Gary Rubinstein writes here about an article he was surprised to read in Chalkbeat.
He was surprised because he expects more of Chalkbeat.
The article lauds a young TFA teacher who has just finished her first year.
He writes:
The basic premise is that Angelique Hines a first year TFA teacher placed in a brand new charter school in Tennessee is featured in a series of interviews by Chalkbeat called “How I Teach.” The premise of the interview series, according to Chalkbeat is “Here, in a feature we call How I Teach, we ask educators who’ve been recognized for their work how they approach their jobs.” So already there’s an issue of whether Hines is really an educator who has been recognized for her work. She has been teaching for 9 months in a brand new charter school that has no track record at all.
One thing we do know is that her students can sit with their hands folded in front of them in a very obedient way.
So the article explains its title. Hines speaks about how a student said he misses his old school because that school was much more fun. One example of how the old school was more fun, he says, is that in the old school they watched more movies.
Gary writes that the article assumes that the old school was “bad,” but provides no evidence. The article assumes that students can’t learn and have fun at the same time. The article assumes that the first year teacher “has been recognized” for her work as a teacher but who recognized her and for what? How many teachers are recognized as exemplary at the end of their first year in the classroom?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Maybe if I taught for another three or four lifetimes I could become as good a teacher as someone with five weeks of TFA training. One can dream!
Maybe they could be used as “refresher” courses for tired,worn-out, experienced teachers. 😉
Young and inexperienced seems to beat older, wiser, and experienced in the eyes of Chalkbeat and Temps For America.
Announcing Bob Shepherd’s amazing new course, You Too Can Be a Doctor! In Five Weeks I’ll teach you everything you need to know about wearing a stethoscope, talking down to nurses, and writing illegibly! No need for a 4-year undergraduate degree program, 4 years in medical school, and 3-7 years of residency. Shortage of doctors in your state? No problem! Just call Bob’s Docs R Us. Fully certified by the Bob Shepherd Medical Association, the BS-MA!
Sorry, Bob, you cannot teach the current folk to write illegibly in just five weeks, some of them cannot even be taught to hold a pen correctly in five weeks.
Teach For America
Train five weeks
Hoity toity Ivy geeks
Superheroes, minus capes,
Climbing down the fire escapes
LMAO. Great, SomeDAM!
Wittgenstein had it all backward. He gave away his enormous inherited fortune and then went off to teach in a rural school. He could have learned from TFA how this is supposed to work: you a) train for five weeks, b) teach for two years to get that social conscientiousness cred thingy on your resume, and c) then go get your real job in investment banking or working as a well-remunerated pundit in one of the Ed Deform astroturf organizations funded by oligarchs.
I can picture myself sitting with my hands folded, half-way turned around listening to a lecture from one of my ‘favorite’ adminimals.
I had one principal who put names on the seats of where we were supposed to sit during her lectures. [No one could ever speak out or give a suggestion.] We didn’t have to fold our hands and sit up straight.
Hint to beginning teachers: When the students complain that class is boring, it’s usually because you’re talking too much and not because the students are not used to learning. Students like to be engaged in something, not sitting still for long periods of time. Hate to put down a colleague, but Chalkbeat is praising a mediocre at best teacher here. If you zoom in a bit and look carefully at the picture, you’ll see that not all the students look fully engaged with their hands folded.
There’s also a second photo inserted in the interview, a selfie of the teacher. And if you again zoom in and look carefully you’ll see that the teacher in one photo does not appear to be the same person as the teacher in the second photo. Weird. And speaking of the photos, just look at all that segregation! I didn’t realize that every single person in Tennessee was African American. I didn’t know that. I thought there were at least a few white people in the capital of country music. That’s some serious segregation. Separate but equal there means separate but with a boring, uninspired and uninspiring, undereducated, first-year TFA charter teacher.
Separate but Rheequal
Why does anyone think chalkbeat is anything other than a shill for the corporatists?
Dorothy siegel: I’ve learned quite a bit about the underhanded stuff my GOP controlled state is doing to Indiana education in chalkbeat. I’ve sent copies of some of their postings to my state senator and representative.
I’m not saying they aren’t corporate shills, but the message of harm is being but out. I don’t understand how this is possible.
I’m surprised too. I’m not an expert but I read a lot of ed reform outlets and Chalkbeat is the outlet that generally doesn’t publish blatant pro-reform articles- the kind where the charter is always superior to the “failing” public school or the TFA teacher has unlocked the secret sauce of teaching in 6 weeks, where the clear implication is that no teacher in any of the schools this kid attended prior had made the slightest effort.
It’s too bad. Ed reform is an echo chamber. The last thing they need is another captured media outlet.
If you really want to see how complete the capture is in some circles go look at anything from the US Department of Education- it’s 100% rah rah for charter and private schools. Public schools (or public school students) are barely mentioned, except to compare them unfavorably to charter and private schools and those students. And that’s 100% publicly funded!
At least we’re not all paying for The 74 or Education Post or the Gates and Walton and Zuckerberg and Broad an Arnold Foundations. We’re paying for the federal propaganda.
Every movement is an echo chamber.
Every echo chamber is a movement — of air
There’s a full court press to salvage TFA’s reputation. There was an article about TFA at SSIR. The editors wouldn’t even print comments that questioned the piece.
Pro Public was brave to print its recent article.
“How many teachers are recognized as exemplary at the end of their first year in the classroom?”
Well someone (as in the article) may recognize a first year teacher as exemplary but that teacher most certainly isn’t. And anyone who thinks that teacher is shouldn’t be anywhere near the teaching and learning process.
“He expects more of Chalkbeat.” Ha. Over and over and over Chalkbeat has been guilty of this one: “Gary writes that the article assumes that the old school was “bad,” but provides no evidence…”
My sister was named Best Teacher of the Year for Bklyn/Staten Island in 1986 after just one year in the NYC pubschsys. But she was not just some newbie TFA. She had not only a B-Ed in SpEd, w/ the usual semester of supervised practice-teaching, but also a year under her belt in a NYC govt-funded SpEd school for underprivileged severely-LD/ED kids (& was starting on her M-Ed in night school).
I’ll never forget her description of how the coal-dust rose from the radiators in that old bldg’s winter classrooms, providing barely enough warmth but killing the aquarium fish and activating her & her students’ asthma. Or of the defensive moves (reminding me of rescue positions from water-safety classes) she learned & used to calm raging or convulsing students.
In her award-winning 2nd yr of teaching (first in the NYC pubschsys), she taught keybdg et al computer skills to Bkln SpEd mid-schoolers– and fought off attacking squirrels that breached that antiquated Bay Ridge classroom’s A/C units– and went to any lengths to involve poor parents in their kids’ education– and became an active union member, & integral part of teacher teams.
My sister got no press, & It is ludicrous to compare her to some “first year TFA teacher placed in a brand new charter school in Tennessee… featured in a series of interviews by Chalkbeat called “How I Teach” [where] we ask educators to who’ve been recognized for their work how they approach their jobs.” After that award-winning yr, she continued longtime as a SpEd teacher there & later at an upstate midsch, became head of their SpEd dept, acquired another Masters’, & 33 yrs since award has for some yrs been an asst-principal at a large & prestigious upstate-NYC hisch, running bldg safety & discipline & teacher-qual monitoring.
Let’s check on Ms Hines in 33 yrs & see how long she spent teaching.
TFA is the hardest thing to explain to people who don’t pay attention to education issues. Here where I live, a TFA alum, a nice guy, is the go-to person all Dem candidates go to for messaging consulting. He’s also prominent in the local “progressive” organization. Yet no one questions his credentials and when the TFA connection is pointed out, it turns in his favor because of the false “Peace Corps-like” myth.
The hardest thing to come over is the marketing “Teach for America” marketing. Who the hell is against “Teach for America”? Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, Teach for America. What are you, some kind of Communiss?
[from A Confederacy of Dunces: “’What you think about somebody wants peace, Claude?’
‘That sounds like a communiss to me.’
Mrs. Reilly’s worst fears were realized.”
We’ve got work to do. Everyone out there: Start by writing letters to the editor to your local papers. We are losing the battle until the average citizen understand that TFA is anything but.
…is the “Teach for America” marketing…
An illustration of another problem…I spoke with a Republican parent a few months ago. She had been sold on the notion that choice via charter schools was good. This week when I talked with her, the bloom was off of the rose. Her son wants to be a band director. Charter schools don’t have bands. A Republican votes based on narrow, self interest.
The same discussion uncovered a different issue. The Republican parent has long been anti-immigrant (those from south of the border) for the reasons she’s been told by the right wing but, she now resents the brightest moving here from India, Asia, because her son lost out in class ranking to them.