This post was written for EduShyster by guest blogger Owen Davis, a former corps member of Teach for America.
It is firmly tongue-in-cheek. He advises members of TFA headed for Newark not to back down.
So what that Cami Anderson, one-time leader of TFA-New York, plans to lay off 1,000 experienced teachers–most of whom will be black–and replace many of them with TFA?
He writes:
Your ability to shrug off the naysayers is what really astonishes me. So what if TFA is on average whiter than the teachers it will replace? What does it matter that TFA is a necessary ingredient in the charter stew that drowns traditional public schools – and that Newark’s current layoff plans stem directly from the diverting of district funds to charters? Who cares that 60% of NJ TFAers end up in that same charter sector, whose teachers are only 74% as likely to be black and half as likely to be Hispanic as in district schools? And the fact that half of TFA’s current teachers in Newark’s district schools landed in “renew schools,” where existing staff had to reapply en masse and where hundreds of educators were displaced?
He adds:
The Newark situation can’t help but stir recollections of your stalwart march into New Orleans in the decade after Hurricane Katrina, when the number of TFA first- and second-years shot up from 85 to over 400, while the proportion of African-American educators dropped from 73% to 49%. Or in Chicago, where your corps size grew by a third while fifty schools were closed and a thousand positions were cut – and where previous mass layoffs hit black and Latino teachers hardest. It’s in these dire circumstances that “doing nothing is not an option.”
The post is loaded with links. Read it and follow the links. Owen Davis’s advice to TFA: Don’t back down. Go right ahead and replace those experienced black teachers and see yourself as civil rights leaders.
Life is filled with ironies, is it not?
I am working on a doctoral research project inspired by Diane’s book, Death and Life of the Great American School System (2011). If the public school system–as many of us knew it, at least–is dead or near death, it would stand to reason that public school teachers who remember the system as it was prior to No Child Left Behind (2002) have experienced loss and grief. If you remember what it was like to teach prior to No Child Left Behind, if you feel as if teaching completely changed when No Child Left Behind was implemented, or if you ever felt saddened by some of the changes that resulted from educational reform, then you may be interested in taking my survey.
Professional Loss and Grief in Teachers (a survey)
https://ndstate.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5nCLnPAFadWZX93
Dear Jackie,
I took your survey – and I thank you for it. It is the first time anyone has asked how the politics of education has effected teachers directly. If teachers speak out about the harm it is doing to our psyche, we are slammed as being “bad”, “greedy”, “thugs”, or worse, “we don’t care about children.” Do note, and I’m sure you are aware, that RTTT and Duncan have morphed NCLB into something much worse – rather the death nail, and I wish it were included in your survey. Nonetheless, I look forward to your results.
from the Rheeformish Lexicon, a dictionary of Rheeformish Doublespeak prepared based upon documents from various Ed Deform coven meetings and grimoires:
teacher. 1. Pimply adolescent from a wealthy private school given five weeks of TFA training prior to spending two years doing Great Grates with dark-skinned children before going on to his or her real job in investment banking. See “Teach for Awhile.” 2. Low-wage worker hired to oversee a thousand students to make sure that they are obediently gritful and that their tablets are in working order. 3. Computer running computer-adaptive software (worksheets on a screen that reduce learning to mastery of the bullet list). Motto: “Teaching, there’s an app for that.” See Powerpointing of U.S. education. Archaic usage: Whiny union member with ersatz degree from an education “school,” responsible for failure. See failure.
That was a good one, Bob!
Bob Shepherd: you forgot to turn off the Microsoft EducratCorrect feature when you wrote this definition.
The middle part should read:
“2. Low-wage worker hired to oversee a thousand students to make sure that they are obediently gritful and that their tablets are in working order; see also eduproduct delivery specialist.”
Have a heart …
Think how left out every “eduproduct delivery specialist” will feel if you don’t include their proper title.
😎
an egregious oversight. Warm regards, oh Krazed one!
I didn’t know I could hate the TFA system more than I already did. *sigh* The fact that they get their education paid for while those of us who CHOSE to be educators in the first place do NOT… Well…that’s a discussion for another place and time.
I reposted this on Bob Braun’s Ledger: too funny!
Oops one more thing: how much does TFA make on their Etsy-cutesy style book bags, sweatshirts, and “future core member” child gear…this reminds me of the article that stated that the price of kale has gone up for the poor due to the “hipster effect”. It makes me uneasy: the thought of some Yale educated white person ” teaching” the “masses” for two years and feeling so smug about it that they buy their white niece a shirt to let everyone know about their “philanthropy”…ick! I went to Berkeley, and that was one thing that just irked me, the prevalence of that holier-than-thou liberal mindset that easily turns condescending. That book bag in that post irritated, although it probably is me being negative.
Please take the time to read, sign, and circulate the petition entitled:
STOP COMMON CORE TESTING.
Concerned parents and citizens of the Garden State – join the CC pushback! From High Point to the Jersey shore, stop the corporate control of public education in New Jersey. Thank you.
http://www.petition2congress.com/15080/stop-common-core-testing/?m=5265435