"Just passing through."
"A threat to public education."
"Just building their resumes before moving on with their lives."
There has been a lot of debate about Teach for America, lately. The NY Times covers Teach for America quite a bit, I'm guessing because the NYC corps of Teach for America members is the largest in the nation. But, in almost every article I read, there is a general pattern that is followed, almost exactly, every time.
It goes like this:
1. Teach for America is in the news for another amazing accomplishment, like TFA teachers raising test scores in their classrooms more than other traditional teachers.
2. An explanation of what TFA is - a corps of stellar recent college graduates who work in some of the most difficult classrooms in America. Invariably, these days, there is mention of how incredible it is, in this economy, that almost 20% of the top graduates at many Ivy League schools are applying to Teach for America instead of Deloitte and Touche.
3. Of course, "there are critics" who criticize Teach for America because, as I put some of the quotes at the top of my blog post here, we are just passing through. We are not committed to the cause of teaching. We are just rookies using these hard to staff schools as a social experiment. We are not possibly as great as a veteran teacher. We should be ashamed of ourselves for just using already poor and disadvantaged students just to build our own resumes.
4. The article will usually finish by summarizing the amazing accomplishment that they originally wrote the article about in the first place.
I have never been asked to contribute to these articles, but I figure I have a blog with a readership of 6 people who I can vent my frustration to about this topic. And for full disclosure, I was a Teach for America teacher from 2004-2006 in the Baltimore City Public School System.
Here's how my article would be written:
1. Teach for America teachers THROUGH OUT AMERICA, placed in some of the hardest to staff schools, are accomplishing amazing things with their students.
2. Teach for America is a corps of recent college graduates from schools THROUGH OUT AMERICA, with diversity of ethnicity, culture, personality and opinion not seen in the traditional teaching pool. Individuals come from amazing schools, including small liberal arts schools like Whittier College (my college - nope, it's not an Ivy League, but frankly, I too am frustrated that TFA is branding itself more as a bastion of the Ivy Leagues, instead of pushing the fact that the majority of its greatest teachers come from Colleges like mine. In fact, my first year teaching, one of my housemates was from Dartmouth - he couldn't hack it. Funny, the small liberal arts school kid - me - was awarded Rookie of the Year that year by my school.)
3. There are critics - insert the oft-repeated and tired quotes that I have above. But, let's add that the very schools that they criticize Teach for America for abusing are certainly NOT being inundated with the veteran teachers these nay-sayers demand to see in those classrooms. Additionally, not even the majority of traditionally trained teachers who dedicate their lives to the profession are interested in staying at these difficult schools for their whole career. But nobody who is criticizing Teach for America - usually Professors in Colleges of traditional Teacher Preparation - is offering a better solution that is also viable (and, most ironically, most of them wouldn't dare go teach in the schools Teach for America places at, either!)
Either put your money where your mouth is, or shut up and move out of the way so that those of us who would rather do instead of just say can get stuff accomplished!
4.
What other articles often fail to recognize or state is that Teach for America, at the heart of its mission, includes for the very fact that not every individual attracted to the program will stay in a classroom for over two years. Solving the problems of educational inequity - the so-called "achievement gap" - won't be accomplished if we only attack the problem within the field of education. What these big-mouthed, degree-laden education professors seem to be continuously missing is that we NEED people in our nation who worked in a school for a few years to get a better grasp of the problems faced by our students, so that they can then present plausible and solid solutions in whatever field they ultimately decide to dedicate their lives. Someone who has seen the challenge first hand can then make decisions in the arenas of housing, nutrition, healthcare, transportation, etc more effectively. THIS IS THE POINT!
5. My article wouldn't end with a summary of the amazing accomplishment - most people have pretty much figured out that Teach for America is a good thing. I would end, instead, with a plea. My favorite colleagues at the school I worked at in Baltimore, were my favorite because they were supportive, provided helpful hints and feedback through those challenging first months of teaching. They neither put me on a pedestal nor disdained me merely for the fact that I was a Teach for America member. They treated me like they would any other colleague - once I earned their trust and respect, we were a solid family. If we hope to raise our profession, we can't just sit idly and wish things stayed the way they were 20 or 30 years ago. We can't propose "solutions" that sound great but are not feasible, like super monetary incentives to get veteran teachers in these difficult classrooms - especially in this current economy! We must stop blaming and putting each other down. Rather, we should be the ones dictating the discourse for the future of education! We should not be allowing people who haven't ever been close to the front lines to be dictating teacher contracts and prescribing solutions. WE should be at the forefront of the positive changes necessary for our children. Ultimately, it must stop being about the adults and start being about creating amazing, life-changing, unforgettable educational experiences for the children we serve.
And the very last sentence in my article would challenge the biggest assertion by critics. I would include this quote from Donna Foote, author of "Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches with Teach for America". She writes, "there are much easier ways to burnish a resume than a two-year commitment to hard labor in some of the crummiest classrooms in America." Indeed.
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