Educational Leadership

In contrast, in my traditional program, when it came time to plan a classroom management system, I had already spent more than 100 hours observing master educators in several classrooms and had been part of a cohort of preservice teachers for almost a year. I had seen management systems in action, read about them in books and articles, written about them for my professors, and talked them over with my colleagues. In this second attempt at preparing a management system, I felt much less harried and much more knowledgeable.

After looking over the Teach for
America training materials, a friend
of mine referred to the program as a
“mini-MBA” (master of business admin-
istration). There’s truth to the remark,
because the training focuses on Daniel-
son’s first domain of teaching: planning
for success. The skills associated
with mastering backward design and
planning with goals in mind are easily
fired en masse—it gives its preservice
teachers a longer view and a better
chance at becoming fluent enough in
the work of a teacher to stay in the field
and make a difference.

Different Programs,
Different Goals

Teach for America and other alternative certification programs are well aware that it takes time to build a strong teacher—and that most teachers hit their stride between years three and five. If there’s merit in Malcolm Gladwell’s argument that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at any craft, I can expect to master my craft (as much as anyone can master a craft like teaching) at around year nine.

So then why does Teach for America only require two years of teaching, and why is the training program only five weeks long? From my own experience and considering the organization’s stated mission (“Teach for America is growing the movement of leaders who work to ensure that kids growing up in poverty get an excellent education”), its goal seems to be to foster leadership outside the classroom—that is, to provide a classroom teaching experience for young people who are likely to leave teaching and either enter other fields or become leaders in education. In contrast, my master’s program had the clear goal of preparing teachers for careers in the classroom or, down the road, as teacher leaders.

As a preservice teacher, I needed
time to absorb, make sense of,
and find ways to implement my own

transferable to other fields, like business and law—which were touted as common options for Teach for America alumni during the information session I attended.

These skills, however, cover just one portion of the work that goes into creating a classroom in which children not only pass tests and show quantifiable academic improvement, but also love to learn and grow into independence. So asking whether Teach for America adequately prepares teachers for the classroom may not be the best question to ask. The better question might be, Is the organization cultivating the kind of leaders it wants, and if so, how does this translate into educational change?

Other alternative certification pro-
grams, like National Louis University’s
Academy for Urban School Leadership,
require a five-year commitment
from their participants. Although the
academy has its controversial points—
like its focused work on turnaround
schools in which entire staffs might be
button. However, hindsight has shown
me the virtues in taking the time to
learn from experts, observe veterans at
work, and then take those skills with
me to my first teaching job.