Stacey Arthur arrives at Bonner Elementary School in Houston,
Texas at 6:30 a.m. every weekday to make photocopies, fill out
paperwork, and set up her classroom.
Unlike most teachers, Arthur prepares for a special group of
students: students with moderate to severe mental disabilities.
“It’s an adventure,” she said of teaching
necessary life skills to her seven students, most of whom cannot
speak and have Down Syndrome.
Having gained hands-on experience in special education
classrooms while working for the Developmental Disability Immersion
Program at UCLA, Arthur knew working with disabled children was
something she wanted to continue beyond her undergraduate studies
at UCLA.
She applied for Teach For America last year, and by summertime
was beginning her transition to Houston.
Though every region is different in terms of program resources
and training, Arthur said the support TFA offered new corps members
in her area was “great.” TFA held a transition fair to
provide information on bank services, car registration, cell phone
providers and even an apartment locator to incoming teachers in
Houston.
“They made the transition so easy; they absolutely held
your hand,” Arthur, a California native, said. “They
organize it for you. You are guaranteed to have a job when the
school year starts.”
As for her new hometown, Arthur is ecstatic.
“Houston is awesome. There is so much going on here. The
traffic isn’t bad, the cost of living is so much lower. I can
be a teacher and live very comfortably,” she said, adding
that she plans to stay in Texas after her two-year commitment with
TFA comes to an end.
Before beginning her teaching endeavors at Bonner Elementary
School, Arthur, along with 900 other TFA teachers, participated in
an intensive five-week training program at the organization’s
Houston institute. They learned to create lesson plans and mastered
effective classroom strategies.
Even though after two weeks of attending workshops, TFA teachers
begin teaching summer school courses in subjects that may differ
from their assigned positions, Arthur said the experience is still
beneficial.
“It takes a lifetime to become an effective teacher, but
it gave me a solid foundation,” said Arthur, who taught
eighth-grade math over the summer ““ a far stretch from
teaching students with disabilities. “It’s a continual
learning process.”
From working on literacy skills to teaching cooking lessons,
Arthur said that dealing with her students’ behavioral issues
and instilling appropriate social skills in them can be
challenging.
But it is her students’ growth that motivates her every
day.
Arthur remembers one student in the beginning of the year
couldn’t repeat his name or phone number.
“(So) I taught him his phone number in the form of a song.
Now he knows his phone number. Now he can do it on command,”
she said.
“In the beginning of the year, we were at zero. Now they
have reached almost all their goals,” she said.
Finding what strategies work for each individual is one of the
most demanding parts of the job, Arthur said.
Though she has felt stressed at times in the classroom, Arthur
praises the support TFA offers its teachers. After training over
the summer with teachers outside of the program, Arthur said TFA
teachers are better prepared than other students in the Alternative
Certification Program.
“It was overwhelming and scary, but I feel that I had more
support because I was with TFA,” she said. “They were
super-supportive for my needs.”
With only a few weeks of school left, Arthur plans to use her
summer to improve her curriculum by utilizing the resources TFA
provided during training.
She is already looking forward to next year.
“It’s been an incredible experience,” she
said.