Thanks for the two-parter. Congrats on the kid, Jim! My second is due 8/4.
Here's a bunch of unstructured thoughts and responses having just listened to both. Sorry, it's long and kind of train of thought. No need to reply, I'm just processing my thinking "out loud."
One thing I think I've always overlooked about TFA is that it helped people break out of insular socioeconomic and racial bubbles. While its record is checkered, one thing TFA did was get some well-to-do young adults to spend two years with poor kids in environments that were often very different from where they grew up. Crossing these kinds of cultural boundaries is important and high-status people are increasingly sorting themselves out of situations where they cross cultural boundaries. So, you guys talk about coming "from outside" a bit critically but that's probably an underrated aspect of the impact TFA has had. TFA wasn't designed for or billed as conscientization for well-off white college grads but that's still something of a useful function.
Speaking of the high status TFA conferred (or maybe sought in applicants as a condition of acceptance) it was always funny, as a teacher who went through a typical university-based training program, to be relegated to lower status than the TFA teacher down the hall. This wasn't so much the school or the district but my own friends and family. Dad was always talking about how cool it was that I got to work with someone from TFA but I was like "we're doing the same job!". The cachet and status of the program (at least back in the 2010s when I was working with a few TFAers) was so huge. At the same time, I really felt for the TFAers I worked with because there were, initially, very high expectations of them and the pressure was not fair.
I think you guys should reach out to other TFAers and bring them on to talk about education. You guys know Carl C.? He did TFA in Arkansas around the same time, elementary school iirc, and then went to work for Lucy Calkins, of all people. He probably has a lot of interesting things to say about schools, curriculum, and the post-TFA life. Obviously, it's not meant to be a TFA podcast but maybe every couple of months bring another alum on? Given the space TFA occupied in the school reform movement of the 2000s-2010s, it seems worth hearing from more alums given all the changes that have happened since then.
I noticed that TFA has really shrunk in size since the 2018-2019 cohort. You mention it in the context of alternative licensure but there are other things that could be mentioned here. Has TFA lost that status and now capable, successful college graduates all go work for big consulting, tech, and financial firms instead? Do we no longer think about schools as an avenue for justice? Why the shrinkage of TFA if alt cert is growing? Also, I noticed that TFA is moving more toward school leadership and instructional coaching than teacher training and placement. What's up with that? On the flip side or third hand or... anyway, TFA has gone global under the Teach for All banner. You can do Teach for Pakistan, Teach for Argentina, Teach for Kenya, and so on. Is this model, which seems embedded in the 2000s era US school reforms something you think could be exported for good around the world? Are you critical of this expansion?
Your comments about feeling thrown into the deep end as a new teacher are, as I'm sure you've learned since then, pretty universal. I still remember my student teaching at an "urban" high school in 9th Grade ELA - I still love 9th grade to this day. Three days after I started, my supervising teacher sent me a text saying she'd be out for a while but that I would be okay because she thought I had a good rapport with my students. For almost that entire school year, I was the teacher for that class and had a rotating menagerie of substitute teachers who provided, let's say, variable levels of support. Years later I have worked in a few unis as part of their education departments and the levels of support and supervision given to people during their student teaching practicum are all over the place. One college I worked for required students to find their own placements. Another, much fancier university, had everything set up and had good ongoing relationships with mentor teachers and their cooperating schools as well as their own laboratory school. One of the best programs I've been a part of actually sounds a lot like what you describe in the institute and that's a teacher residency program and of all the programs I've worked with, I like it the most and wish more teacher prep went in this direction.
Since Jim mentioned Advanced Placement, I wanted to gently suggest a critical book, Annie Abrams' Short Changed: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students. She's a high school English teacher and has a lot to say about how AP has changed in recent years as well as its growing role in the privatization of curriculum. Worth a look given the content of the posts and podcasts.
Given the level of moral injury and internal conflict you guys expressed about being TFA alums, I was surprised to hear that one of you (Jim, I think?) worked for a charter school. A colleague of mine described her work in charters as requiring her to become less than human, robotic even, just to be able to get through the work. She was particularly harmed by occasionally being tasked with finding ways to bounce low-performing kids out of the school that looked like the kids' fault. But, she's also in a well known no-excuses system which doesn't sound like your situation. Do you find that being part of a charter network brings with it similar requirements for cognitive dissonance?
