In the last few weeks, I’ve encountered a number of people who ask about Teach for America as an organization. Although my blogs might reflect negativity toward teaching and TFA, this is not the sentiment I intended. Rather, in my eyes, TFA serves its communities in a way that far outweighs its mission to allow all children access to high-quality education (a mission most admirable).
TFA recruits some of the most accomplished college graduates in the country, people who have shown responsibility and resolve in their lives. These energetic people are placed around the country in its most underserved communities. In this respect, TFA brings diverse backgrounds to areas in which homogeneity is the norm. At my school, the biggest disservice to our students is the lack of resources for out-of-state opportunities post-high school.
NOTE: I could go on for hours about the incompetency at my school, the lack of communication between…
TFA’s summer training program, Institute, inundates new corps members with information about planning, execution, tracking, parent communication, and community diversity. It’s an intense 5-week course which I laughingly explained to my college friends as “everything graduate students learn in 2 years.” It seems like years ago, those five weeks of planning and late nights, informational…
read more »As a teacher, I have felt completely unprepared to deal with mid-year transfer students, especially those that have been placed in my high school Spanish classes. It’s an immersion class unlike anything I ever experienced during my education. We act like idiotas, linking actions with phrases – a method called Total Physical Response (TPR) –…
read more »Teach for America stresses the “locus of control,” that area over which we have power. Managing the classroom, presenting content in a concise and comprehensible way, and our rapport with our students are all within the locus of control. Counseling at the high school is out of my locus, and it’s one thing that’s noticeably…
read more »There are some students you need to push in the right direction to show them their true potential. I would suggest not literally pushing them, as I did yesterday. One of my students, Xander, is a smart kid. He is held back, however, by his talkative, uninspired and unmotivated friends in my 5th period Civics…
read more »When the word “gay” entered adolescent vernacular as a synonym for “stupid” or “ill-advised,” I equated it to using the word “retarded” in the same context. It bothered me. There was an incident this past winter with two of my friends, one gay and the other straight. One friend called a situation “gay,” and our…
read more »Teaching has become more of a struggle in the last few weeks. My students have become accustomed to Mr. Pepper’s class, and they know what to expect from me. They know where I’m weak. They know how to push my buttons. They (should) know what I expect of them. But I’ve realized that my planning needs…
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