CUADRO 3.6 CAUDALES DE DISEÑO PARA LOS ELEMENTOS DE UN SISTEMA DE AGUA POTABLE

I’ve always scoffed at things like this. I’m seeking answers for the struggles, failures, and anxieties of my first year of teaching from a psychologist. Someone has recommended a woman to me who has a practice across the river, so I set up a visit. I go in and describe my frustrations and the way my body has responded. She asks me a few questions and hands me a questionnaire. I fill out all kinds answers about my preferences and patterns of behavior, and just like that, we wrap up our first session.

We only have one more session. The woman tells me I’m definitely ADHD. I don’t know what to think. Never once in my own schooling has anyone mentioned anything like this, and frankly I had never found school as a student to be that difficult. But at the same time, I do identify with some of the known symptoms for ADHD: hyperactivity, a short attention span, easily bored, in constant need of motion and

stimulation. I don’t argue with the counselor, who refers me to a medical doctor. When I see the doctor, he barely asks any questions at all before scribbling me a prescription for Strattera. When I conduct my own research on the pills, I don’t love the possible side affect of sexual dysfunction among other things, but I decide to pick the pills at a

drugstore anyway. I’m willing to try them for a season, especially if they will help me get work done more efficiently during my second year of teaching for America.

Despite my uncertain status at Northern, I decide to act as if I will be back there. I have lots to do re-familiarizing myself with the state standards; breaking the them down into smaller, scaffolded steps; planning an initial calendar that helps us works toward the

our goals, and creating benchmark assessments. I do my work downtown at the Teach For America corporate office. Corps members don’t have to work here, and in fact, there isn’t a lot of room for us, but sometimes during the year I came in for the printing and copying access. Today, I come as way to, in addition to the Straterra pills, help me focus, to keep myself accountable and on track. I’ve literally just laid my materials out in front of me when I get a phone call. It’s a local number, one my phone doesn’t recognize. I usually don’t answer calls like this, but I have a suspicion about what it might be, so I break my own rule.

It’s Northern’s assistant principal. She’s direct and short. “Mr. Schumerth, I’m sorry but there won’t be a position for you at Northern this year. The district will be in touch with a new assignment.”

I’m stunned. I wonder if the decision was made because I chose to recommend that those students repeat the fifth grade. Or if it was just a straight data decision, based on how my kids did on the state test. Or if it was because I communicated to the

committee that I had sought out help from a teacher who openly advocates situational resisting of school administrators. The possibilities are endless, and of course I’ll never know. What I do know is that the decision was not made because of my performance in

the interview. It had been short and insignificant, a mere formality, and it seems quite possible that the decision may have been made before I ever entered the room and opened my mouth.

I also wonder how long it will take to get my placement and if I’ll be teaching something completely different than fifth-grade literacy. I can only hope I don’t have to

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teach any math or science. My planning work now seems useless until I have more information.

I text Rick and Kim. Have they heard anything from Northern? Both have. Rick gets to stay; Kim, like me, has been let go. I find out that in addition to Kim and me, one more of our fifth grade team members, Diana, won’t be back at Northern either. I feel slightly better knowing I won’t be the only one heading into uncertain terrain. It also occurs to me that this is a built-in excuse if my second year goes to shit: Well, what did

you expect? The district shifted me to a new school at the last second!

Before leaving the office, I tell Betsy the news. I wonder if she already knows, but if she does, she doesn’t let on. Her response is empathetic, and she encourages me to be patient. She’ll be playing the role of liaison between Teach For America and the school district, which still has an obligation to place the three of us somewhere for the upcoming

school year. Betsy assures me she’ll work hard to make sure I get placed soon and even hints that it might be possible for the three of us who have been let go to land in the same place.

