An Open Letter to TFAers Tempted to Diagnose ADHD, Among Other Issues
Dear Teach for America (TFA) Corps Member:
In 1985, I graduated from high school. So did TFA founder, Wendy Kopp. She and I happen to be only five weeks apart in age.
In April 2014, I published a book. Kopp has her own chapter.
She attended college at Princeton from 1985-89. I also attended college, at Louisiana State University (LSU). I stayed for an extra two years and graduated in 1991 with a degree in secondary education, English and German.
I chose to become a teacher. Kopp chose political science.
It is 2014. For my entire professional career, I have been a teacher.
Kopp’s professional career has involved creating TFA, an arrangement whereby non-education majors like you make two-year commitments to teach. Many of you will later become charter school “founders,” principals and superintendents. With minimal classroom experience, you will call yourself “educators,” and TFA will boast that the majority of their recruits remain in “education.”
Some of you will drop out of TFA before your two-year commitment is complete. You will realize that teaching involves much more than simply a high college GPA and enthusiasm.
I realize that you have been indoctrinated to believe that career teachers are lazy, or that they are not capable because they did not graduate from the top five or ten percent of their class.
I also realize that you believe that the ultimate measure of learning is the standardizedtest score and resulting graduation rates (however the term “graduation rate” happens to be defined– four years? Six years? Nontraditional program?).
I know that some of you struggle with the idea of “using” teaching to pad resumes. Others view teaching as an ill to be tolerated for two years and end up resenting your experience, viewing it as a “waste” of your life.
I am no fan of the TFA program. I do not believe that five or six weeks of training– in a controlled environment, to boot– is in any way sufficient to prepare you for the classroom.
Teaching is a profession in its own right, and those who graduate from four-year colleges and universities with degrees in education– evidencing the long-term educational investment that testifies to an intent to stay– also risk not making it beyond the five-year mark.
So, to me, a program that sells you on five weeks of training as adequate preparation clearly does not have your best interest in mind.
I have written about Louisiana’s contracts with TFA. You are making quite a bit of money for that An Open Letter to TFAers Tempted to Diagnose ADHD, Among Other Issues | deutsch29: