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.

Continued from page 2

A LITTLE HELP FROM FRIENDS

Unlike many first-year teachers, Dreyfus has a formal mentor—the aptly named Grace Angel, who also is the school’s grade-level chair for kindergarten. During those first few weeks last August, when Dreyfus just couldn’t get home before dark and a day’s worth of lesson plans took a whopping eight hours to write, Angel stayed and helped. They talk about behavior plans and theories of learning, but also the basics: how to hand in a lunch card, line up for a fire drill, or host a parent night. (Although many of her parents speak no English, they’ve still managed to let Dreyfus know that she’s too thin with gifts of baked chicken.)

“Find your style,” Angel counseled her.

Dreyfus also has support from all the other kindergarten teachers, who have become a close-knit team (they gather for monthly dinners, no less). Vicki Courtney still remembers her first year—27 years ago—when she inadvertently stole the veteran music teacher’s classroom. Even back then, there was a shortage of classroom space in Clark County. It didn’t make her feel welcome. And she knows that’s important.

“Without them, honestly, I probably would have quit,” Dreyfus says.

Based on their models, Dreyfus set up the best part of her day—the hour when her kindergartners rotate independently between centers. The housekeeping wing is pure play—Maya ties a baby to her chest with a long scarf, while Luis grabs a uniformed jacket. At another table, Frida carefully writes an illustrated story. (It begins dramatically: “First they dig a hole.”) And, at another, the kids turn yellow Play-Doh into cones and cubes.

Still, this isn’t what mentoring should be. Ideally, Angel would have received formal training. She would get compensated for her good deeds, and she also would have a lighter teaching schedule so that she could actually visit Dreyfus’ classroom, model lessons, and meet more frequently. “There needs to be time for reflection,” Angel says. “Teaching should be reflective.”

Too often, mentor relationships represent nothing more than monthly coffee and reheated platitudes—“Hang in there, kid,” says Segun Eubanks, director of NEA Teacher Quality. And most induction programs aren’t much better. Just about 1 percent of new teachers get comprehensive induction, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education. The problem is money—doing it right costs about $4,000 per teacher. (But the alternative is worse. The revolving door of recruitment and replacement costs up to $2.6 billion annually, the Alliance says.)

Money is a problem for teachers, too. In Clark County, new teachers earn about $30,000 a year—less than the national average, which was $31,704 in 2004, and well below the $40,000 minimum NEA believes every teacher should make. With Vegas’ stratospheric housing prices, Dreyfus has no hope of buying a house here. Ever. (The day she needs three bedrooms, she says, is the day she moves back to Wisconsin.) To make ends meet, Dreyfus shares a garden apartment on the western fringe of the city with two others, including Krista Holter, a first-year teacher from Minnesota. They spend a lot of time talking school.

“Was John good today?” Holter asks at dinner.

Her share of the rent is $365. But don’t forget car payments and insurance bills, plus the cost of new teacher supplies. Setting up her classroom with big puzzles and fat pencils, beanbag chairs, and books like Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type cost about $1,000. Taking a Praxis test that the district decided in February that new teachers must pass in April cost another $200.

“We could make more as cocktail waitresses,” Dreyfus says grimly.

Playing the Odds
Previous | 3 of 4 | Next