Why I Stopped Writing Recommendation Letters for Teach for America

[yeats]

And why my colleagues should do the same.For the past nine years, I've been an instructor, a Ph.D. student, adjunct professor, and post-doctoral fellow in humanities departments at several different universities. During this time, many students have asked me to write recommendations for Teach for America. My students generally have little to no

Comments

[chaya]

Opinion piece tag?

[yeats]

forgot we had one -- thanks! will add now.

[kleios_kiss]

YES. Thank you. TFA is solely meant to create a cheap, rotating, union-busting labor force. Nothing more. It's disgusting that we do this to our most vulnerable population of students. I've sat in on education classes that were populated by TFA members and it sounded like a cult of elitist, largely white, upper-middle-class peoples who all spoke down about people who've been in their jobs for years or decades, presuming to know more than them despite having no training or experience, and discussing the "horrors" of unions, all while solely working in charter schools for their first year of their little post-college, pre-grad school resume-padding experience

[yeats]

Not saying that every TFA person is like this, I know some truly good people who were in it because they genuinely wanted to become teachers and have stayed in the teaching profession for close to a decade. But I do know that that's an exception. yes, this. like, if teach for america were a program that specifically targeted young people who wanted to become teachers as a career, and provided them with free training and an education master's in exchange for a commitment of a certain amount of years, that would be one thing. but TFA doesn't do that -- in fact, my friend who graduated from the program to work as a recruited told me that she was privately told that the program prefers applicants who plan on going into high-profile and high-prestige fields, because they'll have a better chance of influencing education policy in favor of TFA-style reforms. i went to undergrad at an ivy league school, and it seemed like TFA recruiters were everywhere, which makes a lot of sense based on her insights

[skellington1]

provided them with free training and an education master's in exchange for a commitment of a certain amount of years

That, in a nutshell, is how I'd love to see lots of education work naturally. Work where society needs you and society foots your education bills.

[moonshaz]

That would be splendid, imo. Absolutely splendid.

[gambitia]

Good to know more about TFA. I didn't like it before, because my mother is a teacher and I grew up around teachers and so I know how much training it takes to be a teacher--you can't do it in a 5-week crash course. It's a highly professional job, and treating it like it's a silly profession that anyone can do with a crash course is just wrong.

I was not aware of the union-busting nature of TFA though.

[kleios_kiss]

It's a highly professional job, and treating it like it's a silly profession that anyone can do with a crash course is just wrong.

YES! This too. So much. Thank you. It kills me how people think that teaching isn't a "real" profession and so therefore *anyone* can just jump right in! It's not real work, it's charity! Lets save the poor kids for two years! My parents are also both teachers, working in low-income areas of the Bronx, so I hear you. TFA further stigmatizes and belittles the profession of education. And there's a big part of me that is thinking that this notion that teaching isn't a "real" profession is linked with gendered development of the institution over the past couple of centuries in the U.S., and with the assumption that "women's" professions aren't "real" professions, I pretty much see TFA just continuing to perpetuate a highly unequal, rooted in sexism, notion of our current educational institutions and professionalism.

Edited for grammar fail.

[gambitia]

I think the "woman's work" definitely plays a part, along with the longstanding stereotype of "those who do, do; those who can't, teach" which goes back to ancient Greece iirc.

I kind of wanted to be a teacher when I was little because I wanted to be like my mom. That dream ended when I tried to tutor some kids and realized how hard explaining things is. Explaining things is hard. Explaining things to a group of children, who have different learning styles and abilities, is even harder, because you have to throw yourself out of your own frame of reference and into theirs. That is a skill, a difficult one to master, and it should be revered. We love people who are "good leaders", or "good athletes", or whatever--why not good teachers?

[redstar826]

plus, there is this whole obsession we have in the US with being at the top of the heap so we have all of this worry about test scores and how we measure up compared to other countries. I think in a lot of Americans' eyes not being the best at everything=failing

[audacian]

YES.

[shhh_its_s3cr3t]

I have so many people from my University who did this just to get around paying loans back for a couple years..... under the guise of giving back etc.

So I'm pretty pleased that someone with the background and the actual real knowledge of this program has finally taken an honest stand.