Mixed Messages from Teach For America- Is Teaching a Prestigious Profession?
When I meet new people I like to do a small social experiment by either telling them, “I work with Teach For America” or leaving that out entirely and just telling them “I am a teacher.” The difference in how people respond is amazing. I must admit, at first as a kid right out of college I thought dropping the Teach-For-America line was great because girls would actually talk to me and even seemed impressed by my association with TFA. When I told people I was a teacher and left out the TFA piece, you could almost see them start to wonder how bad my LSAT must have been to end up teaching! Herein lies the problem: College graduates need to see that teaching is a profession to be proud of whether it is attached to TFA or not.According to a recent press release, TFA is the top employer of graduating seniors from schools like Yale, University of California-Berkeley, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Howard University. At first glance