The same day I get an e-mail about applying for Teach for America, a friend posts a Facebook note announcing that she quit the same program after two weeks of teaching at her new school.
She came to this decision after her phone was stolen by a student who called her father and boyfriend to harass them (he also took unspeakably lude pictures of himself on her camera phone). After she bore threats of violence from her students. After she received an anonymous death threat. A death threat? In what other profession are you asked to deal that stuff on a daily basis? The military... maybe law enforcement... but education?
And this is someone who I regard as completely put-together, who I expect could handle almost any situation in life and make it look easy. If she couldn't do it, I see now way in hell I would last twenty minutes in one of those classrooms. What could I ever do to make kids like that respect a schoolteacher, much less stop tearing themselves and everyone around them apart? I mean beyond all that Michelle Pfeiffer crap. I think, "maybe I'd just go in there and slug someone, right off." But that's what you're supposed to do in prison. See, I wouldn't even know where to begin. What do I have in common with that environment?
Still. Someone has to do it. Who's going to do it?
She came to this decision after her phone was stolen by a student who called her father and boyfriend to harass them (he also took unspeakably lude pictures of himself on her camera phone). After she bore threats of violence from her students. After she received an anonymous death threat. A death threat? In what other profession are you asked to deal that stuff on a daily basis? The military... maybe law enforcement... but education?
And this is someone who I regard as completely put-together, who I expect could handle almost any situation in life and make it look easy. If she couldn't do it, I see now way in hell I would last twenty minutes in one of those classrooms. What could I ever do to make kids like that respect a schoolteacher, much less stop tearing themselves and everyone around them apart? I mean beyond all that Michelle Pfeiffer crap. I think, "maybe I'd just go in there and slug someone, right off." But that's what you're supposed to do in prison. See, I wouldn't even know where to begin. What do I have in common with that environment?
Still. Someone has to do it. Who's going to do it?
11 Comments:
Drew, I'm so with you on this. I feel what Teach for America attempts to do is so important, so necessary, and yet my chances in an environment like that are about 2 days max . I want to inspire though, do it disney style and change some kid's life.
i also have a friend doing it and some of her friends are mad at her, but not necessarily because of the stuff you're talking about (which is admittedly terrifying). they're mad because they also think that what teach for america does is important (educating the underprivileged) but think that asking recently graduated college kids with NO teaching experience and a summer-long orientation/training camp is a shitty way to make educators.
essentially, teach for america is not the same as the peace corps. anybody can plant crops in bolivia, but there's a lot more to education than gumption and a desire to change the world.
I considered applying to TFA too, but then I reconsidered because every single person I knew of or my friends knew of was completely miserable. TFA plays on your assumption that because you went to an elite school and got an elite education, you are a) capable of doing anything even if you have no experience, and b) somehow more capable of doing the impossible than people who went to Shitty State U. It's like this sense that we have that poor people need us--with our fancy, expensive sociological understanding of their plights--to save them from themselves. Either that, or the idea that if we're going to stoop to teaching, the only people worth teaching are the most difficult students, since apparently middle and upper class kids already have so many advantages that they don't even need educations.
That was well put.
I agree that TFA may be a flawed program, and also a vanity job that appeals to our worst liberal assumptions of ourselves and the poor. But I'm not convinced that low-income students don't need great teachers more urgently than middle-income students. I'm grateful for the fantastic teachers I had; but I also had my parents, who predisposed me to getting a good education from whomever taught me. Do kids in the worst branches of the CPS get that same encouragment toward education that they do in Alpharetta or Skokie? Sometimes. But it's a lot less likely. If I have the opportunity to be a positive role model in a community that's lacking them, I'll jump it. And until someone proves to me that it's just my misenlightened sociological understanding that poor students need great teachers, those are the kids who are going to get my priority.
I don't think that poor kids don't need good teachers. I just don't think I'm the kind of teacher they need. I may have a good education and a lot to teach them academically, but I'm not sure that what they need is to be introduced to the Hegelian dialectic so much as to be brought up to speed in basic subjects (something that people with degrees from Northeastern Illinois Teacher Factory can do as well as I, and perhaps better) and kept in line by someone they respect. I have few illusions that the kids at some Englewood public school are going to respect a 5'2, 22-year-old white girl who tells them to learn about the American Revolution. I would even ask you to think whether your favorite teachers, who I assume had the benefit of years of experience, would be as successful and effective in those classrooms as they were in yours.
I mean, one of my teachers had a plastic eyeball. That might have been effective.
Like, in his eye? Or as a prop?
Re: your question, "Still. Someone has to do it. Who's going to do it?"
Guilt is hardly a reason to enter a profession, Teach for America or otherwise.
Just think, you could be like a male Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds. So I guess like Jon Lovitz in High School High. Discouraged yet?
Teach for America teachers are more effective than inexperienced non-TFA teachers, according to a study done in Texas. Excellent verbal skills tend to pay off in the classroom.
The problem is that TFA teachers start with no experience and usually are placed in troubled schools that can't attract and retain certified teachers. I've known TFA teachers who felt overwhelmed and others who loved the experience.
Ideally, new teachers would start in an easy-to-teach school, gain experience and then try a challenging school. But the TFA commitment is only for two years.
I'd say: Consider TFA. Ask if you have any choice about what school you teach at. (If so, look for a competent principal.) If not, consider charter schools serving needy students.
-- Joanne Jacobs
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