It was just past 7 on a recent Friday evening and Audrey Smith, sitting on the living room rug in front of the television, was on her fourth yawn.
Smith planned that evening to finish cutting 11 flags of Spanish-speaking countries to hang in her classroom. Her boyfriend, Jose Velez, completed the task for his weary girlfriend.
Smith, 26, a first-grade teacher at Gwinnett County’s Baldwin Elementary School, had been home about three hours, the end of another long day that began before dawn. Much of her time that evening was spent keeping up with their 11-month-old son, Timothy, and coaxing the precocious boy to eat his dinner.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution followed Smith’s rookie year to get a glimpse of the challenges facing young educators. State education leaders are troubled by what they described in 2015 as a “crisis” — nearly half of Georgia’s public school teachers leave the profession with less than five years on the job.
Smith said she’s learned from various mistakes and endured some financial hardships. Some moments, she’s felt like she was on the honor roll, and others, she graded herself harshly. But she’s eager to return to Baldwin and is already planning for the next school year.
“I’m essentially ready to start over,” Smith said one morning during her spring break.
LIFE IN THE CLASSROOM
Smith ended her first day on the job with her arms raised triumphantly after a near disaster minutes earlier. Two of her students nearly missed the school bus, and she raced down the hall with them, pleading with them to run faster. They made it.
Some of her students were behind academically when the school year began. Most of them, she said, are now reading at or above grade level. After some early struggles with problem-solving in math, her students got it. “My kids are math wizards,” Smith boasts.
Smith estimates she works about 60 hours a week. At first, she vowed not to bring her work home.
In addition to academic improvement, Smith’s goals at the start of the school year included making her students problem solvers and productive citizens. Citizenship lessons continued in May, as Smith talked to her class about what justice means and taught them about American heroes like Harriet Tubman.
“That’s every teacher’s responsibility, to teach them how to be people,” Smith said.
Baldwin Elementary is near Buford Highway and Beaver Ruin Road in Norcross, a busy area of apartment complexes, carniceria shops, restaurants and homes in one of the most racially diverse locales in Georgia, if not the South. The poverty rate here is nearly twice as high as the county average. Smith’s students reflect the diversity. Smith lives near another elementary school in Buford, a more affluent part of Gwinnett. She chose Baldwin, a 45-minute drive from her home, in part, because many of its students are poor and she sees it as her purpose to help.
About one in six Georgia students transfer to another school during the school year, according to the Governor's Office of Student Achievement. Smith didn't expect that musical chairs effect. When one student stopped coming, she investigated. She called several relatives and learned the family moved to Mexico.
“It was so weird,” Smith said of not seeing the child anymore. “I thought she was going to come back.”
Despite changes, she must still maintain order in her classroom.
It’s not her nature to be tough, Smith says, but she is. Stop talking. Don’t interrupt. Walk in a straight line in the hallway. These are her rules, and Smith’s students typically fall in line. Smith also uses a point system to rewards good behavior, with the daily winner sometimes getting a lollipop.
Smith has learned to ease up on her students about certain things, such as standing in a straight line. She’s also backpedaled slightly on her vow not to do school work at home.
Keeping her students in line was tougher in the final days of the school year. The students were tired. At times, near the end, so was she.
THE RETENTION CRISIS
Some days, Smith said, were really tough.
“You kind of bang your head against the wall and say ‘I don’t know what I can do. It’s a large burden,’ ” Smith said. “I feel that burden and some days it’s too much to bear.” Yet, “It’s that burden that brings me back … I know I can handle it.”
Many teachers say they leave the profession because of the salaries.
At times, Smith talks with frustration about the pay. She paused for a few seconds when asked if she knows her salary. “No. Yeah. Kind of,” she said. “It’s whatever a first-year teacher makes. There’s more important things. I just like what I do.”
The minimum starting salary for a first-year teacher in Gwinnett this school year was just under $38,000. The average salary for Georgia workers 18 and over with a bachelor’s degree is $51,206 a year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Some are overwhelmed by the job's demands — such as grading papers at night. Gwinnett County, the state's largest school district, does not track how many of its younger teachers resign in less than three years.
Smith and fellow teachers talk about what works and what doesn’t. They mine educator websites for material they think will help, spending their own money for some of it. Many, Smith included, believe educators who teach the third grade and below should teach a specific subject, not every subject, as is done in Georgia.
“You are not allowing the teachers to hone in on certain things,” Smith said.
Ruth Calliouet, who focuses on teacher training as an associate dean in Georgia Gwinnett College’s School of Education, said the most frequent request from younger educators is guidance and support from administrators. Some states, she noted, have mentoring programs for teachers. Georgia, she said, does not have a structured program. Some school systems, she said, give grants to younger teachers to purchase books and other items for their students. Many Georgia teachers, including Smith, pay for some supplies out of their own pocket.
LIFE AT HOME
Born in Gwinnett, Smith is a product of the school district she now works in. She didn’t want to be a teacher, but she became interested in doing so after working at a charter school in New York City where she organized parent-teacher conferences and after-school events.
She met Velez in the Big Apple, and they moved to the home Smith was raised in, living with her parents, her brother and four dogs in a ranch-style house with a big backyard that Timothy is eager to explore by himself but is prevented through group effort.
“If I didn’t have everybody around me to support me, I couldn’t do it,” Smith said.
Smith quickly says she’s more fortunate than many of her peers. A family friend baby-sits Timothy at a discount rate. (She couldn’t afford day care, Smith says.) Her mother occasionally gets her additional school supplies. Smith and Velez repay her parents’ generosity through household deeds. She makes lunch for the entire family. Velez, a pest control technician, does yard work.
Smith stares at the television evening news. President Trump is on the screen.
“Every president had a first-grade teacher,” Smith says, emphasizing her point that she feels her job is a calling.
Velez helps care for Timothy as Smith prepares his dinner. When Smith’s mother arrives home, it’s her turn. When Smith’s father arrives, it’s his turn. Smith named her son after her father. The infant is a Wheel of Fortune fan. His eyes are glued to the television as the wheel spins, while he sits silently in his grandfather’s arms.
THE FUTURE
Smith wants to save up enough money to someday buy her parents’ home.
“She’s going to do some great things,” her mother Dona said.
Her principal, Brenda Johnson, sees potential in Smith. “She teaches with a veteran’s heart,” Johnson said.
Baldwin Elementary has a program in which some students are taught in English for half the day and a foreign language the other half. Smith, who is fluent in Spanish, will be a teacher in the program next school year.
While eager to begin the next school year, Smith was pensive about the conclusion of her first year in the classroom.
“I have so much to teach them,” she said.
On the last day of school, Smith met her new students for about 30 minutes. She spoke, as required, entirely in Spanish. Her first-grade class returned before dismissal. Smith gave them goodbye hugs as she escorted them to their school buses. No one was left behind.
Smith let out a sigh of relief upon returning to her empty classroom. In about two months, the students will return, she told her new students. Her classroom is already adorned with words and numbers, mostly in Spanish.
The flags Velez helped her cut are on a wall by her door.
About the Author
