Navigating Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Rock: Teaching in Urban Schools

Prior to the passage of the NCLB Act, research demonstrates that urban schools were already challenging work sites for teachers. The scholarly literature cites the two overarching themes of cultural differences between teachers and their students and families as well as the bureaucratic dilemmas of large institutions as major challenges to urban teachers (Elam, 1989; Haberman & Rickards, 1990; Irvine, 1990; Mohatt & Erickson, 1981). Regarding cultural differences, teachers in the United States are primarily White, female, middle-class, and monolingual English speaking. This is a stark contrast to the majority of students and families in urban schools, who are racialized minorities and immigrants, from poor and working-class backgrounds, and whose first and home languages are not English. Hence, in relation to their students, teachers occupy positions of institutional power and authority in schools. They also embody and use hegemonic cultural capital and privilege in society based on their racial, class, and linguistic status. In addition, whereas many White teachers like myself had overall positive experiences in K-12 schools as students, many students and families in urban settings, especially those from marginalized backgrounds, experience schools as alienating and disempowering spaces (Delpit, 2006; Ladson-Billings, 1994). Because of their overall positive school experiences and success as students, many teachers struggle understanding and resolving what they perceive as the typical problems of student disengagement, discipline, and lack of parental support.

My analysis of the scholarly literature on how teachers conceptualize and address these problems, especially the academic underachievement of students, highlights the two competing paradigms of “deficit” and “funds of knowledge” approaches. Teachers who hold the deficit view consider students and their families as lacking appropriate knowledge, skills, and dispositions to participate and be successful in school and society. They emphasize the acquisition and practice of certain normalized and universalized ideas, practices, and values, which are based on the dominant sectors of school and society (i.e., White, middle-class, and proper U.S. English). Proponents of this view maintain that since these normalized and universalized knowledge and practices are valued by the dominant mainstream, teachers ought to impart them and students ought to acquire them (Payne, 2005). Since many teachers have the valued cultural capital based on their racial, class, and linguistic positions, they are perfectly capable of modeling and sharing the “proper” ways of being and doing to their students. Critics of the deficit approach view it as an inherently “subtractive” form of education since it fails to account for and use what students already have (Valenzuela, 1999). The other side of the deficit approach is the “funds of knowledge” approach, whereby teachers foreground the intellectual assets, cultural resources, and rich ways of knowing that students already possess (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005). Contrary to the deficit approach that takes a “banking” model of education in which the teachers become the purveyor of knowledge and the students become a tabula rasa to be filled (Freire, 1970), in the funds of knowledge approach teachers build on and connect with the students’ cultural literacy for curriculum and pedagogy.

Scholars argue that urban students do not perform well academically because of the cultural mismatch between their home and school contexts (Delpit, 2006). I believe that the deficit approach, which encourages students to assimilate into dominant Eurocentric, middle-class, and English language norms, exacerbates this problem. However, the funds of knowledge approach, which provides a “cultural synchronization” linking learning that takes place inside and outside of school (Irvine, 1990), is a key to student success. In fact, many White teachers like myself were successful as students in school because our home and school contexts were culturally congruent.

Many teachers see their main task in schools as educating students using meaningful curriculum and engaging pedagogy, yet face enormous institutional challenges related to bureaucratic, financial, and other administrative issues (Darling-Hammond, 1997). They have large class sizes, sometimes with more than 35 students in classrooms that barely accommodate them. They work in poorly maintained and outdated facilities, with leaking roofs and without air-conditioning or heat (Kozol, 1992). Even with their meager salaries, they regularly use their own money to buy materials for their classrooms and students, including books, papers, pencils, crayons, and manipulatives. Many teachers experience schools as bureaucratic machines with seemingly endless policies, procedures, and paperwork (Barmby, 2006). They adhere to numerous and often changing mandates from federal, state, and municipal governments as well as from school district and building administrations. These policies and procedures for students and staff range from discipline and zero-tolerance protocols, special education accommodations, and child abuse reporting to dress codes, truancy, and health emergencies. Teachers are buried in paperwork: Their desks are stacked with student classwork and homework as well as lesson plans. They also complete attendance records, notes to students and their parents, make-up work, grade cards, and individual education plans for particular students. In addition, they are involved in staff committees and attend professional development sessions on school climate and improvement, curriculum adoption and implementation, as well as parent and community relations. Teachers have additional responsibilities that occur before, during, and after class, such as monitoring student drop-off and pickup, cafeteria and recess time, and passing periods in the hallways; advising student clubs and coaching sports; setting up parent–teacher conferences; and organizing and chaperoning field trips, dances, and other social-educational activities. The scholarly literature confirms that teachers carry tremendously heavy workloads under strenuous conditions and that they receive very limited support from administrators and from the public at large (Bubb & Earley, 2004; Elam, 1989; Haberman & Rickards; 1990).

