Teachers Wanted as New Orleans Students Return

One of the challenges facing New Orleans residents as they try to rebuild is finding hundreds of new teachers to serve a rapidly growing student population before schools re-open in September. Local school officials who have been urging students to return are now struggling to find enough teachers.

Teacher Dorothy Riley is supposed to be retired, but she came back to teach kindergartners at Drew Elementary School in New Orleans' Ninth Ward.

"I felt as though if a child ever needed a teacher, it was after Katrina," Riley says. Riley lived with her mother in Lafayette after the hurricane, but she says she felt she had to return to New Orleans.

"I don't think it was my decision. I think it was a decision from the Lord to go down and touch somebody and bring these children up," she says.

The city will need hundreds of teachers like Riley to serve a system where 200 new students enroll every week. Many of the charter schools that have opened their doors in New Orleans are full. Earlier this year, parents sued when 300 children were turned away.

To avoid more trouble in the coming year, local school officials have kicked a major recruiting effort into gear.

Novelt Estrella, part of a recruiting and training effort called TeachNOLA, is responsible for keeping track of about 70 applicants.

"People from all over the country are applying here — interesting people with a lot of skill and intellect and passion," Estrella says.

New Orleans is growing rapidly, while other big city school systems are closing schools left and right. So the Crescent City might look appealing to laid-off teachers in other places.

Teachers from out of town also are drawn by housing subsidies and a $5,000 bonus the state now offers for teachers who stay a full year.

The new crop of teachers may find that many schools are running smoothly. But in others, pre-Katrina problems have been magnified by the educational storm that followed the hurricane.

At Walter Cohen High, one of five new schools opened during the past few months to cope with growing enrollment, English teacher Matt Roberts tries to get a lesson started one day with only seven students in class.

Some of the others are apparently in in-school suspension. Those who have arrived are bored and unprepared. Roberts struggles to get the students on task. He bounces around the room, giving each student one-on-one instruction.

But as Roberts focuses on one student, the other six quickly get off track. One student hides behind a file cabinet and sends text messages on his phone. Because the school has only been open for a few weeks, a computer-based reading program isn't ready, giving students one more thing to grouse about.

Roberts has seven years of experience teaching out of state — but, he says later at home, nothing prepared him for threats and other problems he now faces at school.

Roberts and his wife are New Orleans natives who returned in part to help with the recovery effort. They questioned their sanity when they found themselves bathing their kids from a kitchen pot because their home had no hot water. But Roberts says all the challenges he faces are matched by the huge rewards.

"The same student who threatened me today is a student who on Tuesday pulled a security officer from the hallway into the room to show that security officer his poem," Roberts says.

The promise of those bright moments keeps luring potential teachers. A woman from New York who walked into the school district offices one day says she's ready to sign up even though she'll have to take a major pay cut and cover the cost of getting certified herself.

"I used to live here, and [I've] just been missing New Orleans like nothing else, especially after the storm. When you see the way the city's really been let down, I just need to come back and just give some kids a shot at an education."

The city's Recovery School District has filled one important post — Paul Vallas, chief executive officer of the Philadelphia city schools, has agreed to take over as chief in New Orleans starting July 1.

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