to do detailed, excessive lesson plans
based on “I do, we do, you do” that
no one was ever going to use, as well
as extensive details on how to set up
classroom tracking systems so we could
presumably “prove” we were effective
teachers.
For the bulk of the summer, it felt
like we were experimenting on these
poor summer school students, basically
learning to teach on them. I’m guessing
this would never fly in an upper-middle-class suburban school.
The main tenet of
the Teach for America
training model is,
If you can lead,
possible, in the press. Leadership,
therefore, is a crucial feature of the
program.
The Drawbacks of the Program
Scant Training in Teaching Tasks
The majority of participants enter Teach
for America with limited or nonexistent
clinical or methods coursework from
their college careers; they’re supposed to
learn how to teach at the institute.
However, the Teach for America
training model downplays the need
for traditional teacher preparation.
The main tenet of the model is, If you
can lead, you can advocate for school
reform. The organization advocates
developing innovation, leadership, and
skills in its corps of teachers. As Wendy
Kopp, founder of Teach for America,
noted in an interview with Malcolm
Gladwell (2011), “TFA is not a teaching
organization, but rather a leadership
development organization.”
One recruit pointed out skills he
believed would prepare him to teach
effectively. The program, he noted,
didn’t provide this instruction:
During TFA’s summer training, there
was no training on child development
or child psychology, no overview of dif-
ferent methods of pedagogy, very little
training about behavior management in
class . . . and very little actual training on
how to teach students at any level in the
context of a classroom (meaning, what do
you do when you’re in front of students?).
you can advocate for
© DAVID PLUNKERT/ THE iSPOT
school reform.
Although corps members do attend
workshops and instructional sessions
that address the rudiments of content
knowledge, pedagogy, and classroom
management, the emphasis is primarily
on “teaching as leadership.”
For example, one rubric used to
evaluate the teachers in training focuses
on five areas: Set big goals, plan pur-
posefully, execute effectively, continu-
ously increase effectiveness, and work
relentlessly. One related model teacher
action is to “create rigorous, objective-
driven lesson plans so that students who
complete class activities successfully will
have mastered the objectives and made
progress toward the big goals.”
This teacher action implies both
intensity and accountability—and
appears to precede learning how to
execute a teaching task. Another teacher