Hard Place: Teaching Under No Child Left Behind

The NCLB Act was a standards-based educational reform from the Bush administration, which received bipartisan support (Leonardo, 2007). With the goal of having all students become proficient in reading and mathematics by the year 2014, NCLB pursued the improvement of students’ academic performance through standardized testing, and the accountability of K-12 educators by publicly disseminating the results of these tests. NCLB required all states to administer yearly assessments in reading and mathematics in Grades 3 to 8. The student scores on these standardized tests, in addition to student attendance rates and particular categories related to race, socioeconomic class, language, and exceptionality, were used to determine whether or not school districts and individual schools demonstrate adequate yearly progress (AYP). What made these tests particularly high stakes for teachers was the system of rewards and punishments attached to them. In other words, institutional and financial rewards and consequences were connected to schools attaining or not attaining AYP. For instance, in the Midwestern school district where I worked, schools were publicly recognized as “Excellent” or “Excellent With Distinction,” and teachers in these schools received financial bonuses when they met or surpassed their AYP targets. However, if schools failed to meet their AYP targets, they received public ratings, such as “Academic Emergency” or “Academic Watch.” If they consistently failed to meet their targets, they were reconstituted and reorganized, and teachers in those schools either lost their jobs or had to seek employment elsewhere.

The high-stakes condition of NCLB dramatically affected teaching practices. The strong focus on student performance on standardized tests resulted in the severe narrowing of the school curriculum and instruction. The emphasis on the tested areas of reading and mathematics led to the reallocation of time and resources to these content areas at the expense of other subjects, such as science, social studies, arts, music, and physical education (Koretz, 2008; Rothstein, Jacobsen, & Wilder, 2008; Sunderman & Kim, 2005). Even in the content areas of reading and mathematics, greater weight was placed on topics and skills that appeared in the standardized examinations, thereby heightening concerns that educators were primarily teaching to the test and that students were mostly learning what would be tested. Teachers ended up drilling students with practice test questions and focusing on examples of assessment that mirrored the standardized exams (Barrett, 2009; Popham, 2005). The stress on student test performance also resulted in school districts developing and adopting curriculum guides that were aligned to tested topics and skills. The school district where I worked mandated the use of curriculum guides that provided teaching scripts and activities. These guides gave specific instructions and language for teaching, which stressed direct instruction, lecture-based activities, and rote learning. Such teacher-proofing of curriculum and instruction, I argue, put an additional disturbing twist to Freire’s (1970) concept of the banking model of education. In Freire’s original formulation, students were the blank slates to be filled by the teachers’ knowledge. Under NCLB, teachers also became blank slates to be given specific content, instructions, and language for their curriculum and pedagogy by the school district.

Many teachers enter the education profession to “make a difference in the lives of students” (Fullan, 1993, p. 12), but they find NCLB to be a major impediment in their pursuit to do so. Many felt that they lost their professional autonomy and freedom to decide and implement what and how to teach in their classrooms. What they had learned in their teacher preparation, such as multiple intelligences, differentiated instruction, inquiry-based and hands-on learning, as well as real-world connections and applications, were essentially thrown out. Their ongoing deprofessionalization had generated high levels of stress and anxiety as well as decreasing self-esteem, morale, confidence, and sense of efficacy (Blake et al., 2010; Crocco & Costigan, 2007; Hayes, 2008; Valli & Buese, 2007). Many school teachers already felt overworked, undersupported, and unappreciated, and NCLB certainly did not make their work conditions any easier. In fact, the high-stakes conditions of NCLB made them feel even more inadequate, dispensable, and burnt out. Stripped of their ability to make a difference and to be agents of change, it should be no surprise that NCLB contributed to the escalating departure of teachers from the profession (Crocco & Costigan, 2007; Hill & Barth, 2004).

