My D17 got accepted to TFA yesterday and is very excited. (she gets to stay close to home as well). She graduated in December and has been substitute teaching right now at a private school and wants to pivot her original career goals from Social Justice/Political science, to teaching.
She has worked with disadvantaged children before , so she does have an idea of what she is walking into, but my fear is that a 2 year commitment , not only teaching , which who knows if it will be on zoom still at some point, but also having to get her certificate/masters at the same time, may be too much. Pre-Covid I would not have worried as much, but I heard that this years cohort (20-21) have had a very rough and isolating time of it.
She also is up for a fellowship further away from here (which scares her to move away since she has moved back to home from college and has “established her life”) that is related to working with a college and kid interested in social justice. If it was me, that is the opportunity if I was given, I would run to, but she is not me.
Finally, there is the traditional route, where she could continue to work as a Sub and attend Graduate school full time.
She is an adult and this is all her decision. I just was hoping parents of anyone who have done TFA could let me know how their children handled it, and if they were happy they did it, or eventually regretted it.
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What does the fellowship entail compared to TFA?
I dont have all the details, except that she creates social justice “activities” for a college organization, and probably other activities as well.
OK, some kind of Experiential learning officer.
Are the compensation and benefits similar to TFA?
not exactly, but I dont want to give things away too much, as its distinct in case someone I know is reading this. The compensation would be similar but all three “paths” are very different. Its not about $, but more about my concerns that she will be get burnt out doing TFA and especially if things continue as remote in the fall. I can imagine though that many of these students are also very much behind and next year is going to be extra hard even in person. Just wondering what other experiences have been.
I would not recommend TFA. I’ll PM you.
I work with some former TFAers. They are glad they did it but were eager to move on. Not sure what grad degree that your daughter would get but some of the Ed degrees seem to work better with a teaching schedule. The ones I knew got an MPP, not MSEd, after they were done.
Young people who do TFA often want to move on and many would rather work in Law (policy) or other fields than education since TFA can be leveraged for various upper-scale positions outside of education.
Since she wants to stay in education, I don’t think TFA is the way to go for her. Congratulations, it’s hard to do 
but… wouldn’t these programs work better for her goals?
There are alternative licensure programs with paid Master’s in many different districts.