First-Day Jitters Aren't Just for Students

It was a first lesson for the tall, lanky new teacher from Hyrum, Utah, a small town not far from the Idaho border. It was his 26th birthday. For a long time, he had thought he would never be a teacher. A political science and economics major, he planned on law school. But it didn't feel right. So he applied to Teach for America and was accepted and assigned to teach language arts in Langley Park.

Elementary school, he said, fit his personality.

"Well, I'm a big kid, really. That's basically what it comes down to. I want to act in a silly way," he said. "This is one profession where you can be paid to be crazy."

Although Murdock received intensive training, there is no substitute for standing in front of a roomful of children, said John Malter, a sixth-grade teacher at the school and Murdock's mentor.

"Your first week, you're not even thinking about your curriculum. You just want to survive," Malter said. "You're hoping those kids don't eat you alive."

Langley Park-McCormick reflects the challenges and possibilities of teaching in Prince George's. More than 90 percent of the school's 440 students come from families poor enough to qualify for meal subsidies. Ten years ago, the school's students were evenly divided between blacks and Hispanics. Now about 85 percent of them are Hispanic, many of them children of immigrants. About 57 percent have limited English skills.

Under its previous principal, Sandra Jimenez, the school met state testing goals for the past three years. Her success earned her a sudden move to a struggling nearby middle school. An assistant principal, Denise Bush, filled in last week while superiors scrambled to find a new leader, eventually naming one Friday.

On Wednesday, teachers were summoned to the media center for a speech by Superintendent John E. Deasy. The pep talk was beamed live from school headquarters in Upper Marlboro over a rickety Internet connection.

At first, the screen showed Deasy speaking, without sound. A technician fiddled with the settings, only to see the superintendent's image briefly upside down and tinted green. The mood was cheerful. A handful sang, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!" By the time the connection was working, Deasy was 25 minutes into his speech, and the audio still came in partly garbled.

Deasy laid out some of the problems Prince George's faces: One in four ninth-graders does not complete high school in four years. About 6,000 of the county's 130,000 students are chronically truant. And the county shares the financial woes brought on by the national economic slowdown. But he concluded with a story about César Chávez, repeating a slogan the late civil rights leader was known for: "Yes, we can, and we will," Deasy said.

By Thursday, Murdock's room was still missing eight desks. His school-issued laptop didn't have a power cable. He and several other teachers couldn't log in to the school system's new computerized attendance and grading system. At a meeting that afternoon, when Bush asked the teachers how many had class phones that didn't work, at least a dozen raised their hands.

But Murdock was resolutely enthusiastic, cleaning his room with the help of his wife and 15-month-old daughter and rummaging for treasure left by previous teachers.