Life in the Corps

Cat Crumpler graduated from Duke last May. A public policy major, she now lives with four roommates in Cherry Valley, Arkansas—population: 659. It’s hill country, and her house is on a lake. Crumpler, Trinity ’10, a Teach for America corps member, teaches fourth grade math at the only school in town. “I really wanted to do something philanthropic,” Crumpler said of her decision to join TFA after graduating from Duke last May. “I wasn’t really looking to make a lot of money—I just wanted to do something good.”

Although the top employers of recent Duke graduates include business and banking icons—Goldman Sachs, Google, Morgan Stanley—a service organization, Teach for America, has been the number one employer of graduates for the last four years. The two-year teaching program places recent college grads in underserved urban and rural districts with the goal of narrowing the nation’s achievement gap. TFA members are employed by their school districts and receive salaries comparable to those of any first-year teachers.

But closing the achievement gap is no small task, and even for the most ambitious student, the transition from an undergraduate to an educator can be a difficult one.

During her first semester in Cherry Valley, Crumpler arrived at the school at 5 a.m. and would not leave until 8 or 9 p.m. There’s paperwork, and lots of it, plus tests to grade, lessons to plan, behavior reports to write—all before the kids walk in the door. Students eat breakfast at school and arrive in class. She begins lessons. Ratios and fractions are taught with bags of Skittles. The kids attend Music, Mandarin or P.E.

“Finding the rhythm was the toughest thing,” she said. After a few months of this, Crumpler said she became more efficient.

“As a college student, you’re taking care of yourself,” said Ashley Collins, Trinity ’10, who works as a second-grade teacher in rural North Carolina. “[Now] I’m their teacher, I’m their nurse, I’m their psychologist, I’m everything to them…it goes from thinking about yourself to thinking about 17 kids.” Although Collins came to TFA with a variety of teaching and tutoring experiences, she said one of the greatest challenges she faces occurs outside the classroom. Many of her students cannot make education their highest priority—they struggle to have basic needs met at home.

“Honestly those experiences are sometimes preventing them from wanting to learn,” Collins said. When her second-graders arrive in class, she can see in their faces if they are upset and hurt, and she must address these feelings before she can begin instruction. Collins recalled one girl who told Collins that she was like a mom to her.

“And she had just lost her mom,” Collins said.

The school had an ethic of hard work, kindness, no excuses and high expectations. Classes were co-taught and children attended school from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and often stayed later for extra-curricular activities, Bailey said. Although she had initially hoped to teach older children, the only vacancy was a kindergarten position. An only child who had never spent much time around young children, Bailey suddenly found herself guiding a classroom of rambunctious four and five-year-old boys who had never been to school before.

“When I joined TFA this was probably the last scenario I thought I’d see myself in, but I found joy in it nonetheless,” she said.

Bailey took initiative to improve where she lacked—watching her peers, conducting her own research and mastering the correct vocabulary to use with kindergartners. The boys had boundless energy. There were messes, there was throwing up, but Bailey found her work engaging and felt fortunate to work with the children.

“I went to kindergarten for maybe three to four hours a day,” Bailey recalled. “In this scenario, they were in school for up to 12 hours a day and that was all instructional time. There wasn’t a recess. There wasn’t a nap time. At some point, you’re a five-year-old boy: You want to run around, you don’t want to read a book.”

Bailey ate most meals with her students, the majority of whom received free and reduced lunch. She frequently worked Saturdays and her students occupied most of her thoughts.

“You are dealing with kids who have tough stories,” she said. “There’s a lot you can do with them in the classroom, but there are a lot of things you can’t control. And those things that are out of your control are the things that kept me from sleeping at night.”

Bailey also struggled to give herself time off. The school had no building substitutes and in general the staff took few sick days. As a result, her health began to wane over the course of the year. It was apparent to her co-workers and students, she said.

