{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-article-tsx","path":"/susanthrowninthedeepend","result":{"data":{"primeArticle":{"slug":"susan.throwninthedeepend","excerpt":"Teach For America offers college graduates a chance to dismantle structural inequalities in the classroom – but at what cost?","headline":"Thrown in the Deep End","author":"Susan Monaghan","authorbio":"","authoremail":"","authortwitter":"","coverimg":"https://assets.dailybruin.com/images/susan.throwninthedeepend/chalkboard-7f40fbedcf88b845c184cb9fb52805d0.jpeg","covercred":"Clara Vamvulescu","coveralt":"Illustration of a chalkboard that is overcrowded with overwhelming information.","articleType":"article","updated":null,"content":[{"type":"text","value":"The Teach For America UCLA recruiter tells me that certain states build prison cells based on the number of third graders who have not reached a proficient reading level."},{"type":"text","value":"This isn’t true, but I understand why the idea moves her."},{"type":"text","value":"Teach For America is a nonprofit organization that employs recently graduated students as teachers in low-income regions across the United States, optimally for a minimum of two years. More TFA applicants come from UCLA than any other school, according to Shayne Walton, TFA’s UCLA recruiter."},{"type":"text","value":"The acceptance process is daunting – only between 6% and 8% of applicants are selected each year, Walton said. If accepted, members undergo a summer training program and are employed at a school in one of about 50 regions across the nation based on their top preferences. Members may also receive an AmeriCorps education award after each year with the program to use for postgraduate education, typically totaling between $5,300 and $6,100."},{"type":"text","value":"The program does not hire teachers directly. TFA members work for the school they’ve been placed in, with support in the classroom from TFA coaches when needed, as they earn their teaching credentials at a local university."},{"type":"text","value":"Walton was hired as a third to fifth grade teacher at a charter school in East Harlem two months after graduating from UCLA, teaching 210 students on weekdays."},{"type":"text","value":"Walton’s story left me wondering – how could this program possibly work? Who was seeking positions at this organization, and how many others had gone straight from their senior year of college to a leadership position overseeing more than 200 elementary school students?"},{"type":"text","value":"After two and a half years working in Taiwan as a Fulbright scholar, Eliza Liz said she felt more than ready to teach at another education training program with a prestigious reputation."},{"type":"text","value":"When she was accepted to the TFA program in the summer of 2018, she jumped at the opportunity. But the recent graduate soon realized the program was not what she expected."},{"type":"text","value":"“My experience with TFA was really bad,” Liz said. “There's no other way to put it.”"},{"type":"text","value":"TFA’s five- to seven-week summer training program, known as “institute,” has been criticized by several former corps members. Institute has been called an inadequate process for cultivating educators, who are expected to dramatically improve education systems that already employ teachers with years of training."},{"type":"text","value":"Olivia Blanchard wrote an indictment of the program for The Atlantic in 2013 called \"I Quit Teach for America,\" detailing the inadequacy she felt as a teacher in the Atlanta Public Schools system. Blanchard wrote that after leaving institute, corps members tended to be confused about their purpose in their school system while struggling to learn the basics."},{"type":"text","value":"Liz said TFA made her experience in the classroom unreasonably challenging for an educator at the beginning of her career."},{"type":"text","value":"“I think TFA is a noble organization, it’s trying to do something,” Liz said. “But ... what I needed was to be seen, valued and heard. Instead, I was blamed, shamed and told it was never enough.”"},{"type":"text","value":"Her problems with TFA began during training to obtain her teaching credentials at Loyola Marymount University with the other Los Angeles TFA corps members. Liz said she overheard members complaining about their students, saying they were “stupid” and “didn’t care about anything.”"},{"type":"text","value":"Their professor, she said, was of no help. Instead of offering advice on how to better teach their students, the professor would say the teachers-in-training had done well “just by showing up.”"},{"type":"text","value":"Initially expecting to learn the dynamics of the classroom during training, Liz and the other corps members soon traded in her notebooks and pens for yoga mats – the organizers decided to proceed with guided meditations and movement therapy instead. To Liz, it seemed pointless and ill-conceived – why was she doing these exercises? Why did she not receive professional training?"},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"Illustration of a teacher being overwhelmed and frustrated.\",\"url\":\"https://assets.dailybruin.com/images/susan.throwninthedeepend/overwhelmed-4795d70e498bd6d1640eebbc26ec36b5.png\",\"credit\":\"Clara Vamvulescu\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"“They care more about being socially just than truly preparing these teachers for the real trials of when you don't know how to plan a lesson, and (what to do when) the kids are not being cooperative,” Liz said."},{"type":"text","value":"Liz asked the organizers multiple times to explain the reasoning behind the exercises. She said other trainees thanked her for speaking up, saying they were too scared to voice dissent."},{"type":"text","value":"“I think that rings a huge alarm bell, right there, if you're scared to speak up,” Liz said."},{"type":"text","value":"By August 2018, Liz had completed training and started teaching at a middle school in Los Angeles. Entering her classroom for the first time, she discovered that the room she’d inherited was being used as a storage space, packed with hefty pieces of junk, including couches and a gas compressor."