High Hopes

So, to pick up where I left off last time, I think I should mention a little bit more about what Teach For America is. Basically, its an organization that was founded in 1990 based on the principles I talked about in my last entry; that although America promises equal opportunity, it does not exist in our nation's schools. Thus, TFA collects promising recent college grads, trains them in the leadership skills they will need (in just six weeks) and sets them on a course to close the achievement gap over two challenging years.

A lot of people don't seem to like Teach For America. Most of what I heard about it from people when I was considering applying was negative. (Of course, this only prompted me to dig deeper to find out if what people were saying was true. I found that it wasn't.) People said that it's a "Band-aid solution" for a large-scale problem. I guess it depends on what you mean by Band-aid. Since 1990, over 17,000 people have served their two years (or more, as often happens when people come to love what they're doing) of teaching. Currently, there are 5,000 corps members across the country placed in 26 different urban and rural regions. So far, TFA has impacted the lives of almost 3 million students. Is that a Band-aid solution? You might still think so, in the grand scheme of things, but what does that mean? Should someone not join this organization because it isn't bigger or more powerful? I don't think so.

Another critique of TFA is that members are only required to teach for two years. Of course, some choose to teach for longer than that, but many do not. People argue that this leads to "unrest" in schools as it increases teacher turnover and ultimately is somehow detrimental to students. But, even if you take this line of reasoning, the "dropout rate" of teachers after their first year in the lower-income districts where TFA places teachers is obviously much higher than that of TFA. It's more like TFA is encouraging and giving incentive to teachers to resist becoming discouraged and giving up after their first year.

Something else that I think should not go unmentioned about TFA is that the people who are accepted are college grads that arguably could get much higher-paying jobs elsewhere. When I applied to the 2008 Corps, I was one of about 24,700 applicants for only 3,700 slots. This means that the acceptance rate was about 15%. According to an article called TEACH FOR AMERICA PLACES LARGEST-EVER CORPS, EXPANDING ITS IMPACT TO 26 REGIONS NATIONWIDE, in 2007 TFA received applications from "11 percent of the senior classes at Amherst and Spelman; 10 percent of those at University of Chicago and Duke; and more than eight percent of the graduating seniors at Notre Dame, Princeton and Wellesley." Think about it: most of us could have done other, more self-seeking or possibly higher-paying things with our lives. (For example, I could have gone to medical school.) But we didn't, because we wanted to take two years out of our lives to work hard to make sure that students in underfunded districts have the same opportunities as those in more affluent districts. How can you criticize that?

Anyway, that's a little bit more about TFA. To be more specific about what exactly I'm doing, I will be teaching some kind of science course at the secondary level (grades 7-12) in Los Angeles (probably South Central). I won't know for sure what my placement is until I have interviewed with a principal or two. I have been doing a lot of reading to prepare myself for my training, which starts June 29th, and I have already learned a lot about how I can work to develop the leadership skills I will need to succeed as a classroom teacher. According to my reading, these skills include

• setting big goals for students' academic achievement
• investing students (and their influencers) in working hard to reach the big goals
• planning purposefully
• executing effectively
• continuously increasing effectiveness
• working relentlessly

Sometimes when I am doing this reading, I feel overwhelmed and wonder what I have gotten myself into. But most of the time, I just feel optimistic and confident about my ability to have a positive influence on my future student's lives.