Gary Rubinstein received a training film that Teach for America uses to prepare new recruits during their five-week preparation period for teaching. He found it very disturbing. Young people are given a portrait of a “system” that neglects children, and they are sent like Superman to fix things. No wonder so many of these idealistic young people don’t stay in teaching, when they discover how hard it is to be a good teacher or to change the “system.”
“To me these messages are not the sorts of things that are productive for new TFA corps members to be told to believe in their first days of institute. I don’t think they should start with the premise that the system is broken and a-la-Betsy Devos, it can’t get much worse, and then that the TFA teacher’s role is to somehow single handedly undo the deliberate decisions that have led to this. Instead I’d rather they were told that teaching is very hard and that teachers all over the country are working very hard despite limited resources and that TFA teachers are going to fight alongside these other teachers and try to learn from them and hope that they can quickly become like those experienced teachers so they won’t increase educational inequity for their own students.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Cross posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/What-TFA-Tells-The-New-Rec-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Learning_Public-Education_Public-Education_Recruitment-170619-612.html
with this comment, which has embedded links at OPED.
Let me be clear. TFA recruits are not trained as teachers.
Imagine if hospitals hired trained medics to replace genuine doctors, PROFESSIONALS who studied and practiced medicine FOR YEARS!
TFA novices are sent in to replace the more expensive, experienced tenured teacher who has been sent packing on fabricated charges. http://www.perdaily.com/2015/01/were-you-terminated-or-forced-to-retire-from-lausd-based-on-fabricated-charges.html
TFA KIDDIES barely last 3 years, as they are unprepared to do the job of showing YOUNGSTERS HOW TO LEARN. HOW THE BRAIN LEARNS is the subject of PEDAGOGY, the profession that we teachers practice, just as doctors practice medicine.
The EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX https://greatschoolwars.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/eic-oct_11.pdf
has now spent 2 decades selling magic elixirs http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
to the public, even as public education system experiences catastrophic failure, because the authentic teachers were THROWN OUT, IN ORDER TO silence the voice of the genuine practitioner WHO KNOWS WHAT LEARNING LOOKS LIKE AND WHAT IT REQUIRES!
Just look at what South Carolina has offered as a way to get kids to learn.Consider this report in the “Post & Courier” in South Carolina: “Online charter schools have grown exponentially across South Carolina and the nation… and they don’t offer real education.
Fake sources, fake schools and fake teachers.
Goodbye income equality, because public schools that teach the young human how to do work and how to analyze and compare, how to think IS THE ONLY WAY to offer citizens a way to earn a living.
TFA training seems to depend on creating the illusion that these five-week wonders can be the superheros who can, because they are “passionate” save all of their students from whatever schools have done to them. They will be leaders in a crusade against the evil-doing experienced teachers and leaders.
They seem to be recruited on the assumption that expertise is not needed for teaching. They are part of the sustained effort to de-professionalize teaching.
For pity’s sake, even the Peace Corps generally requires a two to three month training period, depending upon what skills you already have.
A five week training session would be okay for a classroom aide, who works with an experienced teacher, but not for the classroom teacher.
I have the feeling that TFA sees the schools as Third World entities that need to be “saved” by these minimally-trained but very earnest young people. Most of whom will be gone in a year or two (like the Peace Corps volunteers) but who then will be considered “experts” in education.
Gary really needs to let go of his attachment to TfA. They will never be the organization he thinks they can be. He has to stop buying into the idea that their actual mission is to help children and that, if they just see the harm they’re doing, they’ll stop. He has to understand that the harm they’re doing is the mission.
A not-so-golden oldie:
[start]
In 2011, TFA founder Wendy Kopp spoke on a Seattle radio station, saying that people often misunderstand the function of TFA. “We’re a leadership development organization, not a teaching organization,” she said. “I think if you don’t understand that, of course it’s easy to tear the whole thing apart.”
end]
Link: https://www.thenation.com/article/teachers-are-losing-their-jobs-teach-americas-expanding-whats-wrong/
So as TFA leaders and their rheephorm “brothers/sisters of another mother” leaders are more in control of the “system” in many more places then ever before*, it turns out that the “system” is more in need of correction and improvement and change than ever before.
Do the words “thoughtful” and “remembering what came out of your mouth” no longer exist for those managing/promoting/selling TFA?
It is hard not to notice how self-wounding this is, or as François de la Rochefoucauld put it long ago:
“”Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.”
Imagine what he would have said about self-ridicule…
😎
*Think Los Angeles & New Orleans & Chicago & Detroit and the beat goes on…
The beat goes on in Indianapolis. 😦
Oh to put Wendy Kopp in front of an actual low-income school classroom and have a camera on her while (with an endless chain of interruptions from those sent to “observe”) she implements her magical teaching theories under one of her two-year miracle working contracts.
Wendy Kopp never taught. Ever. Not one day.
And neither have you ever taught K-12, which is completely different from teaching in universities.
Should we discount your words and malign your motives as well?
The system of banking is broken. Giving people greater access to predatory lending is the Civil Rights issue of our time. Therefore, we need to allow bank branch tellers to be leaders instead of tellers. After a five week training session, these 16-18 year olds will be banking leaders, able to tell bank presidents what to do and how to do it. That makes, what, sense, right?
McCoy: Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a leader!
Kirk: Bones! The Vulcans! Have! A broken! System! You must! Beam down there! After attending! My! Five! Week course on! Leadership! And teach them! How! To be! More! Like Klingons!
Spock: That would not be logical, Captain. Vulcan is a peaceful planet, unlike the churn and burn Klingon planet which is home to winners and losers in constant, violent competition. The doctor would not be of assistance, as the Vulcan Council is comprised of the most reasonable, experienced elders in this star system
Kirk: Then! The whole! Star system! Is broken! We have! To fix! It! Sulu! Warp us into! The middle of! The nearest star!
Sulu: Aye, sir. Consider us warped.
There’s always an attempt by contractors to appeal to mercenaries’ sense of serving the greater good. It works to reduce the amount of pay that the recruits receive.