In the meantime, it’s not like I don’t have anything to do. Rick, Kim, and another Teach For America friend of ours, a guy named Matt from Philadelphia, move from our apartments downtown to a beautiful home in Jacksonville Beach. We can walk to the ocean from our new place, but it will mean more of a commute in year two. The place has four bedrooms, three full bathrooms, and a sheltered outdoor kitchen (and shower!) in the backyard. It feels like we’re really living large now, and the guys and I plan to purchase and put a ping-pong table in the garage. When we talk about who will take which room, I opt out of the discussion, saying I’ll take whatever’s left. That gives me one of the rooms

upstairs with the shared bathroom. Kim thinks as the lone woman in the arrangement that she should get one of the rooms downstairs, but Matt’s not having it. Kim may have found this house for us (and she did!), but she will be treated as “an equal” with no special privileges. My three housemates draw for the rooms, and Kim loses. It will be her and me who will be upstairs and sharing a bathroom for the year.

We find out that we’ll also be teaching at the same school again, as will Diana. We get that confirmation from Betsy about three weeks after our firing. Am I allowed to use the term “firing”? The school district uses more politically-correct words like

“surplused.” When the film Waiting for Superman comes out in 2010, former Milwaukee

schools superintendent Howard Fuller has his own name for it: “the dance of the lemons.”

Nevertheless, I’ll be teaching my second year at Harrison K-5, a school about ten miles north of Northern. I still have a couple weeks until teachers have to be back at work. Just enough time to get some plans in place. I’ll be teaching fourth grade writing and social studies, or so I’m told. The catch is that I, and all three of the Teach For America transplants, will be working with co-teachers. No one says this outright, but I have the sense that Teach For America tries to avoid situations like ours’ because of a concern about agency and accountability for your class’s results. In other words, the organization wants us to own what happens, positive or negative, in our classroom. Asset-based thinking, we call it. No, “Well, my co-teacher did/didn’t…” excuses. Teach For America aside, I’m nervous about working things out with a co-teacher, but at least I have a job, and the grade and subject change aren’t as drastic as they could have been.

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Betsy has set us up with an opportunity at the new school to meet our principal and co- teachers.

Kim and I carpool, the first of many more times, to the new school. The building is on top of a hill and across the street from a K-Mart. When we get there, there are only a few cars in the parking lot. The building is made of old bricks, and appears to be much smaller than Northern. Harrison had received an “A” grade from the state for its

performance the previous year. This fact makes for another reason we’ve been given an odd Teach For America placement, but Harrison is more than eighty percent free-or- reduced lunch, and it will be transitioning to a new principal. The former principal will be taking over at a new charter school in town.

The new principal, Mrs. Jamison, meets us at the door. She’s tall, athletic, articulate, and probably in her early or mid-thirties. She leads us into a conference room where we meet our co-teachers, who sit on the opposite side of the table as us.

“Why don’t you each tell us a little bit about yourself?” Mrs. Jamison says. The question makes me feel like we’re in a bit of a disguised interview. Kim, Diana, and I each stumbled through a response: where we were from, accolades, what we had taught the previous year.

After we finish, Mrs. Jamison explains our new teaching situations. “Co-teaching is like a marriage,” she says.

I’ve never been married, but I’ve failed at enough dating relationships to not be

comforted by those words. My co-teacher will be a woman named Amanda: 36, pretty, Irish-Catholic, divorced, and coming from a “gifted” program that was just hacked by

district budget cuts. Above all, I wonder: have I been assigned a babysitter for my second

year?

After the “meeting,” we’re given some time to spend with our new “spouses.” Amanda and I don’t get off to a good start. I tell her about the plans I’ve been working on, but she brushes me off. “Let’s get this bulletin board ready before we leave today,” she says.

I had noticed several other bulletin boards looking new and shiny in the hallway. I feel like anything but an equal as Amanda orders me to staple a border across the top, while she works on the bottom half. It’s actually a great relief to me that she has an idea and materials ready to go. I care so little about bulletin boards, but maybe I’ve lucked into a partner who will take care of this part of the job. When I feel done with my task, we stand back to evaluate the work. Looks fine to me. I’m ready to move on to “more

important things.”

Amanda shakes her head. “Your part is crooked,” she says. “That won’t do. We have to take it down and do it over again.”

I shake my head and resist my urge to lash back. What is with these people and

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