In the face of prevailing education reforms, is what I do important? Seriously. As a teacher educator, pre-service teachers spend their entire senior year with me. In addition to classes, they do two full days in an elementary school in the fall and then transition to five days, essentially full time, in another elementary school in the spring. They get roughly six official weeks of full-time teacher experience over the course of nine months. Schools of education throughout the country prepare teachers in a similar fashion, albeit with slight variations.
My students and I recently discussed Teach for America (TFA), the alternative darling of the mainstream education reform movement. My personal views of the program are conflicted. On the one hand, it kind of makes what we do in so-called "traditional" teacher preparation look foolish. How do extensive and time-consuming clinical experiences stack up against much briefer trainings in pedagogy and immediate employment in extremely difficult settings, redolent of TFA? On the other hand, if we consider the education marketplace, would TFA even exist if they were not fulfilling a need that those of us in "traditional" teacher prep are not? Honestly, I cannot say that many pre-service teachers with whom I worked end up in high-needs schools.
With all due fairness, however, my pre-service teachers in elementary education work harder than many undergraduates in other majors. They certainly work harder than I did my senior year in psychology. For many in more elite circles, education is not considered a serious major. What is more, despite teacher bashing, which is our new national pastime, TFA members appear to be insulated from the same criticism, as if they're taking one for good old Team USA. I could be wrong, but I have not heard much defense of the profession that TFA members apparently love for 24 months.
But after discussing TFA with my students, we participated in an activity called Letters to Wendy. After reading about the history and mission of the program, students in small groups wrote fake letters to TFA founder Wendy Kopp. Here are a few choice quotes:
Supposedly you want to cure the ills of urban schools, yet you are a large contributor to its greatest problem--the revolving door. Students in these low-performing schools need stability more than anything else and you undermine the preparation of high quality teachers in programs across the country.
The thought that people with "higher" degrees can aimlessly teach the most at risk children without proper preparation and training is false and cruel.
Just because someone went to an expensive college doesn't qualify him or her to teach and actually make a different in just two years.
And this one just sort of made me smile a bit:
It's bologna. They have no idea how to teach!
Needless to say, their feelings were somewhat strong, and they needed little prompting from me, although I was very up front with them about my own intellectual struggles with the program. Yet I can't say that I blame them for their strong reactions. They are working extremely hard to enter a profession that is reaching a nadir of negative public scrutiny. Then we have the TFA folks who are viewed as heroes in all of this, supposedly doing what run-of-the-mill teachers can't or won't. I'll admit as I did above that TFA is a notable stopgap measure in high-needs schools. But I won't join in valorizing corps members at the expense of dedicated educators who plan to make a career out of teaching.
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I cannot agree with your students. If they were accomplished teachers with a track record of success, then I would definitely see merit in their words, but reacting as such to a career they haven't entered yet, or without looking at the data of TFA retention rates, test scores, impacts on communities, etc just sounds like self-victimization. I've rarely heard good teachers (traditional or otherwise) at my school (or from friends) criticizing TFA. Mostly, the teachers that do have many complaints are the ones that have been consistently shown to be ineffective urban teachers and have been bounced around from school to school, whether charter school or public.
Let's all just agree that our measure for success and failure of education programs should be just that. The successes and failures of our students.
1. TFA corps members are not more or less likely to leave education than other teachers in the low-income areas they teach in. Many change their plans to continue as educators after the two years despite other intentions they may have had.
2. The preferential treatment may be there systemically (TFA job fairs etc) but (at least in Chicago) I have to compete with traditional teachers and other alternative certification teachers for a job. I had to go through nearly a dozen interviews to get hired (same as most traditional teachers as well as TFA teachers)
3. TFA corps members have not had time to develop true feelings towards unions, but it is difficult when you are being demonized from top to bottom by every speech any union official gives. The president of the Chicago Teacher's Union once called TFA members 'mercenaries.' Is this rhetoric helpful to our students? Absolutely not. If she thinks TFA teachers are inferior, prove it objectively. As far as 'coming from money' I can tell you that I am a 1st generation immigrant, and many of my fellow TFA members are not as well off as you'd imagine (a few are, however).
4. I don't know many teachers (traditional, TFA, otherwise) that become teachers to 'stick around long enough to get paid a substantial salary.' Frankly, that is the wrong reason to get into education.
2. Even your response suggests that TFA members are given preferential treatment. Half a dozen interviews, by the way, is not a lot. It is certainly not proof that you aren't given preferential treatment.
3. If anybody understands what it feels like to be demonized, it is us, the certified and experienced professionals. You are, however, entitled to your feelings.
4. I never said that all TFA members come from money- I simply said that most do. I didn't mean that they are filthy rich either, but that they certainly do come from comfortable enough backgrounds to not have an understanding of why unions matter to regular working people. And you may be a first generation immigrant, but that doesn't mean that you are poor.
5. You did not understand my point about earning a substantial salary. I said nothing about teachers wanting to earn more money (although they shouldn't have to apologize for this either). My point was that exprerienced teachers are frequently seen as less desirable candidates simply becuase they take a bigger chunk our of school budgets.
Every co-operating teacher knows the drill. For one period of one day in one semester, we will instruct our student teachers to do a series of foolish things and ignore what they've learned in a real classroom, because their college supervisor will be making one of his/her rare fly-by visits, inspecting the student teacher to make sure that some specious lesson is being applied.
