How Teach for America Works

I keep talking with friends and family who have some seemingly very basic questions about Teach For America, and I realized that most people have no idea how Teach For America really works.  So I decided it's probably time (after over two years of involvement) that I bring down the shroud of occlusion.  Plus with the 20th Anniversary TFA Summit going on right now, I figure there's no better time than to talk a bit about the program.

College students (and pretty much anyone else who wants to get involved) apply for TFA around graduation.  They go through a rigorous interviewing process, which lasted over four hours in my experience, and then within a few weeks receive word as to if they've been accepted to the program or not.

Upon acceptance, new corp members attend a summer institute training program near the region of their acceptance, or at least relatively close.  I was accepted to work in the Bay Area, but my training was in Los Angeles.  Close enough, right?  Anyhow, over the summer program, we learn all the basics of what TFA has determined are the skills and qualities that make for effective teachers. Not only do we learn about them, but we get to put them in practice as we teach summer school for the local school districts.

(A complete side note here - if you are reading to find out more about how TFA works, skip this paragraph. It blows my mind that in the 6 weeks of my summer institute training, there were about 4-5 essential skills that I learned which have become a key part of my teaching experience.  These key skills are things that seem like second nature to me, but when I share them veteran teachers, it blows their minds.  A few weeks ago we had a district professional development where we talked about analyzing data from district assessments.  The assessments they give are horrible, and my students do awful on them, and they tell me absolutely nothing.  So I keep track of my own systems that have a much higher resolution for interpretation, and thus are much more informative.  I brought my system with me to the professional development, and ended up having to more or less tell the district supervisors why their system was ineffective and that I wasn't buying in to it and show to them why mine was so much more effective. The district people didn't seem to take it very well, but everyone at my school who was sitting at the table were pretty blown away by what I had been doing.  And I had to laugh afterwards when Katey said on the way back to the school "These are things we all learned within the first two weeks of teaching... It isn't rocket science.")

Following our institute training, we return back to our areas of assignment and start teaching.  Now, how we get the jobs at the schools that we are teaching at varies wildly.  Some of the people at institute already had their teaching assignments when they arrived there.  They had been some of the lucky few who had been able to interview with various schools prior to going to institute.  I, however, was not.  So in between the time of institute and the first day of school, I had about 7 different interviews with various schools and principals in San Francisco. We were instructed to take the first job offer given, regardless of which position we preferred, and the first offer I received came about 15 minutes after I left my interview at the school where I'm currently working.

We complete all the paperwork with the district that we are slated to work in, and from that point we become employees of the school district.

Henceforward, our interaction with TFA becomes limited to communicating with our Program Directors, Professional Developments, and any corp members with whom we established relationships during institute.  We aren't employed or paid by TFA - more than anything TFA becomes a support resource to help us function in the classroom.

As corp members, we commit two years to operate as TFA corp members in our respective schools.  But since we're employees of the school district and not TFA, after the two years are up, we're no longer considered corp members.  But we can still remain in the school, district or state we're teaching in, because again - we're still district employees.

If I could summarize the role that TFA plays in education, they basically just affirm to the districts that the people they are recommending for hire have passed their own requirements, and if the district has confidence in Teach for America, then they can have confidence in their candidates.  Now, what these candidates do once they become employees of the school district while using the resources of Teach for America - that's where TFA really earns its track record.  I suppose that's what you get when you hire a bunch of motivated, type A personalities who don't have a good understanding of what it means to fail.

I'm not going to dive in here to debate as to whether or not I agree with the mission or effectiveness of Teach for America.  However, I look at the sad state my school is in, I see the carousel of teachers that have rotated through there in the short year and a half that I've been there, and see that I'm practically an island of pure stability for these kids - there's no possible way that my being there has been any WORSE for my students.

If you have any questions about how this whole process works, I'd be glad to discuss them - please just throw them out in the comments section.