Emily Talmage teaches and blogs in Maine. She explains in this post how she developed the desire to teach, how she thought she would “save” poor kids from their “bad” teachers, how she learned her limitations, and how she learned through experience that the corporate reform narrative is a self-serving lie.
She writes:
When I was in college, I heard a riveting story.
Actually, you probably heard it too.
It went like this: American public schools are failing. Teachers have abysmally low expectations of their students. They are getting paid to spend their time in rubber rooms! This is the civil rights issue of our time.
I was indignant. And I needed a job.
And so, like so many college students of my generation, I went straight from college into a classroom in the Bronx as a New York City Teaching Fellow.
At first, I was elated. I had always wanted to teach elementary school, but it wasn’t really what you did if you went to a fancy and expensive college like I did. But now I had a way.
I was, of course, rudely awakened. You probably know this story too: young new teacher discovers she is utterly unprepared to manage a group of unruly students. She cries a lot.
I had taken a position teaching children with the “emotional disturbance” label in New York City’s district for students with severe special needs, and could do little more than hang on by my fingernails for the first year. They fought, they swore, and they saw me for what I was: a white girl from Maine who had no clue what she was doing. My experienced colleagues – the ones who were supposed be lazy and incompetent – offered to help, but I was a terrible listener. I was too busy searching for the story I had been told and trying the play the role I had been assigned – even though nothing fit.
By the end of my third year, I had grown humbler, but was no less gullible. This time, I fell for the second part of the story above – the part that tells how charter schools are the answer to all these failing public schools. You know, the Waiting for Superman story.
And so I left my position for one at a relatively new charter school in Brooklyn that modeled itself after the KIPP and Success Academy “No Excuses” regime.
You can read the details here, but the short version is that I was horrified. We snapped at the kids like dogs and obsessed over standardized test scores like they were cancer diagnoses. My previous school had been challenging, but it was full of warmth. There was no warmth at this school. No kindness. Panic filled our classrooms and hearts.
I have been fooled twice. Shame on me. But it won’t happen again. I hear, now, the stories reformers tell for what they are. Disrespect, hubris, empty jargon. PR.
Read on. Emily’s eyes were opened. And now she won’t be fooled again.
Back in 1975-76, I earned my teaching credential in Southern California at Cal Poly Pomona through what was called an urban residency program. I was placed, full time for a full school year, in an elementary school that had a childhood poverty rate close to 100%. I was assigned to my master teacher’s 5th grade class.
By the time I started teaching the next year, I was ready—when I say ready, I mean that I did not harbor any fantasies that I was going to fly in and save all those poor kids who were being taught by incompetent teachers. I knew what the REAL challenges were going to be and was no disappointed. From day one, every day was a challenge and I stayed in that same school district until 2005 when I retired from teaching.
In the public schools where I taught, the childhood poverty rate was 70% or higher and the local community was dominated by violent street gangs. The main reason hard core gang members (gang bangers) came to school was to recruit new members and find customers for the drugs the gangs sold.
Compare the program for an urban residency to TFA. For that compassion I found this residency program that runs four four years.
Year 1
Participants serve as co-teachers in four different urban classroom settings with support from Urban Teachers expert faculty.
Year 2
Participants earn a master’s degree with training in general and special education conferred by the Johns Hopkins University School of Education.
Year 3
Participants receive over 100 hours of coaching to ensure continual improvement of teaching practice.
Year 4
Following the residency year, participants commit to teaching in a high-need urban school for at least three additional years.
http://www.urbanteachers.org/
How about TFA? I couldn’t make this crap up. This is from their own site.
Summer training varies by region but typically includes:
>Five-day regional induction
>Five to seven week residential institute, including teaching summer school
>One to two week regional orientation
>In general, once you begin summer training, you’ll have weekday commitments from that day until the start of the school year.
TFA says, “While you will not be paid during summer training, we will provide room and board in local university housing. In most cases, special accommodations are available for corps members with partners and families. While institute is a rigorous and intensive experience, you will have free time during weekends to socialize and explore your institute city. Read more about need-based transitional loans and grants or use our regional comparison tool to estimate your expenses.”
https://www.teachforamerica.org/teach-with-tfa/your-training-and-support/attending-summer-training
TFA claims their program is “a rigorous and intense experience”, and when the TFA recruit comes out the other end, they are labeled “Great Teachers” without having actually taught one day with their own class.
How does that rigor compare to the urban residency program described above?
Lloyd, you describe a respectable sounding teacher training program. But when I think of the utter hacks at the education school I attended, I am filled with anger. They glibly prescribed methodologies that don’t work, and slandered methodologies that do work. Just about the only worthwhile thing I got out of that program was a guest lecture by a veteran science teacher from a local high school who told us about the assertive discipline program she used in her class. She alone had credibility.
Here’s what I tell the prospective teachers I meet:
1. Be skeptical of what your education school professors teach you. Ask for proof that what they say is true, and examine that “proof” critically.
2. You will probably hear things that are the opposite of the truth (e.g. that lecture is the worst form of pedagogy).
3. There is groupthink/orthodoxy in the education world today. Understand that your professors may be shielding you from views that contradict the orthodox ideas.
