Where We Teach – Las Vegas

Playing The Odds

Stacy Dreyfus is one of thousands of new teachers who come to this booming city each year. But too many of them go bust.

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THE FIRST DAYS

At 7 a.m. on a cloudless May morning, as the sun glints off the Egyptian pyramid on the Las Vegas Strip nine miles away, Dreyfus gathers her kindergartners on the blacktop playground for the 135th day of school. It promises to go a lot better than the first, the 50th, or even the 100th.

John will not run away on the playground. If he gets antsy, Dreyfus knows what to do—simply gather the others, line them up, and walk into the building. He’ll follow. Nobody will embarrass her in line, poking and yelling as they walk by more experienced teachers. (And Adam will not crack his head open—but if he did, she definitely could handle it. After all, it would be the third time this year.)

“Who is going to be my estimating king or queen today?” Dreyfus asks as her kids get settled criss-cross on the classroom carpet. “If your name has five letters, please stand up!”

“If your name begins with an I, please keep standing. If the second letter begins with the same letter as strawberry, please keep standing. Sss, sss, strawberry!”

“All right, Isela!”

Dreyfus has wanted to be a teacher forever. Back in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, her hometown of 63,000, her mother has taught first grade for nearly 30 years. But small-town teaching jobs are scarce. After Dreyfus, now 27, graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in early childhood education and then traveled some, she headed here. Where else could she and her boyfriend (a professional juggler) both advance their careers?

It is not what she expected.

“It’s much harder than I thought it was going to be. You don’t know if you’re doing it right, and you don’t want to fail the kids,” she says. “There were days when I was just like, I’m done. I have no control. They’re running my life.”

With little real preparation (and a soft heart), classroom management quickly became Dreyfus’ weakness. She isn’t alone—less than half of new teachers said they were “very” prepared to maintain order in the classroom, according to the most recent MetLife Survey of the American Teacher. It isn’t much experienced in student teaching assignments or covered well in orientations. And while Dreyfus’ professors may have taught her about Piaget, they never role-played what to do when a kid hides under his desk and cries, “I don’t want a whupping!”

“I could write a lesson plan, sure, but I couldn’t get them to the bathroom. I had two little boys pee their pants,” Dreyfus recalls.

Often the only advice any new teacher gets is the old saw: “Don’t smile until Christmas.” (Actually, Dreyfus and her friends did get another piece of wisdom from a retired colleague on making it through the first year: “Find your favorite cocktail and drink it every night.”) And while administrators try to be helpful, their idea of help isn’t always the same as a teacher’s. Every week, new teachers must submit their lesson plans for detailed review. Nine times last year, Dreyfus endured observations and evaluations. (Every time her door opened, she shrank a little.)

But Dreyfus’ classroom skills improved greatly over the course of the year, thanks largely to practical advice (“Stacy, he’s playing you!”) from her more experienced colleagues. This morning, when a lesson in geometric shapes devolves into a jostling match over crayons, Dreyfus moves quickly. “You’re being rude and disrespectful!” she sternly tells her chattering kindergartners. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know!” snaps Elijahjuan.

“It means we’re making you sad,” Dulce whispers.

“I’ll wait. I’ll wait,” Dreyfus says, as their attention slowly turns to her. “Boys and girls, as long as this takes us, we may not go to recess.” (But, of course, they do. She’s still a softie at heart—and in desperate need of a midday break, too.)

Playing the Odds
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