Marjorie Clark is a white teacher in a Washington, D.C. high
school where more than 95 percent of the students are black.
She grew up in Albany, Ore., in a rural, white, middle-class
community before attending UCLA. Almost all her students live in
poverty, qualifying for free lunches distributed by the urban
district.
Clark is different from her students, but she loves them. She
loves them though they have frustrated her to tears, told her
things she would never have thought of saying to her teachers.
They call her a bitch. They don’t listen. They get into
fights in the classroom.
But then there are the other moments, such as one afternoon at
an impromptu open-mic session on campus.
“The first kid stood up, and he said … “˜A lot of
teachers just say whatever. But Ms. Clark, she never gives up on
us. And that’s why, that’s why I like
her,'” said Clark, who is in her first year with Teach
for America.
“There are so many stories,” she said. “I love
these kids. I really, really do.”
Clark’s investment in her students begins every day at
5:15 a.m., when she gets up for breakfast, showers, and drives to
work. From 8 in the morning until 4 p.m. she teaches, tutors and
fills in for absent colleagues.
Once or twice a week after work, she attends graduate school for
about three hours. Weekends and evenings are spent grading and
planning.
“The time constraints are incredibly difficult. I’ve
seen a lot of breakdowns,” said Clark, who took a few years
to pursue other interests between finishing college and joining
TFA. She said of about 50 TFA teachers in her area, about five have
left the program.
Clark recalls how during training in Los Angeles last year, she
was constantly contact with advisers. They helped her teach summer
school and taught her to write lesson plans.
But when the five-week session in Watts was over, help from TFA
staff also ended. Some teachers did fine without the support, but
the transition after summer was tough for Clark.
“They throw you into the school and give you a pat on the
back,” Clark said. “They need to work on what they
offer to their corps members because too many of us feel like all
they do is say, “˜Good luck, you can do it.'”
She found herself alone in fall, with 35 teens in a 10th grade
world history class. Support came from administrators and other
teachers with their own problems.
There wasn’t enough paper at school. There was a shortage
of pens and pencils. Teachers came and left, and those who stayed
struggled to win the faith of students who were used to seeing
their instructors depart midyear.
Clark was distraught by winter. She was tired of breaking up
fights, writing referrals, tired of calling unreceptive
parents.
She is married but no longer spends time with her husband. The
brief hours they have together are between 7 and 9:30 each night,
after he comes home from work and before she goes to sleep.
“I called TFA in December … and said, “˜I am
emotionally unstable and this is taking a toll,'” Clark
said. The program representative with whom she spoke told her to
focus on maintaining high expectations for students.
Four times a year, a TFA advisor comes to Clark’s school
to observe her and talk about students’ progress.
Clark will explain her day. How one student will throw an egg at
a classmate. How another will call her a bitch. How papers will fly
everywhere.
Her adviser will respond by discussing standards, asking about
students who received lower than a B on a test.
“A friend of mine told me yesterday,” Clark said,
“the sad thing about TFA is that (some) people just survive
it. They don’t enjoy it, they don’t love it, and they
don’t stay in teaching.”
Still, Clark gets advice from other TFA members and veterans and
says teaching has become easier. She said that by spring, she felt
she had earned students’ respect. She loves teaching and
wants to stay in the occupation.
Clark says that though she wishes TFA had given her more
support, she admires how it places people like her in urban
America. The program has taught her to think more about race and
discrimination, shown her a slice of the country she had not seen
before.
“(TFA) is the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire
life. Exclamation point,” Clark said. “It’s
discovering that in America, there’s this whole other world
that you never thought about. And it’s poor, and it’s
sad, and it’s tough.”
The days are long and Clark is exhausted. Some of her
hardest-working students still write at a seventh-grade level.
But then there are those moments, such as at the end of last
semester, when she wrote a personal note to each kid.
One kept the message in a notebook. Another hung his on his
wall, framed.