Structuration: Enabling Agency Between a Rock and a Hard Place

As my review of the scholarly literature indicates, teaching in urban settings, especially in the context of NCLB, was definitely not easy. As an elementary school teacher during this time period, I can attest to the difficulties posed by the cultural differences and institutional bureaucracies in urban settings as well as the additional set of challenges posed by high-stakes accountability and scripted curriculum under NCLB. While many teacher colleagues felt and expressed that they felt stuck between a rock and a hard place, I am committed to exploring teacher agency within and in spite of seemingly overwhelming structures. In this regard, I am guided by Anthony Giddens’s (1986) theory of structuration to explore and analyze how I used my individual agency to overcome the various structural barriers that I encountered as an urban teacher under NCLB. Instead of viewing structure and agency as oppositional and incommensurable, Giddens argues that there is a dialectic interplay between the two where human agents work through, navigate, and reconstruct the social structures within which they operate. In other words, social structures are not solely constraining and oppressive, and social actors do not have complete free rein in what they can do. Within a dialectic interplay, structures can constrain and/or enable what agents can do, and agents can reproduce and/or transform structures.

Portrait of James

I was born and raised in a rural, working-class community in a Midwestern state in the United States. The school district I attended was racially homogeneous: out of approximately 1,000 students; there were no more than 5 students of color. My father died when I was 7 years old, leaving behind a widow, two young boys, and a small farm. I did not realize how much I needed a positive male figure in my life until I was in fifth grade when I had my first male teacher. He profoundly influenced my social, emotional, and cognitive development and inspired me to pursue teaching as a career at a young age. After graduating from high school in 1993, I entered the teacher education program at Triad University (pseudonym), located in a small city 2 hours away from home. (Note: Pseudonyms will be used for all institutions, locations, and individuals to protect anonymity.)

Condition 1: Having a Strong Teacher Education . . . But Not Enough

I chose to attend Triad since it was close to home and had a strong regional reputation for teacher preparation and job placement. Triad’s teacher education was guided by a holistic approach to curriculum and pedagogy and by a view of teachers as reflective decision makers. I was immersed in Benjamin Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy for the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains of learning, in Howard Gardner’s (1983) theory of multiple intelligences, in Jerome Bruner’s (1960) scaffolding of learning experiences, and in Madeline Hunter’s (1982) lesson-planning template. Many of my education professors were former public school teachers who provided a rich and balanced approach to the theoretical and the practical. They modeled effective lesson planning, teaching, and assessing. As an elementary education preservice teacher, I learned from them a balanced literacy approach, which used both whole language and phonics components. I was also inspired by their inquiry approach to science and mathematics, which took advantage of manipulatives and hands-on activities. My professors stressed the value of providing students with authentic, real-life experiences and the importance of ongoing formal and informal assessments to gauge their learning.

My preparation as a teacher took place not only in the university but also in the public schools. School visits began during my first year and increased in time, frequency, and responsibility in subsequent years. I created lesson plans for various school subjects, and my micro-teaching sessions were observed by both university and school teacher supervisors. I was expected to consistently reflect on my practice, which I initially found to be tiring and cumbersome because of my strenuous schedule of attending university courses, pursuing field experience in schools, and working part-time. However, over my career as a teacher, I have come to realize the importance of self-reflection as a tool to guide and refine my practice.

