<p>I think it's about teaching K-12 for one or two (or more ???) years. </p>
<p>I realize that the purpose is a good thing...teaching...but what else is the purpose? </p>
<p>Some dumb questions...</p>
<p>1) do you get paid? If so, how much?</p>
<p>2) do you pay your living expenses out of your salary?</p>
<p>3) do you get a teaching credential first? or is that waived?</p>
<p>What are some of the other aspects?</p>
<p>I don’t know much but here’s the link the official website: [Teach</a> For America - Help Ensure Educational Opportunity for All](<a href=“http://www.teachforamerica.org/]Teach”>http://www.teachforamerica.org/)</p>
<p>D mentioned there had been a presentation at UA about them sometime in the Fall, but she had a conflict and couldn’t attend.</p>
<p>This is my knowledge from knowing TFA folks and from researching for my own kid who was interested… YMMV.
They get paid. Same as first year teachers in the district AFAIK.
The students are selected as “leaders for the future” more than as those who might be good teachers.
The aim is to foster support for the public school system in future leaders more than to find a job for new graduates.
Most of the TFA grads that I know would have been wonderful teachers forever but are now in MedSchool or MBA programs or other more lucrative fields. They credit their TFA years as a wonderful experience. I wish some of them had stayed in the field, they would have changed lives.</p>
<p>My son interviewed for the almost full day final interview and was offered a position with TFA but due to a change in his future path he has decided to turn it down. It is a two year program with extensive training in the summers before the start of school, and they do get paid. The positions are located in at risk school districts where it is believed that the TFA students will be able to eventually affect change as they move into leadership positions after the experience with TFA ends. It is true that many of the TFA teachers do end up attending medical and law school as well as graduate school in completely different fields. </p>
<p>The TFA teachers do pay their expenses out of their salary and many of the teachers find themselves living with other teachers to cut down on the expenses. There are some monetary perks regarding payment of some loans from undergrad and moving expenses to the city in which you are placed. There is also the possibility of some money being paid for med, law, or grad school.</p>
<p>This thread reminded me of an article that was published in our college newspaper last week. It’s well written and it makes a few good points, so I thought that I would throw it out there.</p>
<p>[Why</a> I Won’t ‘Teach for America’](<a href=“The Bi-College News | Pardon our appearance as we move to a new site! Access to archives is unavailable currently.”>The Bi-College News | Pardon our appearance as we move to a new site! Access to archives is unavailable currently.)</p>
<p>D1 interviewed with program, but ultimately decided not to do it. D2 is strongly interested, but she’s only a junior so TFA is a year away at best. I know several children of friends who are participating in the program.</p>
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<p>You are paid by the school district in which you are teaching and are paid the same as any first year teacher. You also have the same salary withholding as any teacher–i.e. state employee retirement fund.</p>
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<p>Yes, you are responsible for paying your own living expenses, including health insurance–though you can buy into the teachers’ group policies in your district.</p>
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<p>TFA teachers undergo an intense 6 weeks of preparation at TFA “camp.” New teachers are usually assigned an experienced mentor at their school. The quality of these mentors varies alot.</p>
<p>TFA teachers are not credentialed. They teach under a special waiver and are expected to take the required education coursework/standardized tests for alternate path certification in the state in which they are teaching. This may mean the new teacher will be going to summer or night classes.(Requirements vary by state.) Most waivers are only good for a couple of years and teachers will need to make satisfactory progress towards or complete state certification requirements if they want to stay in their position once their TFA stint is done.</p>
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<p>You don’t get to choose where you get sent. You may request a region (Rocky Mts, Southeast, Northeast), but there is no guarantee you’ll get it. You get sent where you’re needed. (D of a friend ended up in NC when she asked to stay in the Rocky Mtns/West.) TFA teachers must interview and be hired by the district/principal. It’s not an automatic placement. TFA teachers have occasionally failed to find a job in the school district they’ve been assigned to. I’ve heard mixed things about how well TFA handles this.</p>
<p>I don’t have any knowledge about the TFA program but do know a young woman from our church who is doing TFA this year. I sat by her mother in church right after school started this year. Her D was Val. of her h.s. class and graduated from Duke with honors. The mother said her D was miserable in her TFA city/school and was praying it would get better for her. The mother was tearing up just telling me about it which made me think she was pretty worried about her D. </p>
<p>This young lady is very grounded hardworking young woman from a single parent home who did not grow up well off (went to Duke on scholarship and FA). Our h.s. is very diverse with a large low income population and she spent a sem. and a summer abroad through Duke programs plus did some mission trips w/ our church so it’s not like she had no “real world” exposure or led a sheltered life.
