BTW

3 Replies to “BTW”

1. As a professor of education, TFA actually does undermine both the professionalism of teaching and the extensive preparation necessary to maintain a career in education as an actual practitioner. Classroom teaching should not be equated with a short term bout of service to one’s country in between college and graduate school. It is a profession that would benefit from career teachers who are vested in maintaining an infrastructure of professional knowledge and practices. There is no incentive for posterity when all one needs to do is wait out a short-term contract.

2. Chalk Face: I suggest that you–as a professor of education–focus on how to get your school’s graduates to follow TFA corps members’ example by joining them in teaching the most at-risk kids, in the hardest-to-fill subject areas (special education, math, science), in the hardest-to-staff schools (90% poverty, 90% minority), in America’s most under-resourced and under-served urban and rural communities. And beyond just getting your graduates to teach where they are needed most, you really should look into how to help them have the kind of impact that TFA members have on student success, especially among those students most at-risk of failure and most in need of a great teacher. After all, isn’t that what TFA should be judged by–Whether it is serving the kids its mission commits it to serve and whether it is serving them well?

   http://progressivefix.com/nea-vs-tfa

   http://www.teachforamerica.org/about-us/research/

3. And get his school’s graduates to teach for only 2 years before returning to (paid) grad school.