I graduated from Triad in 1997, quite confident concerning my knowledge, skills, and dispositions as a new teacher. I was hired the following year as a fourth-grade teacher in a school not far from Triad. Located in a rural area, the school had students, teachers, and families whose cultural values and backgrounds mirrored my own upbringing. Parents and other adults in White, working-class, and agricultural communities believed in education as a crucial path to a better life. From Horace Mann through Abraham Lincoln to Bill Clinton, people from these communities held onto the promise and meritocracy of education and believed that those who work hard reap and deserve its benefits (Pendarvis, 2000). Sharing their cultures, beliefs, and practices, I was able to build meaningful relationships with the students and their parents. Student discipline was hardly a problem, and my authority as a teacher was rarely questioned. Parents made sure that their children came to school on time, ready to learn, with their homework completed. Many volunteered in school to make photocopies, provide supplies, and tutor struggling students. My first year of teaching was rewarding and exciting, and I was able to use the knowledge and lessons learned from Triad. My hard work was recognized by my colleagues, and I was given the New Teacher of the Year Award in the school district.

Although relatively successful as a new teacher, I yearned for different experiences and to challenge myself personally and professionally. I decided to apply to an urban school district, and was hired in 1999 as a fourth-grade teacher in the Capital City School District (CCSD), the largest district in another Midwestern state 12 hours away from home. Since I was hired to teach in a grade level that was very familiar to me, I felt confident about my ability to address the curriculum and the students. However, it did not take me long to realize that I still had much to learn.

Terrell was an African American student in my class. He read avidly and could usually be found hunkered over a book while pushing back the long braids that brushed against his face. He enjoyed taking the “devil’s advocate” position in class discussions, displaying superb critical thinking. Although he always completed his in-class assignments, any work to be completed outside of school was never done and submitted. I became increasingly concerned about Terrell’s homework and decided to send notes to his mother. When I received neither any homework from Terrell nor any response from his mother, I followed up with phone calls requesting a conference. After my several attempts, Ms. Hall finally agreed to meet with me in my classroom after school.

When Ms. Hall arrived, she did not shake my extended hand or return my smile. She and Terrell took a seat across the table from me. I cleared my throat and began the conversation explaining that I was happy to have Terrell in class and noted his leadership and good behavior. As I spoke, it was difficult for me to maintain eye contact with Ms. Hall. Her brows were furrowed and her eyes narrowed. She was staring directly at me and not breaking her gaze. I felt like she was sizing me up, assessing what I was saying and was about to say. Finally I shared my concern:

As I struggled to formulate what to say after that accusation, Ms. Hall continued.

Our conversation ended as abruptly as it had begun, with Ms. Hall leaving and Terrell following his mother. Writing and reflecting in my journal after that incident, I realized that Ms. Hall was right. I did not know Terrell and his daily, lived realities outside of school.

Unlike in my previous school where the White cultural and rural home backgrounds of my students and their families were similar to mine, in an urban school setting I had to come to terms with the limits of my own personal experiences and teacher education. Because of my lived experiences, I had a very scant understanding of how social policies inequitably affected many urban students and their families due to their race and socioeconomic status. I did not realize the extent to which racism and classism shaped the lived conditions of racialized and economically disadvantaged people and how these conditions influenced their views of schools and teachers. Whereas many White people in rural areas held onto the promise of education for a better life, many people of color in urban areas saw schools as alienating and disempowering places (Harris, 2008; Howard, 2008). It was much later that year when I found out that Ms. Hall herself did not have positive school experiences as a student and that she left school to work as soon as she could.

Prior to becoming an urban educator, I considered myself a confident teacher who graduated from what I deemed to be a strong teacher education program. I thought I was well prepared: I was steeped in educational theories and their practical applications. I had a solid understanding of the elementary curriculum and critical thinking as well as a myriad pedagogical and assessment strategies. Missing, however, in my teacher education was a deeper engagement with issues of difference, context, and caring. At Triad, the issue of difference primarily focused on the exceptionalities of special and gifted education, on students’ variety of learning styles, and consequently on the importance for teachers to differentiate instruction. Although Triad was located in a small, working-class city with people of color comprising about 10% of the total population, we did not discuss the contextual issues of race and class. As I looked back on my teacher education program, our discussions of multicultural activities emphasized eating ethnic foods or celebrating holidays (Brown-Jeffy & Cooper, 2011). I came out of Triad thinking that I knew and cared for all students. What I came to realize, contrasting my teaching experiences in rural and urban schools, was that Triad prepared me to interact and develop relationships with students who were White and had similar lived experiences and backgrounds to me. My failure to recognize students’ intersectional attributes of race, class, and culture that are different from mainstream norms meant that I missed how schools privileged certain identities and marginalized others and how these processes of privileging and marginalization were intricately tied to students’ academic achievement.

