Understanding KIPP Model Charter Schools, Part 12: The Final KIPP Interview
Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys through "No Excuses" Teaching
Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys Through "No Excuses" Teaching, By Jim Horn, 9781475825794 | Rowman & Littlefield - https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475825794/Work-Hard-Be-Hard-Journeys-Through-%22No-Excuses%22-Teaching
I am still interviewing, however, so if you are a former "no excuses" charter teacher or student or administrator who wants to share your story for future publication, please contact me: james.horn@cambridgecollege.edu.
Chapter 12
The Final KIPP Interview
My first interviews with former KIPP teachers began in 2011, and the last ones for this project were conducted in 2014. The very last one was with a young woman who contacted me to tell her KIPP story, which had ended just a few days before our interview. Like other former KIPP teachers, she stepped out of the darkness to speak, even though she feared reprisals and “harassment” from KIPP employees if her identity could be assigned to her words.
As with so many other former KIPP teachers who left damaged by their experience, she is a former Teach for America corps member who taught two years in a poor public school before coming to KIPP. She had suffered through her first TFA year finding out all that her college double major did not teach her about children and teaching, but by the second year she felt like she had hit her stride. She had, nonetheless, decided to leave teaching when her two-year TFA commitment was up, when she was contacted by KIPP.
KIPP had acquired her name as a prospective teacher from her first year teacher mentor, who previously had spent her first year as a teacher at a KIPP school. Her mentor, she explained, was looking to cash in on large finder fees for new teachers hired from his leads if the new hires stayed at KIPP for at least 30 days.
She was invited for an interview in an urban area large enough to have its own KIPP network, and she received a guided tour of the “most beautiful classrooms” and “perfectly-arranged classrooms.” She was taken to lunch and to dinner, and 24 hours later she was offered a teaching job. Since this KIPP school seemed to “have it together more” than the public school she was leaving, she took a risk and decided to give teaching one more try.
Like other KIPP teachers, she started to work in early July. On the first day of her second week at Schools Matter: Understanding KIPP Model Charter Schools, Part 12: The Final KIPP Interview:
