of teachers - many, many of them good ones - entered the profession because it complements family life. Most teachers, no matter where they teach, gave those hours in their first years. Then they got good at what they did (and didn't need so many hours at school), had families, and wanted to be there for them - so as not to create more problems for the public school system. You can't find enough Bridgets to fill all public school teacher positions. But you can find enough good teachers.

    Also, I find it very telling that Bridget gives much of the credit for her being able to teach her best to the discipline support at the school. Give that to all DPS schools and we would see a great improvement. The new discipline plan goes in the wrong direction - reducing consequences instead of increasing them. Allowing disruptive students to remain in the classroom and steal time from other students, rather than removing them until they comply to rules. She also mentions planning her own lessons as a factor for success - then why has DPS gone towards a canned curriculum? Seems to me that these schools support teacher curricular decisions and support a disciplined academic environment. Those are two things DPS could do that wouldn't take much money at all.