Condition 2: Cultivating Caring Relationships With Students and Their Families

The demographic profile of CCSD is similar to that of many urban districts in the Midwest. With a student population of close to 60,000, the vast majority of its students are from racialized minority and economically disadvantaged backgrounds: 70% are students of color and 71% qualify for free or reduced meals. The district also has a sizable percentage of students who are differently abled (9% of the total student population) and who are English language learners (15%). The sheer size and diversity of such a community was dramatically different from where I was from and from where I initially worked as a teacher. Based on my experience with Ms. Hall, I knew that I had much to learn. My “schooling” as an urban teacher largely came from the caring relationships based on mutual trust and respect that I learned to cultivate and maintain with my students and their families.

Malcolm was an African American student in my fourth-grade class who was a skilled athlete but struggled academically. Not long into the first grading period, he became disinterested in school and homework, and disengaged from class lessons by drawing pictures of superheroes or making a helicopter out of his ruler and pencil. When I shared my concerns with his mother, her usual reply was, “I’ll tell his dad when he gets home.” From my conversations with Malcolm, it was clear that he adored his father and saw himself as “special” as his “dad’s firstborn.” I found out that his father worked long hours as a barber and as a taxi driver and that Malcolm was asleep when he returned home from work. I decided to call his father and left voice mail messages. When I did not hear from him, I went to the barbershop one Saturday morning.

For the remainder of the school year, I went to Mr. Foxx for my haircut and got to know him quite well. Embarrassedly, in my journal, I wrote my earlier assumption that he did not care for his son’s success in school. I was wrong. He later revealed to me:

I get him to school every day, Mr. E. But as far as helping him on his homework, I work a lot, and when I am home, it’s too hard for me to do. Things are different than they were, y’know? I just want him to do better than me. He’s a lot smarter than I was, y’know?

Mr. Foxx strongly valued Malcolm’s academic development. However, like Ms. Hall, he did not have positive school experiences and was pushed out of school by teachers whom he felt did not care for him. Parents like Ms. Hall and Mr. Foxx were crucial in my development as an urban teacher. Learning about their school experiences and their hopes for their children gave me a deeper understanding of the significance of teachers to care across differences (Pushor & Murphy, 2004).

Caring across differences, especially for White teachers like me, meant “traveling between worlds” (Lugones, 1987, p. 11). Although I did not live close to the school, I immersed myself in my students’ after-school activities and in the local community. I attended my students’ sporting events, ate in restaurants, shopped at stores, and attended church services in my students’ neighborhoods. I attended community council meetings to learn about issues germane to my students’ lives, such as rent control and crime prevention. I frequented the local recreation center, and conducted home visits. My regular participation and visibility in nonschool events and in the community slowly earned the trust and respect of my students’ parents and families. Over time, parents shared candidly their personal stories with me. Many of them did not finish high school but wanted their children to stay in school and “get their education.” They described countless encounters of individual and systemic racism in school and society and relayed a general distrust of White institutions like schools and the White people who work in them. Although they wanted their children to do well academically, they also saw schools as racist places that did not have their “child’s best interest” in mind.

My initial entrance into my students’ homes and communities resembled the positionality of a cultural voyeur, noting mere differences between my and their upbringing. However, my eventual immersion and engagement revealed deeper insights into their and my own perspectives about issues of difference, power, and inequity. African American parents’ frank disclosure of schools as racist institutions and of White teachers as not caring for their children was uncomfortable to me, someone who believed that I cared for all children regardless of their racial, class, and cultural backgrounds. However, their candidness was necessary to pierce through my White liberal belief that did not adequately account for issues of historical and contemporary injustice and my participation and complicity in an educational system that has pushed out many students of color. My discomfort urged me to interrogate my own assumptions, stereotypes, privileges, and practices.

