Teachers in VCU program learn how to create an image

BY ZACHARY REID Richmond Times-Dispatch
 

No matter the intellectual gifts or the enthusiasm they bring to the work, new teachers face major challenges when they’re assigned classrooms for the first time. “You have no credibility, no name recognition and no reputation,” Raynell Reid told a room full of prospective teachers in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Richmond Teacher Residency program. “When those students walk in, they’ll come in smelling blood.
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The 31 students in the program are committing the next four years to a new teacher training model in hopes of keeping the smell of blood at bay.

Their program is one of nearly two dozen nationally that is designed specifically to teach teachers how to succeed in some of the toughest urban school environments in the country. Similar programs in the Urban Teacher Residency network are in Chicago, Washington, Boston and Philadelphia, among other cities.

The first year, the students take graduate courses toward a master’s degree. When school begins in September, they will start four-day-a-week classroom assignments in which they will work alongside veteran teachers in a setup akin to a medical school residency.

After finishing their residency, they commit to working in the city for three years, during which time they will continue to have a training support system at VCU.

To make sure they’re ready for their day in the classroom, Reid, a veteran Richmond schoolteacher who is now a site coordinator in the VCU program, and Cynthia Robinson-Carney, a current Richmond Public Schools teacher who also works with the VCU students, taught the students the secrets to getting their careers off to good starts.

“What you will have is your image,” Reid told the group as she began an exercise that included tips on dressing for the job and the power of perception.

Later in the day, Robinson-Carney told them to remember their role.

“You’re not their buddy; you’re not their friend,” she said. “You can like your students, but you have to remember the roles. You’re there to teach them.”

Since starting the residency program four years ago, program director Terry Dozier and other staff members have insisted that students dress professionally.

“We want them to look the part,” Dozier said. “With this group, they’ve really taken that to heart.”

Still, Reid found a rapt audience for her presentation on creating a professional image.

She flashed images on the whiteboard including businessmen and businesswomen, a used car salesman and a prostitute.

The students looked knowingly at the well-groomed people and snickered at the others, particularly the prostitute.

“She looks like someone dressed up to look like a prostitute,” one student said.

“She looks like she’s in a Halloween costume,” another said.

Reid pointed out that they all could identify the intent, even if the person was in costume.

“You, my friend, are judged by how you look,” she said.

She urged them to dress well and to act professionally — slacks, crisply pressed shirts and ties for the guys; dresses, or at least slacks and blouses, for the women.

And no jeans.

“When I walk into a classroom, I need to know who the teacher is,” she said. “Especially with some of you who will be in high school, you’ll be close in age to your students. Don’t dress like them. Don’t act like them. You are the teacher.”

She said every potential teacher needs to be able to answer two questions.

“Who are you? What will people say about you?” she asked.

Derrick Bates, a 29-year-old student from Henrico County who will teach special-education classes, said he was worried about being able to pull it off every day all school year.

“(What) if we have an off day?” he asked.

“We all have an off day,” Reid reassured him. “You don’t have to be perfect. You’re going to have those days when you don’t feel well. … Don’t try to put on a show. Be who you are.”

At the end, Reid asked the students what they learned.

“How quickly people judge you,” said L.J. Okonta Jr., a 22-year-old student from New York who will teach special education.

“That nonverbal communication is an important aspect,” said Greg Johnson, a military veteran who will teach at Franklin Military Academy this year.

Robinson-Carney, an English teacher at John Marshall High School, started her part by having the students break into groups based on how they were raised.

She sent them to different areas if they thought their parents had been assertive, tolerant, controlling or generous. At Bates’ suggestion, Robinson-Carney added a “mixing bowl” category for those who couldn’t decide.

The students spoke among themselves for a few minutes, then Robinson-Carney asked them what they thought students need.

“What do our students need us to be?” she asked.

“I grew up in RPS. I teach in RPS. In my experience, the corner you want to be in is assertive. If you can’t be assertive, our kids don’t deserve you there.”

She said attempts to be controlling don’t work, and dreams of being tolerant or generous are failed, too.

“Our students need rules and boundaries,” she said. “Strict is not a bad thing. Mean is a bad thing.”

The lessons were important, Dozier said, because of the likelihood of failure in the classroom. Nationally, 50 percent of teachers quit within five years; in urban school systems, such as Richmond’s, 50 percent of teachers leave within three years.

Creating a presence in a classroom, she said, was something most teachers never learn.

“In a traditional model, when you’re a student-teacher, you come in after the school year has begun, so you never learn how to really set up a classroom,” Dozier said. “The goal here is to teach them from day one. They’ll be in the classroom the first day the teacher is, before students ever show up. It will be their classroom, too.”

What they do with the lesson, their teachers told them, is up to them.

“You have to think that you are a gift given to the world,” Reid told them. “The question is: How are you wrapped? ”