Angela Bolds gave up a lucrative career for the chance to teach eighth-graders lessons in algebra - and life.
By MONIQUE FIELDS
Published August 10, 2003
[Times photo: Carrie Pratt]
Angela Bolds, a new math teacher at Morgan Fitzgerald Middle School in Largo, holds up a red card to ask for silence from her students near the end of one of her classeson the first day of school.
LARGO - On this first day of school, Angela Bolds tells her students exactly what she expects of them.
Respect is imperative. Class participation is required. Talking is forbidden. And tardies are unacceptable.
"If your seat is not seated in your seat, you will be given an alternate assignment," she warns.
Bolds instructs the students to read the syllabus closely. You and a parent must sign it, she says. Bring it back by the end of the week.
The eighth-graders at Morgan Fitzgerald Middle School stare at their new math teacher, all 5 feet of her. She is wearing a navy blue suit and a stern expression.
Bolds, 36, is more than strict. She is one of a cadre of teachers in the Pinellas school district who have decided to move from the private sector into the classroom.
She is a trained electrical engineer and programmer/analyst who holds a master's degree in business administration. She also is a wife and mother of two young children.
In March, Bolds was working for the Home Shopping Network, earning more than twice the $31,000 that beginning teachers are paid in Pinellas County. But the job wasn't emotionally satisfying. And the money wasn't as important as the opportunity to affect people's lives.
So Bolds decided to trade sitting in front of a computer for teaching in a school where half the students are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced lunches.
Her new office is a classroom plastered with her thoughts and ideas.
"Attitude determines altitude," one says. "Math is fun!" says another.
Fun, however, isn't all that high on Bolds' teaching agenda.
While she is charged with showing students the finite limits of pre-algebra and Honors Algebra I, she also intends to introduce topics that have no right or wrong answers.
Bolds begins each day with short exercises about respect, character or integrity.
What would they do if they found a wallet with $500 in a parking lot? (Many said they would keep the money and go shopping.) Is e-mail private? (They assumed so.)
"You can't take any action for granted," she says. "It always means something."
Bolds touches on the ethics of cloning and stays on the subject when she sees hands shoot into the air. When she realizes most of her students have never heard of Dolly, the cloned sheep, she urges them to investigate.
"Look it up and bring me some answers," she says.
Even writing is part of the class. Bolds urges her students to write their thoughts and feelings in a journal so they can see how much they change during the school year.
"You're going to see yourselves develop right before your eyes," she says.
The same thing could be said of her.
Bolds grew up poor in Tampa as one of eight children in a household headed by her mother. She remembers when Santa Claus didn't visit one year. She will never forget the tattered and ill-fitting clothes she wore to school or the teasing that followed.
At the age of 8, she vowed she would never be poor again - and she never was.
She read the dictionary and taught herself new words. It was a way of getting respect - a word she cherishes - from teachers, students and the brothers and sisters who cheered her on.
She excelled in school, eventually enrolling at the University of South Florida, where she majored in electrical engineering.
Her mother, Annie J. Hicks, set the example years earlier. She, too, demanded respect, especially from her children. She also proved that anything was possible when she returned to school and erased her name from the welfare rolls nearly 30 years ago.
Hicks says she isn't surprised by her daughter's change in careers. She is the one who fought to have her daughter admitted to advanced classes.
"She planned for where she is now so she could come back" to teaching, Hicks said. Hicks is a registered nurse-turned-teacher. This fall, she will pursue a master's degree in vocational education at USF.
Professionals willing to cast aside lucrative careers to become teachers have some things in common, says Vicki Meredith, coordinator of the district's Transition to Teaching program.
They have something to share. They need something satisfying in their lives.
And like Bolds, they have little training in a classroom.
Aging employees and an ongoing teacher shortage are two of the reasons Pinellas school officials created the Transition to Teaching program in 2002.
"Looking at the data, we knew in middle school and high school that 46 percent of the teaching staff were over the age of 50," Meredith says.
The program helps teachers bypass college instruction and allows them to obtain certification after one year in the classroom. The program provides training and evaluations. It also matches new teachers with veteran teachers and retired administrators, and sends them to a workshop titled "survival skills."
It's an apt name.
On her first day of school, Bolds divides one of her classes into groups and gives them several math problems to complete. It's a way for her to evaluate how much they learned last year, and to get them thinking about math again.
The students quietly work on the problems while Bolds walks around and gauges their progress. After 20 minutes, she asks for volunteers to go to the board, solve a problem and explain their reasoning to the class.
As her students talk, she takes notes.
They aren't working the problems as quickly as she expected. They also don't explain their answers using the language of math, such as "common denominator," "numerator" or "mixed number."
When the bell rings, she knows she has a lot of work to do.
"I'm surprised they don't know this," she says.
Bolds thinks incessantly about her classes. Each night, she goes home so tired she falls asleep soon after feeding and bathing her children.
Teachers had warned Bolds about the rigors of the job. They told her not to smile before Christmas. They told her about the curse words, the disrespect, the way students try to get out of their work.
Working at Morgan Fitzgerald, said principal Linda Tucker, would require working with a "challenging population" of students.
"I don't think it's easy," she said. "We stay busy all the time, and we all have to be very flexible.
Middle schools, by their very nature, are rough.
Students in the middle grades are hitting puberty. They are beginning to find out who they really are, or at least who they want to be.
The girls dye their hair pink. The boys wear earrings. They all have different needs.
When Bolds learned she might have visually and hearing-impaired students in her classes, she was nervous. Just teach, administrators told her.
It is good advice, though Bolds does make a few adjustments. She turns off the overhead projector and leads the assignment once she realizes the writing is too small for one of her students to read. When she asks a hearing-impaired student a question, she pauses while an interpreter uses sign language to communicate with the student.
The additional challenges don't bother Bolds. She knew the job would be challenging when she signed the contract in June. She had vowed to make a difference in her students' lives, as so many teachers had made in hers.
By the end of the week, Bolds begins to soften her approach, but only a little. Her voice isn't as stern, and she even smiles a few times. She shows up for class on Friday in a pair of Levis and a button-down shirt.
Her students haven't been nearly as difficult as she expected on Day One.
Some of them tested her tardy rule and found themselves at a desk writing five ways they could make sure it didn't happen again.
One of them wrote:
1. Wake up on time.
2. Get on the bus.
3. Get ready early.
4. Have stuff ready.
5. Don't miss the bus.
After a few such assignments, students who were tardy just headed straight for the back of their room, where their punishment awaited.
Soon, students were making a point of greeting her when she arrived and saying goodbye when she left. When the bell rang, a few stayed behind with more questions.
Stephanie Keyhoe, 13, walked into class Thursday with news.
"Mrs. Bolds," she says, "I started that journal."
"See me in December," Bolds replies.
By the end of the week, it is clear to the students why their new teacher begins each class with a lesson about character and respect.
"If I were a teacher," says Hector Concepcion, 13, "I wouldn't want my students to be late either."
Students will be assigned lockers and books this week.
Bolds plans to give them pop quizzes and quicken the pace.