As I continue to reflect on my work as an urban educator, two dispositions have been crucial for me as a White teacher to foster caring relationships with African American students and their families: humility and a desire for knowledge. I had to humbly admit that I did not truly know my students. I came to realize that the rhetoric of “I care for all students” was an arrogant, color-blind fallacy that many White teachers possessed and that masked the necessary and difficult work to meaningfully get to know not only about students’ individual differences but also about the contextual conditions of their school and home realities. In other words, caring is not the same as knowing. I needed to know and understand that racism, classism, and the various intersections of social inequities structure lived experiences and perspectives. My lack of comprehension on these matters could become a barrier to building relationships with my students and their families. However, humility and knowledge were ultimately not enough. Fostering and maintaining caring relationships also meant meeting my students and their families on their own terms. The reality was that I was not able to reach all of my students and their families. There were instances when I could not connect with them. In the end, it was up to the parents and their children to decide whether or not they would let me in.

To be sure, there were many positive outcomes to developing caring relationships with students and their families. I better understood parents’ expectations and dreams for their children, and we were able to work together to support their academic and personal growth. This was the case for Malcolm and his parents. I attended Malcolm’s community football games and developed a bond with his parents. Working together, we saw significant gains in Malcolm’s achievement on school-, district-, and state-level assessments as compared with the previous year. Malcolm and his parents paid me a yearly visit and sent occasional e-mails after he finished fourth grade until I left Capital City, keeping me posted of his progress. To this day, I still have the note that Malcolm discreetly left for me, hidden underneath my plan book on the last day of school. The note, short and simple, read, “Thanks for caring for me Mr. E.”

Condition 3: Collaborating With Other Teachers

My first year at Capital City was, needless to say, challenging, exhausting, and oftentimes lonely. My journal revealed my ongoing struggles—terms such as “confused,” “conflicts,” and “concern” regularly appeared in my entries. I felt that I did not have any colleagues to turn to for support, advice, and reassurance. I had two veteran teachers in the same fourth-grade level who were focused on their students and numerous work responsibilities, therefore appearing socially and professionally distant to me. They were pleasant in our hallway conversations but did not have time for grade-level meeting and planning. By the end of the year, one of them retired and the other one moved to a different grade level, thereby creating two vacancies. I began my second year with two new colleagues: Fran, a 42-year-old White woman with 10 years of teaching experience, and Kris, a 29-year-old White woman with 5 years of teaching experience. Both of them had taught in other elementary schools in CCSD and came highly recommended, especially Fran. I noted in my journal that I was extremely nervous and intimidated to meet and work with Fran. She had a district-wide reputation of being an exceptional teacher and was well respected by teachers and administrators. She was very popular among students and parents, and her students scored very well on the state proficiency tests in spite of being in “tough” schools. Unlike my first year when I felt isolated in the profession, Fran and Kris strongly imprinted within me the value and benefits of working collaboratively to address the well-being and development of both students and teachers.

Prior to the beginning of the school year, the three of us met to get to know each other and start planning together. A very important vision and direction that we took dramatically changed the way I considered elementary school teaching, which strongly relied on the philosophy and practice of teachers and their students in self-contained classrooms. Instead, we decided to consider all our fourth-grade students not as members of separate self-contained classrooms but rather as a collective that the three of us would share and oversee together. With this vision in mind, we pursued two directions: (a) each teacher focused on a particular subject and (b) we had a weekly common planning time.