Her mother did not elaborate but just said it was much harder than her D thought it was going to be.</p>
<p>My daughter was a TFA teacher who then stayed at her school, and is still teaching there. To add to what others have said: My daughter first had to pass the state test for teaching. TFA provided a six week “Institute” during the summer, which included teaching at a summer school. It is like a boot camp, and some people quit. My daughter then received a provisionary credential, contingent on working toward a Master’s degree. TFA provided the tuition for this degree, which she got at a local college that had an arrangement with TFA. (My daughter did NOT get to pick this college. She managed to get the Master’s in two years, while teaching.) In addition to the graduate classes, there are small-group sessions just for TFA first year teachers, led by veteran TFA teachers. As far as the city that she was assigned to: TFA gave her three choices of location, and she got her second choice. My daughter is in a unionized school district, and she had to join the union right away. Some TFA teachers were assigned to non-unionized charter schools, and did not join the union. Regarding housing: during Institute, my daughter joined up with a couple of other TFA teachers and found an apartment with them. She pays rent out of her salary, along with taxes, living expenses, and she is even contributing to her retirement account (and getting matched). I think that one of the best things about the program is that there is an automatic peer group of other TFA teachers to give social and professional support. TFA looks for very persistent people, and it helps them to get accepted if they apply during the first round, and indicate that they would be willing to teach any grade, including special ed. The first year is extremely hard, and they are up late working at home, planning lessons and grading. I remember being shocked one time when I visited my daughter, and suddenly a case of paper was delivered to her apartment. The school had run out of paper, so she had ordered a case from Staples and paid for it herself. I think that my daughter is very lucky because her principal went through TFA, and hires a lot of TFA teachers. Among other things, they place a high value on comradery and “schtick”, making a goofy video every year for the graduating students. My favorite story is about a TFA teacher from my daughter’s school who went to med school after her TFA commitment was over, and then came back to the school to visit. Everyone asked, “How is med school?” and she answered, “It is so EASY!”</p>
<p>Rumors fly about TFA and many folks dislike it for political/professional/other reasons. TFA’s own website is informative, detailed, and open about its mission and policies, so I recommend taking RobD’s advice in post 2 and spending some time seeing how TFA answers the questions you’ve posed.</p>
<p>My d is in her second year as an elementary school teacher in the Metro DC area. It is much harder than she thought it would be, but so are the other meaningful things she’s ever accomplished. She surprised herself by not only managing, but succeeding despite contracting mono halfway through last year and also missing 2 weeks of school for the epic snowfalls in the area last December. Her classroom management skills have been praised by admins, fellow teachers, and her TFA mentors. She exceeded the goals set for her by both TFA and her district. Her class assessment showed that students had gained more than 18 months of academic progress during the school year. Only one student needed to repeat the year, a boy with significant LD who, to my d’s frustration, was required by her school to “fail” Reading Recovery before he could receive an IEP.</p>
<p>This last fact was one of many that has led her to decide to spend her career as a children’s advocate instead of in the classroom. She is frustrated by the obstacles created for many poor children by the educational system itself. All I can say is - complacent administrators, be very afraid. </p>
<p>My brief answers to mom2collegekids’ questions - TFA corps members are paid the starting salary for teachers in their district. Like any other teachers, they must be hired by the school principal and pay their own living expenses. They must fulfill the requirements for their individual district’s provisional or alternate certification (in my d’s case, this meant taking the Praxis exams before being hired and several other things on which I’m blanking this AM). And like any other teachers, they are subject to the employment shake-ups their districts undergo each year, use much of their own money for classroom supplies, take classes and workshops during the year as needed/required, and are underpaid for the exhausting responsibility they undertake each day.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids, we’ve had a fair amount of discussion about it on the CC parents forum over the years – you may also find these threads helpful: </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/667640-parents-experience-teach-america.html?highlight=Teach+America[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/667640-parents-experience-teach-america.html?highlight=Teach+America</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/852979-d-accepted-into-teach-america-any-experiences-share.html?highlight=Teach+America[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/852979-d-accepted-into-teach-america-any-experiences-share.html?highlight=Teach+America</a></p>