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"What I needed was to be seen, valued and heard. Instead, I was blamed, shamed and told it was never enough. -Eliza Liz\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"Soon after the academic year began, the principal left, and was quickly followed by the assistant principal in charge of science – the subject that Liz taught."},{"type":"text","value":"And then there were the class sizes. Compared to the classes she’d taught with a co-teacher in Taiwan – which were sometimes as small as five students – the classes she taught in Los Angeles on her own ranged from 28 to 40 students."},{"type":"text","value":"And yet her students were often her most helpful allies in organizing important daily rituals, such as class breakfast, which had to be structured from scratch."},{"type":"text","value":"“It was the kids who helped me the most,” Liz said. “The kids sometimes give you headaches, but they also were the ones that were ... the most patient with me.”"},{"type":"text","value":"Come October 2018, Liz requested help from TFA."},{"type":"text","value":"TFA sent her an in-class coach, a woman Liz described as motivated, goal-driven and – more disastrously – defensive and unwilling to let her specific teaching standards be challenged. Liz asked for a new coach, which TFA granted without rescinding her old one. The two coaches would sit in the back of a 55-minute class once a month to supervise her teaching."},{"type":"text","value":"After each day of supervision, the coaches held a meeting with her over Skype. They recited statistics to reflect her teaching performance, such as “86% of students were not on task.” Liz asked how the coaches had gotten their percentage. The coaches told her that, as some point during the day, they had stood up and counted the on-task students."},{"type":"text","value":"“I always felt so horrible after every single meeting,” Liz said. “I don't think that's what coaching is, (it’s not) supposed to make you feel horrible.”"},{"type":"text","value":"It seemed that Liz’s coaches were her first and last resource when she needed help – there was no one to explain her frustrations to, especially about the coaches themselves."},{"type":"text","value":"At first, she tried to contact Jenn Choi, a program operations coordinator in TFA’s Los Angeles region. Liz said she couldn’t find a single piece of contact information to lead her to Choi, including an email address. It was unclear to her who she should try next – she couldn’t figure out who her direct superior was in TFA’s administrative hierarchy."},{"type":"text","value":"She tried casting her net wider, emailing members of her cohort at institute as well as corps members who had been dismissed, looking for anyone who would be able to tell her who exactly held her coaches accountable. But she was careful to keep her inquiries secret."},{"type":"text","value":"“There was a fear already in me,” Liz said. “I think that’s an issue, if there’s fear in me, and I’m in this organization that wants people to grow. ... I was scared that I would lose my teaching credential.”"},{"type":"text","value":"While Liz was learning from her coaches, the advice they gave her had varying levels of success, and every wrong move was another serious transgression against the TFA way of administering education."},{"type":"text","value":"“I think that as a coach, you need to understand that the first year of teaching is not going to be easy,” Liz said. “But at some point, I think they must have forgotten what that looks like.”"},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"Illustration of a young teacher surrounded by word bubbles conveying overwhelming emotions.\",\"url\":\"https://assets.dailybruin.com/images/susan.throwninthedeepend/lackofresources-e1eb1b066c5271b7558903fe30fcb396.png\",\"credit\":\"Clara Vamvulescu\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"A study published in 2010 by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice found that first-year TFA teachers were not likely to have a positive impact on their students’ mathematics or reading skills."},{"type":"text","value":"This, according to the study, is mostly because of their incomplete teaching credentials: The program’s teachers begin to influence improvement only after they’ve “obtained training and certification in their second and later years in the classroom” – a milestone that, for Liz, was still more than a year away."},{"type":"text","value":"Gary Rubinstein, a former TFA member and alumni recruiter, wrote about the largely unproductive stress of being a first-year teacher for the TFA networking organization Teach For Us."},{"type":"text","value":"“Many of us quit,” Rubinstein wrote. “Those of us who made it through the first year had pretty good second years. It was true, I guess, that what didn’t kill us only made us stronger.”"},{"type":"text","value":"But Liz’s coaches were not interested in allowing her to simply “make it through,” and Liz still hadn’t found another program member to go to. In April 2019, another TFA administrator joined her two coaches to supervise her for one day. Liz was dismissed a few weeks later, after the TFA coaches had a private meeting with her principal."},{"type":"text","value":"“The most ironic part was the person who ended up coming into my classroom and firing me was the person that I would have had to complain to,” Liz said."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"The most ironic part was the person who ended up coming into my classroom and firing me was the person that I would have had to complain to. -Eliza Liz\"}"},{"type":"line","value":"{}"},{"type":"text","value":"Ex-members have levied some of their most serious criticisms of the program against TFA’s methods for supporting teachers in the field. Former TFA members such as Blanchard said coaches do little to help them deal with challenges the summer training program didn’t adequately prepare them for."},{"type":"text","value":"Approximately 10% of corps members leave the program or are dismissed before their two-year commitment is up, according to Walton."