Each morning all three classes rotated through three 50-minute teaching blocks. Taking advantage of our subject area strengths, Fran taught mathematics, Kris was responsible for social studies, and I focused on science. Each one of us taught language arts to our respective homeroom students in the afternoon. How we structured our subject area teaching and how students rotated through all three fourth-grade teachers was a radical departure from the conventional elementary norm. The so-called departmentalization of teaching into particular subject areas usually took place starting in the middle school grades. Critics of subject departmentalization at the elementary level argue that such practice weakens the relationship between teacher and students and threatens the community of learners that can develop in self-contained classrooms (Canady & Rettig, 1995). However, we believed that by sharing our students and focusing on our teaching strengths, the entire grade level of three teachers and 80 students became a larger community of learners. As a grade-level team, we established a unified set of high expectations, with all three teachers overseeing each student’s growth and each student responsible to all three teachers. For instance, a journal entry about a particularly difficult day with one of my homeroom students read, “Sherry really acted out today. Kris told me that her uncle just went to prison. Our kids go through so much, and I’m glad that Sherry had Kris to turn to. They’ve bonded really well.”

Our common planning time was crucial in my individual growth as a teacher and our collective development as a team. Since I was in charge of science, I was able to focus on that subject. Subject departmentalization made lesson planning, an overwhelming, challenging, and time-consuming task especially for new teachers, more manageable (Canady & Rettig, 1995; Chan & Jarman, 2004). It allowed me to plan more in-depth, meaningful, and differentiated activities that promoted inquiry and critical thinking because there were less content areas to plan for. At the same time, I discussed with Fran and Kris what they were covering in mathematics and social studies so that I could make conceptual and learning linkages across various content areas. Moreover, since we taught language arts to our students, we shared curricular resources and instructional strategies with each other and discussed what worked and did not work effectively. In addition, we used our common planning to address particular goals and tasks, such as creating rubrics and assessments, analyzing student test data, and planning intervention. When we had district-wide professional development days, we attended different sessions and used our meeting time to share information with each other. Eventually, we found our weekly meetings inadequate to discuss our work interests and decided to have daily working lunches. We allotted the first 30 minutes of lunch to discuss school business and the remaining 30 minutes to share more personal stories. For 5 years, Fran, Kris, and I worked together at Capital City, and we became very good colleagues and friends.

Teaching has often been depicted as an isolated endeavor whereby teachers seldom work with their colleagues in truly meaningful ways. Although scholarly research and my contrasting experiences working alone and with Fran and Kris clearly indicate the personal and professional benefits of collaboration and collegial support, it has not become the norm (Waddell, 2010). The education rhetoric of collaboration often does not manifest in the regular routines and practices of schools and teachers. Put differently, how schools normally structure time does not adequately account for and build in blocks of time for teachers to work together. Because of our vision and direction to teach in a somewhat departmentalized way and to establish common planning meetings, Fran, Kris, and I were able to create a space where we were free to challenge and disagree with one another. It became norm to critique and ask provocative questions as we unpacked our teaching dilemmas. On multiple occasions, Fran observed my teaching and offered constructive feedback concerning my strengths and areas for improvement. Over time, my insecurities and concerns over my ability to become an effective teacher subsided. Our sharing and refining of ideas and practices in nonjudgmental and supportive ways were foundational in how we saw each other as “critical friends” within the profession (Foulger, 2010).

Condition 4: Developing an Informal Contract With the Principal

Even prior to the NCLB Act, the Midwestern state where Capital City is located began proficiency testing in the elementary grades in 1994, and Grade 4 was a benchmark for these examinations. By the time NCLB was implemented, Capital City was already immersed in an educational culture of student testing and accountability. NCLB mandated the public dissemination of the results of student proficiency test scores, and school districts and buildings received a range of ratings from “academic emergency” to “excellent” based on these scores. In the early 2000s, the CCSD was rated “academic watch”—just above the lowest “academic emergency” mark, and it was under scrutiny for failing to meet state standards. The CCSD central administration put pressure on school building principals to raise student test scores and demonstrate gains in student achievement. Such pressure trickled down to classroom teachers, who were expected to deliver on the promise that all students would meet grade-level expectations. The fear of Capital City as a school district being taken over by the government loomed large among administrators and teachers, especially since a number of urban school districts across the country were placed under state control when they did not meet goals and expectations for student achievement over a period of a few years (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 2005). When I started at Capital City, such a culture of student testing and accountability was new to me, since the previous state where I worked did not have these examinations. However, it became only a matter of time before the federal and state governments put into place laws, procedures, and enforcements to ensure that “no child [was] left untested” in the entire country (Darling-Hammond, 2007).