<p>@ b@r!um: thanks for the article. She attempts to make some good points but, as she states at the end, “even for new teachers who undergo full certification requirements and teacher education programs before they start in a classroom, the retention rate in Philadelphia after three years is only 50%.” So it’s not necessarily a Teach for America issue. </p>
<p>While I understand that it would be better to have a greater percentage of black & Latino teachers in urban schools, the reality is the majority of teacher candidates and Teach for America participants are white. We say we want our best and brightest in the classroom and TFA is one way to try & accomplish this. Is it a perfect plan? Of course not. Is there going to be high turnover. Yes. But inner city schools have had ridiculously high turnover rates since at least the 60’s.</p>
<p>My daughter taught at a charter school in Harlem last year and had several TFA co-workers. She said that they had much more support, both socially and educationally, then she did because of the TFA program. They were also paid more which did make her quite unhappy since she had an actual degree in education plus two years of experience. Two of the TFA workers quit before the first semester, but her school was hard and she had non-TFA teachers quit too. I have mixed feelings about the program but think the selection process is rigorous for a good reason - the schools that these people are placed are not for the weak and wimpy.</p>
<p>Another current TFA parent here. I said most of what I have to say in the threads linked above, which also demonstrate my changing attitude towards TFA.</p>
<p>My daughter’s experience is recognizable from the other reports here: paid a regular starting teacher salary, which is enough to live on, frugally; lots of anxiety around actually getting placed; getting a master’s degree concurrently with her teaching, and will be fully credentialed at the end of her second year; first year hellishly difficult and exhausting (including lots of coaching and support from TFA that required time and work), but the second year is easier. </p>
<p>A few specific grace notes: In her program, new corps members weren’t paid during the summer boot camp or the weeks of job-search that followed, although favorable small loans were available. But that created a serious cash crunch; my daughter needed to move, to find a place to live starting August 1, and to travel all over the place going to interviews, meetings, and grad classes, but she didn’t actually get a job until mid September and a paycheck two weeks later. She was working 60 hours +/week with lots of travel and irregular hours, so getting a part-time job was pretty much out of the question. Neither she nor we had anticipated how much financial (and emotional) support she would need in those 3-1/2 months. (She hadn’t cost us a dime during the summer since 10th grade.) The job search, which was affected by local budget problems, was very emotionally draining, and not being hired until weeks after school started contributed to the sense that she was coming from behind all during her first year. Race and class issues were more prominent in her relationship with school administrators than with (high school) kids – as far as the kids were concerned, she might have been a Martian, but they were kind of interested in that.</p>
<p>TFA, as an organization and the individuals within it, can undoubtedly be arrogant, in a “We are the best and the brightest and our ideas are better than yours, get out of our way” way. But I think it’s impossible to look at what the organization has done to date and not to be extremely impressed with what Wendy Kopp and TFA have done: It has produced a meaningful corps of skilled, socially motivated teachers, yes. But more importantly, practically the entire generation of educational reformers now making their marks consists of TFA alumni, and they benefit from the support of less visible TFA alumni working in business and government. Not too many people actually make a difference in the world, and Wendy Kopp sure has. Perfect? Not even close. But enormously positive on balance. And of course the organization has gone from nothing to a major institution in less than 20 years.</p>
