A former Teach For America manager speaks out
Wendy Heller Chovnick is a lawyer who spent years at Teach For America, both as a corps member in the classroom and as a manager in Phoenix. In the following Q&A, she tells her story about Teach For America, explaining why she joined as an enthusiastic corps member in Washington D.C. in 2001, and why she later became disillusioned enough to leave the organization. She offers an inside view of how TFA operates both on the regional and national level and details why she believes TFA “is not living up to its mission of proving excellent educational experiences for students in low-income communities.”Hers is the latest voice of a former TFAer speaking up about the organization. TFA has in recent months been the target of increasing criticism from former members, leading to an anti-TFA gathering last weekend in Chicago billed as an opportunity to start coordinating resistance to the organization.
She currently lives in Phoenix with her husband and two sons and works at a small securities law firm. Prior to joining Teach For America, Wendy studied business and urban studies at the University of Pennsylvania with a focus on public policy and urban education. After working at her TFA placement school, Paul Public Charter School, in Washington, D.C. for four years, she obtained a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center. She spent a year working at a federal courthouse in Virginia on pro se
A point no one has (apparently) made before
Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham discusses in the following post a study that he says stunned him. Read why. Willingham is a professor and director of graduate studies in psychology at the University of Virginia and author of “Why Don’t Students … Continue reading →