The directive from CCSD central administration was loud and clear: Raise the student test scores. Toward this directive, since literacy was a major component of the proficiency tests, the district implemented a new literacy program and developed accompanying curriculum guides that explicitly indicated what and how teachers ought to teach their students. These guides were a precursor to the fully scripted literacy curriculum that the district implemented in many elementary schools when the district failed to demonstrate adequate gains in student achievement. As a relatively new teacher, I followed the literacy program and curriculum guide as directed. One of my journal entries read: “My students are struggling with these textbooks.” The textbooks were written at reading levels beyond my students’ capability, and many struggled to comprehend the text. When comprehension was not the issue, students complained that the stories were “boring” and “got nothing to do with our lives.” The curriculum guide focused on basic knowledge and included few activities that engaged my students to think and solve problems critically and creatively.

Karla became my principal during my first year at Capital City. An experienced and well-respected administrator in the district, she was keenly aware of the significance of state proficiency tests. As a data-driven principal, she monitored the results of various examinations, including the benchmark assessments to be given to all students in Grades 1 to 5 in various content areas at the end of each 9-week period. Although the benchmark assessments were allegedly diagnostic in nature, many teachers like me believed that they—like the proficiency tests—were a means not only to gauge student performance but also to monitor teacher effectiveness. At the end of the first 9 weeks, I received the results of my students’ benchmark assessments, confirming what I feared: They scored poorly.

Frustrated with the new literacy program and curriculum guide and with my students’ disastrous test results, I approached Karla with my concern and proposed a plan. After stating the shortcomings of the district’s literacy program and curriculum guide, I asked to be given permission to veer from them and to use alternative literacy materials. These alternatives would include chapter books and teacher-created materials that not only were engaging, developmentally appropriate, and academically rigorous but were also aligned to the state and district standards. I wanted to use materials that made linkages to my students’ home and cultural backgrounds and that promoted deep understanding. Darling-Hammond (1997) maintained that deep understanding occurs when students “understand interrelationships in an area of study and apply insights and skills to a range of situations” (p. 112). Put differently, students use what they have learned to successfully solve problems that they have not encountered before. I assured Karla that my students would demonstrate greater academic growth in my proposed plan than if we stayed on the same course as the district mandated materials. Karla agreed to honor my request on the condition that my students would demonstrate substantial gains on the next benchmark assessments. When my students performed well in the assessments for the second grading period using my alternative literacy program, Karla allowed me to continue using non–district-mandated materials. When Fran and Kris joined the fourth-grade level team the following year, they were also provided with the same professional autonomy, especially since Karla was Fran’s former principal and both had already proven themselves to be successful teachers.

The informal contract between me and my principal worked along this term of agreement: So long as I was able to deliver strong student test scores, I was provided with the professional autonomy to make decisions about curriculum and instruction. To be blunt, I was left alone as long as I made the school and my principal look good. During my 6 years as a classroom teacher in Capital City, my school was among the top 10 highest scoring schools in all content areas on the fourth-grade proficiency tests. The fourth-grade team’s ability to “deliver the goods” drew positive attention and accolades to me, Fran and Kris and to Karla as the principal. We earned a reputation as a successful urban school, leading to local television and radio shows visiting our school as well as other teachers and administrators observing our teaching. Ultimately, my informal contract benefited me, my principal, my fellow teachers, and, most important, our students. Rather than taking an adversarial “us” teachers versus “them” administrators approach to my relationship with Karla, I framed my critique of the mandated curriculum and my alternative proposal in a way that allowed us to work together in the best interest of the students. That my fourth-grade team and I were able to demonstrate strong student achievement was a clear indicator of the importance of teacher professional knowledge and autonomy to make decisions about effective curriculum and pedagogy and of the significance of working with and getting the buy-in support from the administration.