“I felt Strange and Guilty”: Annie Tan @TeachForAmerica alum speaks
Teach For America recently announced that they were sending more teachers of color than ever before to teach for short term stints in America’s schools. They expect to be lauded for this.
What is Teach For America? Read here.
Have you ever experienced a situation where you were knowingly or unknowingly unprepared? How did it make you feel? My first year at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor was a rough year. I had a introduction to psychology course in the Modern Language Building (MLB) building which was on the other side of campus from my East Quad dorm. 
Now I realize that the google map above says its only an 11 minute walk, but Michigan weather is not the most hospitably in January and February. The first day of class, the professor (whose name I still remember), told us that we didn’t have to go to his weekly lectures, we could read the book (which he had authored) and do fine on the midterm and final exam— the only metrics important for the grade in the class. So, two weeks into the class the 300 person lecture hall was basically empty. By week three, it was only myself and about 20 other students who would actually attend lecture. By February I stopped going because it was just too cold. Well, the professor changed his mind in the middle of the semester and declared that he would now include questions on the tests that would only come from information given in lecture. I was in shock. The midterm was the following week and I hadn’t attended lecture in a month because the professor had told the class during the first meeting that it wasn’t necessary. What this some sort of psychology experiment? It wasn’t. I received a C on my midterm because I was not able to answer the questions from the newly required lectures. I felt guilty that hadn’t gone to lecture. I felt like a failure because it was the first C I had ever received in my life on an exam at any level of education. In essence, I was set up for failure.
This story brings me back to Teach For America, which sends well-meaning college graduates and other non-traditional “I felt Strange and Guilty”: Annie Tan @TeachForAmerica alum speaks | Cloaking Inequity:teachers into the the classrooms of poor students of color and whites for a two year teaching commitment. The Teach For America model has been to provide five weeks of training before these inexperienced teachers hit the classrooms in some of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the United States. They call their approach and the “I felt Strange and Guilty”: Annie Tan @TeachForAmerica alum speaks | Cloaking Inequity:
