In this post, Mercedes Schneider interviews Annie Tan, who joined Teach for America in 2011, and, with inadequate training, was assigned be a teacher of special education in Chicago. Her experience was, she says, a disaster.
One of Tan’s responses:
Tan: I will never forget the first day when we had our celebration, and the CEO of Chicago Public Schools came and made a speech to us. It felt very strange for him to be there for some reason. Yes, we were going to be 250 new teachers in Chicago, so logically it may have made sense to introduce us and do a welcome, but I also couldn’t imagine him doing that at a regular university that had education majors graduating. I couldn’t imagine him going to one of those graduations and making a speech.
There were a few moments that I still remember that were odd, as well. I remember the first day of professional development through Teach for America, when we got no talk around how segregated Chicago was, just people alluding to it, like Teach for America was not even going to approach that schools were unequal because of race and income, especially in Chicago, which really stands out since I worked in Chicago Public Schools for five years and taught there for four.
And then, the speech from some Teach for America staff members, that we might be the first teachers in some of these kids’ lives that had high expectations for them. I first thought to myself, “How can I have high expectations for my students when I don’t even know them yet? All I’ve done was graduate from a fancy college, so how am I better than someone else?” That really rubbed me the wrong way.
Schneider called this attitude “the savior complex.”
Who thought it was good to place an unprepared young teacher in a classroom of children with special needs?
It is a revealing interview.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Who thought it was good to place an unprepared young teacher in a classroom of children with special needs?
Good question!
Answer: People who only care about “ka-chinging” off the backs of kids and their parents. HORRORS!
There is a valid reasons for teachers to hold a certification in the subjects they teach. Certified teachers have met minimum standards of training. Nobody would hire an amateur doctor, lawyer, plumber or electrician. Teachers are professionals that have direct training in how to teach, and they have completed courses in their areas of specialization as well. TFA is built on the false assumption that any smart person can magically be an educator.
cx: a valid reason
“TFA is built on the false assumption that any smart person can magically be an educator.” Right on, rt. As we all have probably experienced, there are some very smart college professors who are no good at teaching either – the ones whose prestigious positions are held by important discoveries/ publications et al reasons for prominence in field.
Full disclosure: I was one of those “teach-for-awhiles” in 1970, long before TFA. Both my 1st husband & myself looked at teaching as a way to practice in our BA fields while saving $ for gradsch &/or figuring out if that or another career-path suited. I was an ornery sort who sized up academia as full of petty backbiting, & myself as incapable of following bureaucratic expectations, so… Even tho I suddenly realized (jr yr), teaching would be the only job option for a BA in Rom Lit, I eschewed all but directly-related state-cert courses in favor of grad-level seminars – was fine w/lowerpay privsch if it offered more flex, less bureaucracy. Luckily for me, where I landed offered that plus bonus of mentorship from FL dept head.
What I learned: teaching would be the right fit for me when I was more mature, & probably not until I’d raised kids of my own [I returned to it 25 yrs later]. Also that I was desperate to get out of classrooms & into “the real world.” TMI to explain but ended up in my dad/ graddad’s “real world” of engrg/ constr– where I encountered same-age colleagues same as me [did 2-3 yrs teaching, then found biz footing]… & I was not a bad teacher at all during my 2-yr stint teaching 5 levels of French; I was rather good at it, judging from stud feedback after the fact.
I think we are too hard on “teachers-for-awhile.” IF they work among privileged [most-probably privsch] students AND get good mentorship, it can work well. What’s ludicrous is siccing untrained BA’s on vulnerable, high-risk pubsch students – w/not even the minimal teacher-cert courses I got – giving them a paltry 5-wk training course, releasing them on pubschs that haven’t the budget for teacher mentorship – substituting w/ periodic feedback from TFA “leaders” who have at most 3 yrs’ teaching experience.
Add all that to the posted instance: a cohort of “SpEd” TFA’s who have no SpEd training/ cert, taking demanding multi-grade SpEd positions w/ minimal supervision/ mentoring, visited upon the most vulnerable of the vulnerable: southside-Chicago [poor, underfunded] pubsch pupils w/IEP’s… WTH was TFA thinking?
What they were thinking was, corral a bunch of job-hungry potential [but uncredentialed] teachers: entice them w/promises to forgive stud-loan-debts, sell them to underfunded schdists @ $5k/head.
Fascinating interview. As always, the business world power-brokers don’t get our work. I truly think they think of us as babysitters—who, of course, need to be rescued and replaced for two years by a bright Yale or Princeton grad. Why else would they be so hell-bent on tearing down career teachers and trashing unions? The two-year stint is typically a stepping-stone to a charmed life in policy or reform. Both Dr. Schneider and Ms. Tan are to be commended for this important work which reveals some of the false narratives of the TFA mystique.
May this interview reach far and wide—we can share, right?
You certainly won’t get THIS sort of reading venture if you go to the TFA website.
Personally I am fine w/biz-types’ demeaning stereotype of teachers as babysitters: it gets them closer to the reality that economy can’t “go” w/o teachers/ students in-place at brick&mortar outside of home. Interesting to compare to those Euro countries just starting back on school reopenings. They get that reality– but also get another reality, that parents won’t be sending kids back to school w/o PPE/ soc-distancing/ ample testing/ contact-tracing in place. Our gung-ho return-to-normal-sans-all-that states will most likely be experiencing stop/start interruptions due to covid spiking…
Here’s a high profile ed reformer actively working against funding of public schools:
“David Osborne
Economists: there is little relationship between student performance and school resources. “That shouldn’t surprise anyone. Pouring more money into the same broken system won’t fix the deeper problem–government monopolies have weak incentives to” perform.”
They simply offer nothing to public school families. They don’t even pretend to offer anything of value to public school families. In fact, most of the time they’re proud to work against our schools.
If you’re hiring these folks for publicly paid positions or as contract consultants you really have to ask yourself why you’re paying people who work against your kids school.
Public schools are about to get hammered with budget cuts and instead of lobbying to keep funding even or increase funding, ed reformers are working to reduce funding.
The irony is that charter schools scream bloody murder if anyone suggests that they should not be receiving additional funding from the federal government or COVID-19 relief.
Charters always insist they need that extra funding, while they and their supporters are lobbying the government about how public schools don’t need money and how small class sizes are wasteful and instead you should treat children with the cheap “no excuses” methods.
Funding cuts hurt their own schools- the charters and private schools they promote and support- but the impulse to punish public schools is so strong they don’t care.
See also Mercedes post about the TFAs who will be entering schools with a bit of tutoring as the only preparation.
https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2020/06/09/teach-for-americas-2020-trainees-to-enter-the-classroom-with-only-tutoring-experience/
This is a very insightful interview. What especially resonates with me is when she talks about TFA’s with only a few years teaching experience feel as though they are experts in education, “It was like young, energized, new teachers were coming in, doing short stints, then feeling like they knew everything about teaching and repeating the cycle, kind of like a pyramid scheme on our students.”
This happens beyond TFA. Volunteers and substitute teachers also sometimes come away feeling like they have answers without having the depth of experience necessary to truly understand. Betsy DeVos was a mentor to several public education students, through Kids Hope, and has referenced that as allowing her to understand public education.
I truly think they think of us as babysitters—who, of course, need to be rescued and replaced for two years ..If you’re hiring these folks for publicly paid positions or as contract consultants you really have to ask yourself why you’re paying people who work against your kids school.
TFA is built on the false assumption that any smart person can magically be an educator. I will love to have conversations with you if you don’t mind , this is my Email and I will be waiting for your reply!!! luisfally@gmail.com