Emma Gulley is a student at one of America’s finest colleges, Bryn Mawr.
She was intrigued by the mystique of Teach for America, and she agreed to represent TFA on campus.
But the more she worked for them, the more she realized that she was not fulfilling her dream of “giving back” and “social justice,” but servicing a powerful and ambitious organization.
This is the story of her disillusionment. It appeared on Gary Rubinstein’s blog.
She writes:
“I was introduced to TFA as a college freshman, I interned for them for two years, and, had they had it “their way,” I would have interned for them for another year before teaching for two years and then being hired as a recruitment manager. The cycle from recruited to recruiter would be complete. I do feel that I was briefly inducted into a cult, and escaped to tell the tale, which is more than I can say for any other CCC I have ever met.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Every perspective TFA recruit should read Emma’s post. I thank her for her incredible honesty and Dr. Ravitch for providing this inside information.
As a daily diligent follower of your blog, Diane, I am especially grateful for this posting from a student at MY beloved Alma Mater, Bryn Mawr. As I am also involved in neuroeducation of educators, graduate level, I have long been concerned about quality issues with TFA. Now I know even more about the nature of TFA and am appalled.Please encourage this Bryn Mawrtyr to contact me about how real professionals in education need to understand the developing brain, K-12 grades.
( MBD, Bryn Mawr 1958)
Did you really intend to say the “neuroeducation or educators”? I think you may have gotten caught up in the brainwashing narrative of Emma Gulley since your expertize is in understanding the developing brain. 🙂
Fix Educational Inequality and Social Justice.
Recruiting high school grads to change the world they hardly know or have experienced, and helping kids who accidentally picked the poor parents, jobless mom, gutted schools, limited role models, crime ridden bullet dodging community – by accident of birth, is absurd!
If I can ever stomach watching Miss America shows and listen to the lofty speeches of Barbie contestants, I hear similar goals of curing cancer, feeding every child in the world, spay every stray, no more diseases, sunshine without skin cancer, rid grandma of ALZ, and happiness & Peace for all. Sure!
These wide eyed kids need to live life, get a job, help others, do their Ken laundry, cook their own zapped meal, learn, travel, read, just mature and truly learn how to become a teacher of children, all children. Not dabble and wear teachers’ halo to make them feel good, at the children’s expense and to climb their career ladder.
TFA is the New M☾☽☾☽nies …
Jon Awbrey: for those that may dismiss your pointed comment in the same spirit as TFA dismisses its critics [“false equivalences”], I include a sentence from the article by Emma Gulley [link in posting]:
[start quote]
TFA has responded to the valid, well-articulated articles by former corps members critiquing TFA that went viral several months ago by telling me their words aren’t valid because they weren’t in the right “corps member mindset.”
[end quote]
Ah, I am taken back so many years ago to an anti-war in Vietnam demonstration. A Maoist with his finger in his Little Red Book responded to a polite question about how one can reconcile contradictory statements by Mao Tse-Tung: “You can’t quote the Chairman against the Chairman.”
You see, then and now anything is possible when you have the CORRECT “corps member mindset.”
To badly paraphrase George Orwell, “Doublethink means the necessity of holding as many contradictory slogans and buzzwords in your mind when $tudent $ucce$$ is at stake.”
1984. 2014. He was just off by 30 years.
😎
1984 2014 30 years.
That’s funny; never thought about that.
TFA stands for “Teach For A While”. In my 20 years of teaching, I have never seen a TFA recruit stick around for more than 3 years. Some of them have literally told me that they are only going to teach for the mandatory 2 years and then go on to law school. Why would I want to help these folks learn their craft when I know that they are gonna leave after 2 years. TFA is so lame.
Exactly, Pete G., exactly!!!!
In my 40 years of public education, I’ve seen dozens of TFA sticking around, doing a variety of things in public education, including staying on as teachers, helping start new public schools, running for a local school board, etc. etc.
TFA is not perfect by far – but neither are the colleges of education that often underutilized outstanding public school teachers – and ignore outstanding district & charter public schools. Here’s a recent newspaper column I wrote about this.
http://hometownsource.com/2014/02/26/joe-nathan-column-why-are-some-talented-teachers-underused/
“In my 40 years of public education, I’ve seen dozens of TFA sticking around, doing a variety of things in public education, including staying on as teachers, helping start new public schools, running for a local school board, etc. etc.”
