{"id":20096,"date":"2013-09-10T10:25:58","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T14:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=20096"},"modified":"2013-09-10T10:35:17","modified_gmt":"2013-09-10T14:35:17","slug":"classroom-contemplations-why-one-teacher-left-the-classroom-to-work-with-death-row-inmates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/09\/10\/classroom-contemplations-why-one-teacher-left-the-classroom-to-work-with-death-row-inmates\/","title":{"rendered":"Classroom Contemplations: Why One Teacher Left The Classroom To Work With Death Row Inmates"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kendra Martinez \/ Flickr<\/p>

A former Miami-Dade teacher says she got little help dealing with the stress of teaching.<\/p><\/div>\n

Editor\u2019s note: Names of teachers and students have been changed.<\/em><\/p>\n

Marie Roberts is the kind of person most education policy-makers dream of attracting to the teaching profession. \u00a0\u00a0She intelligent, sensitive and able to handle a classroom full of teenagers. She is herself a public school graduate and an Ivy League-educated woman of color.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also the teacher highlighted in an earlier post about adding value — the teacher whose students demanded \u201csmall books.\u201d She responded by securing a class set of novels to help them experience an authentic reading experience.<\/p>\n

But despite her commitment to children and to education, she left the classroom after three years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI left teaching because I didn\u2019t know how to make it sustainable,\u201d she told me. \u00a0\u201cI didn\u2019t have the resources or the tools professionally or emotionally [to deal with] all the demands of the students that weren\u2019t just academic or even just social. \u00a0There was always more work to be done\u2014I never felt a task was complete. \u00a0There was always more.”<\/p>\n

Many new teachers often feel overwhelmed because, like Roberts, they are often assigned to the most difficult schools. \u00a0Her first year was in a large high school in a high-poverty neighborhood in Miami-Dade County.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI had around 230 kids a day,\u201d she said. \u201cIt took me a month to learn their names and they were shifting in and out. I didn\u2019t know what I was doing. The way the system is designed was flawed. Classes were too big, the demand was too much, and no one was teaching me how to work within these demands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roberts made it through her first year and was able to transfer to another school. She spent her next two years at an alternative school, a place for students who had been kicked out of other high schools. She had a little over half as many students as before and she found the student load more manageable. She said the experience showed her that class size matters tremendously.<\/p>\n

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