},{"type":"text","value":"But some members had a different reaction to being thrown into the deep end of America’s most underfunded schools, such as Liz’s friend Danielle Perez."},{"type":"text","value":"Perez entered TFA the same summer as Liz and completed her two-year commitment as a corps member, along with her master’s degree in urban education, in May. Perez said she felt prepared for the stress of training. She comes from a family of educators, including her sister Lana, who completed TFA training in 2011."},{"type":"text","value":"“(Lana) had the most jarring boot camp-like experience. ... She shared with me how it brought her to a breaking point,” Perez said. “I knew all of these stories, so going into (summer training) I had mentally girded my loins, ready for the worst.”"},{"type":"text","value":"One significant factor set her experience in the program apart from Liz’s: Perez’s school site, a Los Angeles charter school in Boyle Heights, exercised such strict oversight over its teachers that her TFA coach became unnecessary."},{"type":"text","value":"Perez said that her school site belongs to the charter school network Knowledge is Power Program, which has a reputation for being one of the most stringent and micromanaged teacher networks in America."},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"Illustration of a laptop being overwhelmed with notifications, symbolizing the often long, grueling hours of being a teacher.\",\"url\":\"https://assets.dailybruin.com/images/susan.throwninthedeepend/laptopgraphic-dcb62bf6a1ba320acc41493aaf0b76ad.png\",\"credit\":\"Clara Vamvulescu\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"It is perhaps ironic that the stress of her experience in TFA’s training program was overshadowed by her school site’s even more rigorous management style, as KIPP was founded by two ex-TFA members in 1994."},{"type":"text","value":"Perez also stressed the importance of having worked for a total of four years at underfunded schools before joining TFA."},{"type":"text","value":"“A lot of people who joined Teach for America are fresh out of college, never had a 40-hour work week job,” Perez said. “And then they get into teaching, which isn’t a 40-hour work week at all, it’s a 60-hour work week job.”"},{"type":"text","value":"To me, it seemed Perez was lucky in all the ways Liz was not: She had the experience where it counted, had been given ample warning where institute was concerned and was overseen with such a strict eye at her school site that she needed very little from her TFA coach."},{"type":"text","value":"But TFA members like Walton are confident that it is possible to go from undergrad to training to the 60-hour work week, all while maintaining the standards TFA sets for its educators from the word “Go.”"},{"type":"text","value":"TFA’s aims are grand enough to warrant some scrutiny. But despite some of the challenges of participating in TFA, Walton believes in its grand aims."},{"type":"text","value":"“Issues in the classroom are so vital and so important, but we look to make systems-level change,” Walton said. “Because our kids aren’t just impacted by what happens in the classroom, our kids are impacted by health disparities, housing discrimination, environmental racism and so much more.”"},{"type":"text","value":"One of Walton’s favorite students had been sent out of the classroom during 100 out of 180 days of the academic year before she arrived at her school site. Walton soon learned that he loved basketball and one day wanted to play for UCLA’s team. To build a relationship with him, Walton brought the student UCLA basketball merchandise, including a jersey."},{"type":"text","value":"Walton said he was the top-performing science student in all of fourth grade by the end of the year."},{"type":"text","value":"But according to Justyn Patterson, the director of UCLA’s BruinCorps, a similar program that sends student tutors into underfunded schools, the impact of this type of academic intervention is limited."},{"type":"text","value":"“We are a student-centered approach to a systemic problem. ... I can only really impact the students that are right in front of me,” Patterson said. “But ... there are systemic (issues) around funding and teacher preparation that we don’t get to address.”"},{"type":"text","value":"After comparing Walton’s and Liz’s experiences, it seemed that TFA’s answer to American education inequity, in lieu of an authentically superior training regimen, is more or less a morale boost for the students it works with – and the more its members are willing to sacrifice, the better the boost."},{"type":"text","value":"This, apparently, is what TFA offers in the place of the conventional teacher training track: a cheerleader for students in the classroom."},{"type":"text","value":"It’s still unclear how effectively this method translates to improvement when it comes to a systemic problem like educational inequity. A study published in 2018 sought to do a meta-analysis of the tests that have been conducted on TFA’s effectiveness and found that only one met the criteria for evidence review standards."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"It seemed that TFA’s answer to American education inequity, in lieu of an authentically superior training regimen, is more or less a morale boost for the students it works with.\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"Considering how intimately UCLA is currently tied to the makeup of TFA – the university has contributed more than 300 members to the program in the last five years, according to Walton – it’s worth interrogating the passionate call to arms TFA is selling."},{"type":"text","value":"“(Educational equity) might have been a deep but not super intense to-the-core belief, and by the end of your time, it is,” Walton said. “And I didn’t think two years could do that, and I was like, ‘Oh, now I have to focus on this issue the rest of my life because I love it so much.’”"}]}},"pageContext":{"term":"summer20","slug":"susan.throwninthedeepend"}},"staticQueryHashes":[]}