I am leaving Teach For America after one year when I never thought I would. My decision to leave education is inextricably tied to my decision to leave Teach For America (TFA). In this final edition of Teachtree Street, I am going to chronicle my personal and professional motivations for leaving in the context of today’s social justice movement, education reform positions and the moral lessons of the milennial generation.
Don’t look here for a polemic criticizing Teach For America, standardized testing, school choice or another stop on the “truth tour” counter-recruiting on college campuses. If you are considering joining Teach For America or have already started at Institute for the summer, let this be a cautionary tale. My position on TFA is a moderate one, and I believe many who join should consider otherwise — and many who join should consider increasing their commitment to education. Let my experience with Teach For America be a reference point, not some pedantry on what you should do with your future. Opinions are cheap, but experience is invaluable.
What Did Teach For America Expect of Me?
There was not a particular moment in which I had a meltdown and decided teaching wasn’t for me. No, those difficult first year teacher moments drove my conviction more deeply. It wasn’t the burden of responsibilities, the challenges of a school placement or growth when the outcome seemed improbable. My decisive moment came when I finally saw Teach For America as a choice you make for employment after college, instead of accepting a calling to make a difference. Teach For America, like any company for which you would work, has a certain ideology. This ideology, however, is a particular perspective on social issues and education reform. And having organizational views on social issues naturally divide those who are a part of it.
The Teach For America model for success falls under the “Teaching As Leadership” (TAL) framework, a method of overcoming a relative lack of instructional experience through extraordinary effort and commitment to a vision for your individual classroom. Through the miasma of a low-performing school, you are — as I read one superintendent call it — the “shock troops” on the front lines of a struggle directly connected with the civil rights movement. You are taught to break down your fixed mindsets about abilities and turn ordinary classroom instruction into transformation which begins with the character and beliefs of the students about their capabilities. The classroom leadership model scales up into an education reform model based on choice for students and families and accountability for schools.
I reached all year for these expectations, treating each shortcoming as an opportunity to grow. I took inventory of my strengths and weaknesses, made personal action plans and connected the experiences of my students to the larger social issues which Teach For America used as motivators for the teaching work. However, I realized that my sense of obligation and belief in how I can effect change rested in a very different model from that of Teach For America. I do not believe individuals can be consistently relied upon to create change, but that the most powerful change is community-centered and group-led. I believe in movements and ideas, I believe in listening first before declaring a solution, in asking critical questions before assuming the answer. My expectations for myself shaped me all year away from the mold Teach For America set as the standard of success. I couldn’t find be relentlessly confident that I knew what my students and school needed.
Couldn’t I Still Find a Reason to Teach?
Even if TFA’s model seemed to rub against my practice, there are plenty of TFA Corps Members I know in Atlanta who dislike the Teach For America model but are passionate about their students and about their classrooms. Their motivations rest in their students, and in increasing student achievement and character. Whatever their pedagogy and personality, they are united in the common vision of being a teacher, and filling the shoes of a teacher. But deep down for me, I joined Teach For America because I believed Teach For America is an heir of the civil rights movement, not because I wanted to fill a teacher’s shoes. This is a difficult confession to make, but that was and remains my motivation to do the work that I will continue to pursue professionally.
My litmus test for having a personal calling to teach is twofold, and I failed both parts on introspection:
- Am I more willing to tell others I am a teacher or that I am a TFA Corps Member? If it’s the latter, then I am not proud of teaching and want the TFA name.
- When I am more motivated about civil rights, does that make me proportionately more committed to the classroom? If not, then something is not adding up with my experience in TFA to drive me.
If I am going to commit the incredibly long hours, the stress and the high expectations of being a new teacher, then there must be pride in the profession of teaching, and an intrinsic motivation for nurturing and working with large numbers of students to build trust and sweat equity with them. When I say “committed to the classroom,” I do not mean the summer camp counselor feeling of “being there” for students, but rather the cycle of planning, instructing, assessing and evaluating, the tough conversations with parents, the students who carry heavy emotional baggage to school every day, the feeling of being isolated among colleagues and the all-too-frequent feeling of fumbling around in the dark for elusive answers. Teaching requires a personal motivation and heart for students, not an extrinsic incentive to perform for the TFA badge of service. Caring about the social issues is a necessary part of teaching in low-income schools, but far from sufficient.