This falls in line with their “two-thirds of TFA core members are still in education” mantra. First of all, any figures from TFA are misleading because they’re based on a voluntary survey that doesn’t include CMs who quit before their two year committment. Second, TFA is careful when they craft their talking points (“…still in education”). TFA is part of a huge corporate network that provides opportunites for CMs that traditional teachers would never have. “Start(ing) a new public school” really means being tapped by a corporate partner to open a for-profit charter school. “Running for a local school board” really means using money from corporate cronies to win majority on a big city school board to privatize education (I.e. Atlanta).
Re “opportunities that traditional teachers would never have….” actually there are some districts like Boston, LA and NY where district teachers have been allowed – even encouraged to create new within district options. In Boston and LA, these are called Pilot Schools. In NYC there are called New Vision schools.
In each case, the local teacher unions have supported and sometimes assisted teachers creating these new within district options. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, both teacher unions have encouraged the districts to strongly support such efforts.
In my 40 years as a teacher, administrator and teacher trainer I have not met one TFA who lasted more than two years. Some left after a couple of days, after several months, one year, or at the two year mark. Several had melt downs, cried easily, were totally lost, had no behavior management skills, no knowledge of SWD, no IEP clues, knew Math or Science, but no knowledge of how to teach it to children. Most were friendly, perky, eager, smart, and most importantly: very attractive. It had crossed my mind that TFA only recruits young people who look great, the beautiful people, who would never.ever.never under any circumstances wear seasonal holiday sweaters for children with Velcro Christmas trees. For that alone, it may be worth it. Nah, too high a price to pay by teachers and children.
Can we spell C.L.U.E.L.E.S.S in a classroom near you?
BTW, many TFA are resurfacing in local BOEs, running charters and heads of foundations as Education Experts. We will ultimately, if not already, work for them.
After all, who needs a formal education? Check with Google who defined the new geniuses and so called scholars of the future.
So would you consider Rhee, Cami, and John White as one of those TFA who stuck around? Always here to defend the public Ed destroyers Joe. That’s what we can expect from you.
I wonder why they don’t stay in the classroom…can’t seem to stick it out for very long.
You are correct, Mr. Nathan: TFA and college education schools have their faults. However, if my experiences and the numbers are to be believed, TFA does much more to make the problem worse.
TFA is supposed to be used as a stopgap, as a means to help out in the meantime, but it has turned into a system that pushes out teachers while incentivizing teacher turnover in both charters and TPS. These schools cannot survive now without their Band-Aids. The contracts it makes with charter chains and districts are despicable. Now the only way to “solve” the problem is to get more TFA recruits. And so TFA grows and so does the problem.
We know that teacher turnover is a serious problem. It is not good for TPS or charters. Yet TFA has done nothing to solve it. In fact, they have only exacerbated this problem.
TFA, the bandaid solution, that gets ripped off over and over again.
And if their interns are so great, as touted by TFA “research”, why aren’t they in the wealthy suburbs?
Emma, bravo for speaking out! We have a chapter of Parents Across America for Suburban Philadelphia on facebook and we are based down the road from Bryn Mawr College. We have students, parents and people who simply care about children in the group. Please consider connecting with us. Your words are powerful and we need powerful voices here in suburbs. So many do not realize that what is happening across City Line Avenue is not only wrong, but heading our way. You can also email me directly at daschwartz24@comcast.net. Together we can make a difference. Hope to hear from you!
I attended my daughter’s final “ceremony” for TFA. After that she was sent to probably the worst middle school in Los Angeles. She lasted one month, after she had poured her heart out trying to do an impossible job. Luckily she went back to graduate school to get a credential. She immediately realized what a disservice she was doing to these incredibly needy kids (many already headed for gangs, most were special education who needed small classrooms and good teaching of course). What frightened me was the tenor of their “ceremony”. I wish I had had the insight to make a movie of it — I think all of us would be appalled. We thought we were at a rally for religious true believers. I do believe TFA is a cult.
Joan Kramer: I admire your candor.
😎
And your daughter probably feels like she failed.
She did fail and, to her credit, realized it and got out. I applaud her for leaving and going back to school to learn how to be a real teacher. I would still have applauded her if she had just left and moved on. Why compound her mistake by staying in a situation for which she was not prepared? Admitting and learning from mistakes is not something of which to be ashamed. We need more people like JK’s daughter.
There have been many articles about the way tfa exploits the kids they are supposedly helping…..but this……if somebody at Fox news could present this as……”children of the privileged being exploited by Teach for America”……….maybe somebody important would take a look at the situation….
From the Onion, a look at Teach for America
http://www.theonion.com/articles/my-year-volunteering-as-a-teacher-helped-educate-a,28803/
I would like to know, in detail, what the five weeks of training covers. What are the readings? Who lectures? What are the bullet points? Do they role play? I would love to know exactly what happens at those training sessions.