Marla was occasionally depicted as a vocally religious woman, encouraging students to pray on school grounds and running a gospel choir. She was also frequently the one to give lectures to other faculty members, parents or students about the financial and emotional challenges facing teachers, along with other topical issues such as bullying, multiculturalism, and the usage of the word "nigger/nigga" by white people, and has shown to be a full believer of extreme methods, such as Senate bringing a gun and using it to threaten students in hopes they stay quiet.