4. Understand that many education school professors are FAILED teachers –i.e. they tried teaching K-12 and couldn’t hack it, so went to get higher degrees. Take that into consideration when they preach to you.
5. Make a *serious* study of the history of education. Memorize key developments in the story of American education (e.g. those detailed in Diane’s Left Back) so that you’ll have them at your mental fingertips as you proceed through your career. This info will enable you to think critically about education. Because most teachers lack this depth of knowledge, they often cannot think critically about the latest fads.
6. Understand that acquiring deep content knowledge is the most powerful tool in devising great lessons. Studying methodologies is of limited value –but most ed school professors won’t tell you this because methodologies are their stock-in-trade.
7. Better than education school: go watch a wide-variety of veteran teachers teach and talk to them about their craft and their struggles.
Better yet, find a teacher training course at a university that will put you through a full time, year long teacher residency in a master teacher’s classroom.
TFA & the like prey on the idealism of young college students who are just setting foot out into the world. When I started teaching, a veteran teacher told me, “Some children will learn because of you. Some will learn in spite of you.” Teaching is a humbling experience, if you let it be. A little narcissism goes a long way; too much leads to inevitable self-destruction.
I have painfully watched young teachers take on employment in our very low-scoring schools and then receive an almost immediate, viciously-delivered blame for failing to produce magic. Harder to watch was when a few of these idealistic greenhorns turned this endlessly-delivered humiliation onto the students, arguing them to be the cause of their failure due to their skin color or cultural background.
A successful new teacher learns quickly to find an experienced mentor and LISTEN. Hubris is best left at the door for younger and older new teachers. Unfortunately, experience is no longer valued by politicians and Reformers, so finding a good mentor is difficult.
Well, thank you for your humility and candor, Emily Talmage. I worked in the Bronx for five years and found the Teach for America neophytes insufferably smug and self-righteous. Now you know. Best of luck to you in your endeavors.
It may take time, but a little humility and genuine self-reflection can go a long way.
And along the way you might actually learn something a lot more important than gimmicks and tricks and shortcuts.
“Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.”
Aristotle. An old. A dead. A very Greek guy.
IMHO, he was thinking of folks like Emily Talmage…
😎
Many states started to realize that young teachers perform better under the guidance of seasoned mentors. With all the focus on testing, many of the initiatives that will help retain young teachers have been lost to test and punish. Under high stakes testing the emphasis is on survival and competition, not collaboration and professional growth.
I was in the same cohort and class as Emily- we did our 5 weeks of “training” together in the summer of 2007.
The NYC teaching fellows are marginally less “indoctrinating” than TFA, at least in my experience, but it was still a terrible way to become a teacher. I was woefully unprepared and had panic attacks in staff meetings.
We all were. I keep in touch with some of the people in that class- I can’t think of a single one I know who wasn’t angry at how poorly the program prepared us.
Most of the people I keep in touch with are still teaching and doing the opposite of what we were taught.
Emily is the real thing: a kind, caring, warm, exceptional teacher and person. I’m very proud to know her
I am a TFA alumni. I’m still teaching at the same school for the last 9 years. It’s a CPS school in Chicago. I agree with humility, self-reflection, and mentoring. My first year was beyond a train wreck. I cried in my class closet in a chair I had set up. I thought I was destroying these children’s lives. I made a commitment to becoming a better teacher. I’m not the kind of person to leave something because I’ve failed at it. Without my mentor (traditionally educated teacher) I would be nothing. I owe her the world. I’m married and am now a homeowner. I owe it all to her.
Thank you Emily for your candid expression. Thank you Mr. Lloyd Lofthouse for a description of the true teaching program with residency.
In short, everyone profoundly acknowledges that it takes time to sharpen skills and to acquire experiences. However, it is very disturbed to see GULLIBLE people (public) who love the shortcut, the glamorous and empty promise from politicians who had “faked degree” and no experiences in social policies.
In reality, each discipline requires certain specific skills, personality, years in training, years in working and moral background. Lateral thinking skills are different to lateral action skills.
For instance, choreographer and dancer in martial art movement (lifetime) cannot be considered to be equal to the real martial artist inexperienced (less than 10 years) or experienced (30 years+).
In the same vein, I do not understand why and how Americans in general would choose Donald Trump to be three consecutive winning primaries. Mostly, how on earth does American Conservative Party endorse their Presidential Candidates who are only puppets for the corporate? Additionally, what kind of conservative ideology that does not care for the well being of people and country (=education, jobs, economy)? Back2basic
Diane, please tell me that you are not suggesting this naive girl from Maine is your defense against TFA’s attempts to recruit young teachers from all walks of life, including the inner cities? I can tell you that most teenage boys have very little respect for women. You may not like to hear that, but it’s part of the maturation process for boys. If they didn’t have the urge to rebel and become independent, we certainly couldn’t field the military we need to defend this country.
I didn’t grow up in the inner city. But I did spend enough time in the locker rooms of our sports teams to understand various cultures. It’s great that Emily volunteered, but she is NOT the target audience of TFA. Trust me on that one.