“It was very difficult to take a day. And I think that’s why my illness began to spin out of control,” Bailey said. “Also, we [teachers] don’t want to be away from our kids because who knows what a stranger will be like in our classroom?” Routine is especially important for young children, she added, and a break from it is jarring; the re-adjustment can take time.

At the end of her first year with TFA, Bailey took medical leave. She returned home to her family to sleep, rest and recover. Already tiny, she had lost 20 pounds after her first year. She planned to return for her second year in TFA, but the time at home gave her some critical distance.

“While I really loved the work I was doing and I loved my kids, it wasn’t possible for me to sustain that level of energy every day,” Bailey said. She decided not to return to TFA for her second year. For a woman who had been distressed at the thought of leaving her students for even a day, the decision caused tremendous guilt. After speaking to mentors and those close to her, she realized those feelings of guilt were not rational, and four years later, she believes she made the correct decision for herself.

“When you think about the type of person who wants to do TFA and wants to live that sort of life, we’re all very committed to this belief…we will do anything to help our kids realize those goals,” Bailey said. “That’s very powerful, but it can also be dangerous from a personal perspective.” Having time to rest and reflect is important, she added. “I think often with mission-driven work, people are hesitant to be critical about the process involved with it because they are so passionate about the mission.”

Bailey also stressed that her TFA experience was not typical, and that the organization was nothing but supportive about her decision. She also had support from her co-workers at Excellence and TFA during her year of teaching.

“I was fortunate enough to be supported in my final decision by my school, by my co-teacher and by Teach for America,” she said. “They definitely support someone taking care of themselves and doing what they need to feel better.”

Although the work may be emotionally challenging, corps members also work to make differences in the communities they work in.

Crumpler entered her first year of teaching during a time of change in Cherry Valley. The town’s primary and secondary schools, which share a campus, had only 60 teachers in total, most of whom grew up there. She and the other eight incoming TFA corps members were the first to work in Cherry Valley, Crumpler said.

“There are community members and staff resistant to TFA because a lot of the teachers who teach here went to elementary and high school here in Cherry Valley and went to college in Jonesboro,” she said. “That is the pool of teachers they’ve always seen. They see us as a threat to their job security.”

And the teaching staff is not the only thing changing. The school, where 100 percent of students receive free and reduced lunch, has been the recipient of many grants in the past five years, Crumpler said. The children now take Mandarin Chinese and have MacBook laptops. She added that this year, it became a charter school.

“It’s been awesome to be part of something so monumental for this town,” Crumpler said.

Life in the hill country has been a major change of pace for Crumpler. While at Duke, she had many options at her fingertips: grocery stores, gyms, activities, ways to relax. Cherry Valley has no stoplights. The nearest city is Jonesboro, 45 miles to the north, with 66,196 residents. To buy groceries, she and her corps roommates must drive 25 minutes to another nearby town.

Still, Crumpler said four of her roommates have committed to staying to teach a third year in the district, and she is strongly considering it. For Crumpler, connecting with the small community she works in has been important to her success in the classroom. She has helped with after-school enrichment activities, tutoring and coaching cheerleading. She attends Friday night football games, and during the summer she and her roommates took strides to reach out to the community where they were clear outsiders, and residents have embraced them.

“They welcomed us with open arms and we used that to form bonds,” Crumpler said. “We went to every BBQ, every church social even if we weren’t religious.”

Crumpler said these bonds with the community foster students’ success in the classroom. When she sees her student’s mother in the only restaurant in town, she can say, “[Your daughter] has homework tonight.”

“And the mother might say, ‘Oh she does? I didn’t know that,’” Crumpler said. She can go to parents about their child’s dropping grades. “If you support the community, the community supports you and your job,” she added.

Crumpler’s advice to incoming TFA corps members is to take help from colleagues and older teachers whenever it is offered, and to be realistic about why you are in the position and what you can accomplish day to day: “If you enter it thinking you are going to save every child you are going to be so disappointed every day you can’t continue.”