State college teacher programs are bad. They provide poor preparation. In particular, they fail to provide any serious oversight-- too many times a student teacher has arrived in my classroom with serious deficiencies. But if their check clears, the college will gladly keep them in the program.
I am no fan of teach for America and its notion that any shlub can walk into a classroom and magically become a teacher, because, after all, anybody off the street can do what we do.
But many teacher preparation programs in our nation's colleges (at least in my neck of the woods) are seriously, seriously broken. TFA is simply capitalizing on that.
You can't convince your students to work in Urban areas, yet you ask them to write letters bashing TFA students who volunteer to work there...
Also, what solution do you propose to fill the jobs in low income schools? Because the fact of the matter is your students aren't taking those jobs.
Got any numbers to back this up? Of course, I only know the situation of my daughter and her TFA cohort. My daughter is typical...Raised in a middle class neighborhood in Boise, Idaho. Went to pretty typical public schools, and because she worked hard, got a nice scholarship to an out of state University.
She got a degree in Chemistry, and has been teaching in Harlem and the Bronx for about 5 years.
Most of the TFA students she trained with are still in education...Not chasing a law degree.
Good thing, huh? I've seen lots of arguments pro and con, but I've yet to see anyone advocate for aimlessly teaching at risk kids. Yeah, sending these out as "real" letters is a first rate idea.
No, let's stay there for a second. You are "inclined to believe"? You mean you didn't inquire before you posted this stuff?
"These are folks in their 20's who are about to enter a profession that many in the US don't respect."
Precisely. Do you believe anything in this "mere" blog post has done anything to increase that respect? This is what I was getting at with that meta-message response, Shaun. You guys keep shooting yourselves in the foot and then turning around and pointing the finger elsewhere re that lack of respect. Ya got the choir sewed up tight. It's the hearts and minds outside the tent that you need to reach or you are going to continue to lose ground.
In one Denver school, a TFA teacher allowed her student to play with gas jets in a science lab. When a small fire ensued the building was evacuated. Poverty students (Many without health care) were made to stand outside in the winter without coats for over 40 minutes while the TFA debated whether or not she should bother taking accountability by telling the AP to direct the fire persons to her classroom.
A professional teacher puts the needs and well being of the students first. Her own reputation, and the reputation of his or her 'programming" should fall much farther down the list.
I have been teaching for 7 years and have finally learned a little about how to do the job. It has gotten easier but it is still the hardest job I have ever had.
Teaching is a sink-or-swim profession. Mentor teachers are busy in their own classrooms and this leaves the new teacher dog-paddling the first couple of years.
Two years isn't enough time to become a good teacher for me (most of us?). It takes time to learn how to handle a class, how to relate to students, how not to take yourself so seriously and how to learn from the students. The master’s degree alluded to this and student teaching gave a taste but there is nothing like being in the trenches!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-schwartz/teach-for-america_b_821099.html
Assuming it's true that traditionally certified teachers are not teaching in the highest need schools (haven't I read x number of articles about teachers being laid off to make room for TFAers?), can you blame them? There's a pretty clear shift in the 'reform movement' towards linking teacher evaluations to their students' test scores. If my job security depends on how well my students are scoring on tests I'll take Stuyvesant over the dropout factory uptown, thanks. Teach for America's aim is to profit from this lack of an incentive, not to change it.
Traditional Teacher credential programs do not produce sufficient numbers of teachers qualified to teach math and science.
My daughter signed-up for TFA five years ago, and has been teaching in Harlem and the Bronx ever since...She isn't on the revolving door.
She has a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Southern California, and were it not for her, her high school would not have a single teacher with a degree in a science.
As for traditionally trained teachers and TFA teachers - I have worked with both. The quality varied in both groups. There were some superstars and there were some that didn't quite have what it took to be successful in the classroom. What I did find is that early in the school year TFA teachers were more likely to ask for help because they knew that they didn't know everything. Traditionally trained teachers have a certificate which represents their completion of a preparation program, hours of study and training. For this reason I think that sometime they are less likely to ask for assistance or admit that they didn't know how to do something, as if it would be admitting that they somehow skipped something in their preparation program.
The top school in AZ (with 98-100% of students passing our state test depending on grade level and content area) hires content experts. They don't look for trained teachers, they hire people that have a deep understanding of reading, math, science, etc. to develop a culture of learning.
I have read your pulled quotes several times now, and the first one (about the revolving door) is the only one that carries any water.
Higher degrees mean more training-- everything after "higher degrees" is a fallacy.
Expensive colleges mean more competitive admissions criteria (ideally). AND you only teach a group of students for one year. The idea that you can't make an enormous difference in that year is demeaning to our entire profession.
The last quote is just embarrassing. If we are trying to rally more support and positive opinion about our profession, why would launch attacks at another branch of it, of which are leaving measurable successful tracks of success.
Finally, I want to address your closing statement:
"I won't join in valorizing corps members at the expense of dedicated educators who plan to make a career out of teaching."
Why is "valorizing" TFA at "run of the mill" educators expense?
Ps. I couldn't find the first part of my argument in this thread, and sorry about the grammar in the second half that you published... that's why I resubmitted it.
And they volunteered to teach in schools where most traditionally trained teachers won't dare trod.
And your students are jealous that they are getting favorable press.