<p>I think TFA says that it tries to recruit people who are natural leaders, and would admit more grudgingly that it tries to foster an image of elitism because that attracts the candidates it wants. But it would vigorously dispute that it doesn’t seek teaching ability. In fact, I think TFA is probably more rigorous and systematic about trying to identify and screen for markers of teaching ability, and then teaching best teaching practices, than any other organization, anywhere. Again, that doesn’t mean it is perfect. There is a real attrition rate, mostly because the job is so darn hard, it isn’t necessarily the career goal of its corps members, and the corps members – because they do tend to be elitist, overachieving, leader types – usually have other options if they want them. I suspect TFA would say that if it didn’t have a significant attrition rate, it would mean that it had gone soft on finding extraordinary corps members and presenting them with extraordinary challenges.</p>
<p>OP, not sure why you are asking about TFA, but if you have a kid who is interested in teaching and wants to see if it is for them, another option would be to apply for a summer internship with a BreakThrough Collabarative program. It is a summer classroom teaching experience in a core academic subject for under-resourced kids with college potential. They have 33 programs across the US. They are paid (not a lot – D made something like $2,500 last summer). The internships are quite competitive, but a great classroom teaching experience for students who are thinking about becoming teachers. Currently I don’t think they get any credit toward teaching credentials (although I think some of the programs are working on this in the various states).</p>
<p>This article gives some insight on Teach for America:[What</a> Makes a Great Teacher? - Magazine - The Atlantic](<a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/what-makes-a-great-teacher/7841/]What”>What Makes a Great Teacher? - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>Lots of great insights! thanks.</p>
<p>Three aspects not yet addressed:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The program “commitment” is two years, with an option for a third. (I.e., the corps member can continue to participate in TFA activities and get TFA coaching that third year, although he could also continue to teach without doing TFA stuff.) There’s no actual commitment, really. People drop out all the time if it gets too much for them. In my kid’s program, there were departures during the first few months, and more at the end of the first year. At the end of the second year, she will be a fully credentialed teacher in the state where she is working, and from her school’s point of view she will have a job there unless she doesn’t want it, or unless they decide she is incompetent. (Or if they have to RIF more teachers than they hired this year.)</p></li>
<li><p>I think there were definitely regions my daughter’s year year (2009) where TFA corps members couldn’t get jobs, and either left the program or changed locations. At one point, when it looked like all of the corps members in her region might not get placed, TFA guaranteed them placements in a city about 3,000 miles away. Last year’s class was smaller, and there was more stimulus money, so I doubt they had that problem. But the budget situation for school districts across the nation is very squirrelly, so there could be lots of issues this summer and next. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>In my daughter’s group, a lot – most – of the kids were pressured to switch to special education placements as a way to deal with local budget and hiring politics. Now, thanks to local budget and hiring politics there are lots of special ed teachers teaching non-special ed classes, but still that switch was traumatic for some of the corps members (and the pressure was traumatic even for the ones who didn’t switch). In many cases, they had already registered and started grad classes at one institution, and they had to switch to another for a special ed degree.</p>
<p>Note that when the TFA kids were having trouble getting hired in my daughter’s region, it was next to impossible for traditional teaching program grads to get jobs at all there. TFA wasn’t perfect in placing its corps members, but under the circumstances it did a better job than anyone else.</p>
<ol>
<li> At least in my daughter’s region, TFA was not monolithically white at all. There were (and are) a number of (impressively educated) African-American, Hispanic, and Asian corps members. I don’t think anything close to a majority, but not negligible, either.</li>
</ol>
<p>My daughter wants to apply to TFA. What can she do to have the best chance to get in? She’s tutoring underprivileged kids now and going on a service trip over winter break to an underdeveloped country and taking an education class that’s recommended for TFA. Her GPA isn’t great (about 3.1) but she goes to a good school where they take a lot of kids. She’s a business major (not great probably) and also did a full major in Spanish (better?). Any ideas on her chances?</p>
<p>Is she a senior in college? If so, I think the deadline to apply has passed.</p>
<p>There’s another deadline.</p>