Relatedly, you each chew on the question of whether TFA had some kind of causal impact on failed and damaging school reforms. To some extent TFA did directly engage in lobbying and political advocacy through the Leadership for Educational Equity nonprofit they founded in 2007. Part of the LEE was training "Venture Fellows" who would "push for expanding school choices" as a way to "end educational inequity." They funded various politicians' election campaigns and did lots of political advocacy around charters, school accountability, and school choice. In recent years they have switched almost exclusively to a focus on training community and school leaders and advocates. I think you can credibly argue that TFA did have some direct connections to the school reforms we all now regard as failed. Still, I think a better way to think about their overall impact is that TFA was one node in a network of reforms that all pushed in the same general direction. They platformed Michelle Rhee because she was part of that network. TFA alums are often running charter schools, promoting school choice, and working to take apart traditional public schools - look at guys like Jim Huffman in Tennessee or the whole leadership team at IDEA charter schools. There are also new institutions that are part of this network like Relay Graduate School and the Broad Superintendents Academy. Not to mention a whole host of philanthropic efforts that worked along side and funded school reforms. It's not like TFA did all of this on their own but they were in a cohesive network of organizations and individuals who worked to reform education along certain lines.
Thanks for inspiring me to write so much about so many things. All the best! I'll be listening.
All of this is so thoughtful and eloquently-stated—while I won't even try to respond to each individual point (though they are deserving of response!), I'll just note how appreciative I am for you laying out your thinking so generously.
Indeed, I could probably imagine an entire separate podcast examining the nuances around TFA experiences and perspectives—they are incredibly varied, and I don't for one second pretend to have a full grasp of all the different ways of understanding the organization and its impact.
While we'll likely move onto other topics, I am hopeful that more voices are part of a critical, nuanced conversation around TFA—that, I think, we all can agree would be a good thing!
Excellent discussion and thank you for having part two and parsing it out even more and gosh there is more, isn’t there?!
am on board with James’ comment here. I won’t say a lot of what he already said. I have nothing against alternate licensure programs because the actual Ed program are failing teachers in a big way. TFA of 2000s held a soft bigotry that I find toxic. For every two teachers like you two, there were the majority with business majors who just needed their peace corps volunteer hours to apply to MBA and law
schools and the low pay was not an issue for them since family was footing the other bills and teacher pay was a stipend for hobbies.
lots of other relevant points in this discussion that have nothing to do with TFA… Really appreciate it. Thank you.
So much more! There's a lot of problems in traditional paths but the proliferation of alt licensure, in my view, has only made it worse. Lose-lose for kids, too.
Appreciate your feedback and continued listening :)
Thanks for the two-parter. Congrats on the kid, Jim! My second is due 8/4.
Here's a bunch of unstructured thoughts and responses having just listened to both. Sorry, it's long and kind of train of thought. No need to reply, I'm just processing my thinking "out loud."
One thing I think I've always overlooked about TFA is that it helped people break out of insular socioeconomic and racial bubbles. While its record is checkered, one thing TFA did was get some well-to-do young adults to spend two years with poor kids in environments that were often very different from where they grew up. Crossing these kinds of cultural boundaries is important and high-status people are increasingly sorting themselves out of situations where they cross cultural boundaries. So, you guys talk about coming "from outside" a bit critically but that's probably an underrated aspect of the impact TFA has had. TFA wasn't designed for or billed as conscientization for well-off white college grads but that's still something of a useful function.
Speaking of the high status TFA conferred (or maybe sought in applicants as a condition of acceptance) it was always funny, as a teacher who went through a typical university-based training program, to be relegated to lower status than the TFA teacher down the hall. This wasn't so much the school or the district but my own friends and family. Dad was always talking about how cool it was that I got to work with someone from TFA but I was like "we're doing the same job!". The cachet and status of the program (at least back in the 2010s when I was working with a few TFAers) was so huge. At the same time, I really felt for the TFAers I worked with because there were, initially, very high expectations of them and the pressure was not fair.
I think you guys should reach out to other TFAers and bring them on to talk about education. You guys know Carl C.? He did TFA in Arkansas around the same time, elementary school iirc, and then went to work for Lucy Calkins, of all people. He probably has a lot of interesting things to say about schools, curriculum, and the post-TFA life. Obviously, it's not meant to be a TFA podcast but maybe every couple of months bring another alum on? Given the space TFA occupied in the school reform movement of the 2000s-2010s, it seems worth hearing from more alums given all the changes that have happened since then.
I noticed that TFA has really shrunk in size since the 2018-2019 cohort. You mention it in the context of alternative licensure but there are other things that could be mentioned here. Has TFA lost that status and now capable, successful college graduates all go work for big consulting, tech, and financial firms instead? Do we no longer think about schools as an avenue for justice? Why the shrinkage of TFA if alt cert is growing? Also, I noticed that TFA is moving more toward school leadership and instructional coaching than teacher training and placement. What's up with that? On the flip side or third hand or... anyway, TFA has gone global under the Teach for All banner. You can do Teach for Pakistan, Teach for Argentina, Teach for Kenya, and so on. Is this model, which seems embedded in the 2000s era US school reforms something you think could be exported for good around the world? Are you critical of this expansion?
