Follow me for a second.
All across the district hundreds of teachers are being
surplussed while at the same time the district is slated to bring in hundreds
of Teach for America teachers. How does that make sense?
It doesn’t unless you don’t think teachers are professionals
(Ashley-Smith-Juarez, Jason Fischer and Dr. Vitti) and you think anybody just
anybody can show up and be a teacher. It
doesn’t unless you want to break the power of the union and privatize our
schools.
Many TFA have potential and are actually quite fun and interesting to work with. You know what bugs me the most though? They have absolutely no skin in the game. Most stay for 2 or 3 years and then leave. They have little to no proven track record. Their pedagogy is weak and stilted because they have NO real experience. Any good teacher will tell you that for the first several years you are just going along, hoping students learn; you don't know what works because you have NEVER done it before. In all of the years we have had TFA at our school (about 25 TFA "teachers"), I would say that 1 or 2 were really effective, most were mediocre, and some were heinous. It is an absolute waste to keep investing in them as they inevitably leave. The most one ever stayed at the school was 3 1/2 years, but the average is 2 years. Can you imagine sending your students to a hospital populated by glorified interns? At least the interns have more than 6 weeks of training in the medical field. Plus, this puts a tremendous amount of stress on the mentor teachers who have this constant influx of people who really have no idea what they are doing. Only by the end of year 2 or 3 are they beginning to contribute to the conversation of education, as they have learned, somewhat, what it takes to be a teacher. Then, they leave.
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