I was recently asked by a very political friend what I though about Teach for America. I said to her, "Imagine that you are having major surgery and are admitted to the hospital and introduced to Emily,your nurse by her supervisor. The supervisor tells you that Emily is a Nurse for America. She has only had six weeks of training, and will only be a nurse for two years because she wants to improve her law school application, but she is very enthusiastic." Are you appalled?
As a teacher of thirty-six years, I am appalled by Teach for America. It rests on two very faulty suppositions. The first is that teachers do not need any special training or any particular skills to teach. After all, we all went to school. In fact, there is now a great accumulation of research that delineates effective teaching practices and it takes years to reach true effectiveness.
The second supposition is more insidious. In the past, schools kept the same teachers for years. The school was an integral part of the community where teachers had brothers and sisters, cousins and neighbors and sometimes even parents and children. Students came back with invitations to high school graduations, college graduations, weddings, quincinearas and birthday parties. To lose this sense of community is to divorce the school from families. Teaching for two years and then disappearing dies not make you a model, a friend and a mentor for students and families.
If you want to change the world, be a real teacher. Stick around for thirty years or so.
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