Can’t I Link Civil Rights to the Classroom?
The most persuasive and elegant argument for staying in having conversations about this decision is the model of a culturally responsive pedagogy, one that first builds a rapport with students on the basis of their personal experience with struggle and uses their sense of deficiency as an asset. Students through this kind of pedagogy feel power and purpose where before they only felt dismantled by an unequal education system. I’ll admit that using the weaknesses of the system as a source of strength and design in the classroom had its appeal for my passion for civil rights.
I have met several Corps Members who have made this approach to teaching work, and they take a lot of fulfillment from their work through the struggle. They have a deep understanding of the importance of racial identity, multi-ethnic focus in instruction and celebration of diverse backgrounds. They awaken in students the sense of injustice and indignation that enough citizens need to have to start movements and elect leaders who will improve education, healthcare, income inequality, infrastructure, housing and more. Yet for every strike for culturally responsive pedagogy which awakens students, there are five instances of inaction which keep students asleep. If I am not more than neutral in being culturally responsive, then I am an agent of an oppressive system. This principle resembles the quote by Dr. King about “passively accepting evil” being worse than participating in it.
When I weighed the costs of creating a classroom based around cultural responsiveness and changing students’ perspectives on society, I realized changing my practice has a large threshold effect. In other words, a lot has to be done in terms of core teaching competencies to trigger the effects of a culturally responsive classroom. School must always be a place of learning first: pedagogically sound and operationally efficient. If I do not wish for the responsibilities from these two objectives, then I am permitting oppression to continue no matter how much I am an antiracist. Cultural responsiveness is not sufficient for the classroom; a heart for the work of a teacher with a particular population of students must necessarily happen inside the classroom.
Shouldn’t I Finish My Commitment?
After working through the previous two motivations for leaving Teach For America, the inevitable questions and suspicion come up: how can you quit something you committed to do for two years? I have always been a commitment-driven person, and until early May was driven to Teach For America without question. Once I started unraveling these thoughts, I realized a subtle but important difference between a commitment to TFA and a commitment to professional aptitudes.
A commitment to Teach For America is entirely artificial. Teach For America is not an employer; in fact they are a service for which Corps Members pay to use. School districts also pay to use Teach For America. A commitment to TFA is a commitment to receive a service for as long as you pay to receive it. Corps Members are employees of their school district first, and school district contracts operate on a yearly basis. If withdrawing from a school district and not renewing a contract is my choice, then it is no more quitting than leaving after any other number of years of service in a school.
With that logistical note aside, the more important question of commitment is: to whom or what is your commitment? Is my commitment to the ideological promise of Teach For America? Is my commitment to the particular view of education reform which Teach For America espouses? Or is my commitment to determining what kind of professional work leverages my passions, aptitudes and desires? The difference lies between what we SHOULD do to please others and what we MUST do to reconcile our hearts. Teach For America pitched to me what I should believe about myself. But what I MUST believe is where I am called to be “in my element.”
Don’t Build Towers; Follow Roads
Milennials feel called to make a difference, to “give back” and to reject the traditional boundaries of political parties or interests to be a part of serving communities. I believe there are community engagement models which fit everyone’s desire to serve. But the commitment to serve must be ethical, transparent and aligned with the hearts of the people entering service. None of us should be sold the model of creating a “legacy” for ourselves where we work right out of college. That will go straight to our heads. As much as I talk about white privilege, the privileged ability to “leave a legacy” in TFA went straight to my head and beliefs this year.
The better path is not to build a towering legacy but obey your unique and imperfect path. If you are called to teach, teach. If Teach For America is the best method to achieve your dream of teaching, then join Teach For America. If you are called to work in social justice but don’t want to teach, then don’t join (or leave) Teach For America. Follow the road that your unique footprint on this earth will mark deeply. My road was in front of me, but I followed the path I was told I should follow to work for justice rather than the only one I must follow.
