Teach For America Corps Members in Dialogue: Can this Model Work?
Yesterday this blog featured a guest post from a current Teach For America corps member, Jameson Brewer. The following comment was posted by another TFA teacher. A response from Jameson Brewer follows.
As can be expected from a Corps Member, this is a reasonably accurate depiction of TFA's Institute and AIM, with one caveat. In my experience as a CM, TFA pushed CMs to focus within their "locus of control" and work relentlessly to pursue academic achievement for our students. The way I saw it, TFA didn't tell us to ignore socioeconomic challenges (to do so would be terrible) or to call call these challenges "irrelevant." Rather, TFA doesn't believe that socioeconomic challenges are an excuse to justify the achievement gap, and believes that good teachers and good schools together can close the gap in spite of socioeconomic challenges.
Is it more difficult to teach in a school where students are plagued by socioeconomic challenges? Of course! It's much easier to teach middle-class (mostly white) students in the suburbs who are already at/above grade level than struggling (mostly minority) students in the inner city. But socioeconomic challenges aren't insurmountable, and the students in these communities can and do outperform their more affluent peers when