Your comments about feeling thrown into the deep end as a new teacher are, as I'm sure you've learned since then, pretty universal. I still remember my student teaching at an "urban" high school in 9th Grade ELA - I still love 9th grade to this day. Three days after I started, my supervising teacher sent me a text saying she'd be out for a while but that I would be okay because she thought I had a good rapport with my students. For almost that entire school year, I was the teacher for that class and had a rotating menagerie of substitute teachers who provided, let's say, variable levels of support. Years later I have worked in a few unis as part of their education departments and the levels of support and supervision given to people during their student teaching practicum are all over the place. One college I worked for required students to find their own placements. Another, much fancier university, had everything set up and had good ongoing relationships with mentor teachers and their cooperating schools as well as their own laboratory school. One of the best programs I've been a part of actually sounds a lot like what you describe in the institute and that's a teacher residency program and of all the programs I've worked with, I like it the most and wish more teacher prep went in this direction.
Since Jim mentioned Advanced Placement, I wanted to gently suggest a critical book, Annie Abrams' Short Changed: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students. She's a high school English teacher and has a lot to say about how AP has changed in recent years as well as its growing role in the privatization of curriculum. Worth a look given the content of the posts and podcasts.
Given the level of moral injury and internal conflict you guys expressed about being TFA alums, I was surprised to hear that one of you (Jim, I think?) worked for a charter school. A colleague of mine described her work in charters as requiring her to become less than human, robotic even, just to be able to get through the work. She was particularly harmed by occasionally being tasked with finding ways to bounce low-performing kids out of the school that looked like the kids' fault. But, she's also in a well known no-excuses system which doesn't sound like your situation. Do you find that being part of a charter network brings with it similar requirements for cognitive dissonance?
Relatedly, you each chew on the question of whether TFA had some kind of causal impact on failed and damaging school reforms. To some extent TFA did directly engage in lobbying and political advocacy through the Leadership for Educational Equity nonprofit they founded in 2007. Part of the LEE was training "Venture Fellows" who would "push for expanding school choices" as a way to "end educational inequity." They funded various politicians' election campaigns and did lots of political advocacy around charters, school accountability, and school choice. In recent years they have switched almost exclusively to a focus on training community and school leaders and advocates. I think you can credibly argue that TFA did have some direct connections to the school reforms we all now regard as failed. Still, I think a better way to think about their overall impact is that TFA was one node in a network of reforms that all pushed in the same general direction. They platformed Michelle Rhee because she was part of that network. TFA alums are often running charter schools, promoting school choice, and working to take apart traditional public schools - look at guys like Jim Huffman in Tennessee or the whole leadership team at IDEA charter schools. There are also new institutions that are part of this network like Relay Graduate School and the Broad Superintendents Academy. Not to mention a whole host of philanthropic efforts that worked along side and funded school reforms. It's not like TFA did all of this on their own but they were in a cohesive network of organizations and individuals who worked to reform education along certain lines.
Thanks for inspiring me to write so much about so many things. All the best! I'll be listening.
All of this is so thoughtful and eloquently-stated—while I won't even try to respond to each individual point (though they are deserving of response!), I'll just note how appreciative I am for you laying out your thinking so generously.
Indeed, I could probably imagine an entire separate podcast examining the nuances around TFA experiences and perspectives—they are incredibly varied, and I don't for one second pretend to have a full grasp of all the different ways of understanding the organization and its impact.
While we'll likely move onto other topics, I am hopeful that more voices are part of a critical, nuanced conversation around TFA—that, I think, we all can agree would be a good thing!
Excellent discussion and thank you for having part two and parsing it out even more and gosh there is more, isn’t there?!
am on board with James’ comment here. I won’t say a lot of what he already said. I have nothing against alternate licensure programs because the actual Ed program are failing teachers in a big way. TFA of 2000s held a soft bigotry that I find toxic. For every two teachers like you two, there were the majority with business majors who just needed their peace corps volunteer hours to apply to MBA and law
schools and the low pay was not an issue for them since family was footing the other bills and teacher pay was a stipend for hobbies.
lots of other relevant points in this discussion that have nothing to do with TFA… Really appreciate it. Thank you.
So much more! There's a lot of problems in traditional paths but the proliferation of alt licensure, in my view, has only made it worse. Lose-lose for kids, too.
Appreciate your feedback and continued listening :)