Policy: Teach For America

There was a time when underfunded urban school districts needed teachers.  Partly as a response to this need, Teach For America (TFA) was established by Wendy Kopp in 1989 to fill those vacancies.  By selecting high-performing college graduates and giving them 5 weeks of training, many of these openings were filled with America’s best and brightest.

A poorly performing economy and tax cuts have put thousands of fully trained teachers out of work.  Our country is awash in unemployed teachers: mostly recent college graduates.  One might think TFA would wither away when its teachers are competing with fully trained, credentialed teachers.  Not so.

TFA has become the poster-child of the current high-stakes testing strategy towards improving education.  In the past 18 months, TFA has received over $200 million dollars from the US Department of Education, the ultra-conservative Walton Family Foundation and several other sources.  When a district hires a graduate of the 5-week training program, the district pays the TFA teacher a starting salary, and TFA gets $5,000.  TFA is not withering.

TFA claims that its teachers are superior to traditionally trained teachers. However, the nation’s top educational researchers challenge these claims.  All this has created a loud din that has drowned out the real needs of the country’s poorest students: to be elevated from poverty.

If the topic of conversation is to be which system, TFA or college credential programs, produces the best teachers, perhaps we should look abroad.  In countries where students are out-performing US children, the teaching profession is an honored and respected career choice.  Teachers typically have masters degrees and rarely leave the profession.  Here, 50% of teachers leave the profession within the first 5 years.

Maybe we should ask ourselves if TFA improves the teaching profession and brings more honor to teachers, or if it does the opposite?

Teacher Tech: 5 Must-Do Activities for the First Week of School

1.            Relationships.

The relationships you build on the first week will make it much easier to work through behavior and academic problems later on.  It’s especially critical to  start out well with your most difficult students whether it’s the shy girl who can’t write to the behaviorally-challenged undiagnosed ADHD boy.

One of the most effective methods to build relationships include doing an interest survey.  (See Secret Scroll below) Once you know that your main behavior problem likes his hamster and Nike shoes, you can bring that up with him every day as a neutral and safe topic.  If you know about an especially difficult student, call home on the first day to say something nice about that student and ask for suggestions to make the year go well.  This will make future calls easier. 

Establish a habit of having something for your students to do when they first enter the class, so you can greet them by name each day.

2.             Routines

It turns out that teaching your students how to do everything from sharpening their pencil, to lining up for lunch, to turning in a paper to the correct place, will save hours and hours of instructional time though the school year.  Sometimes it’s helpful to ask a student or students to demonstrate a new routine before asking the class to do it.  Spend time to point out models and praise students who follow the routine.  If you realize a routine is not quite right, change the name of it and re-teach it.  For example, “Now it’s the second week of school, and this is when we turn in our papers the Mountain Way.   We put our papers in the top basket.”

3.            Assessment

Most rookies do not realize that they are assessing their students every day.  It’s pretty easy to find out who gets work done, who loses things and who can pay attention to stories.  Use a roll sheet to jot down notes and observations.  This will come in handy during parent conferences and report-card time.

You don’t need to do technical, published assessment to get a general idea of how your students perform.  During Sustained Silent Reading (SSR), you can ask each student to read to you for 2 minutes from a student-selected text.  This should give you enough information to know what your students are capable of as a class to know where to go next.  Be sure to take notes about these meetings.

4.            Attention
You can teach your students not to pay attention.  This is especially true of high ability and ELL students.   If you don’t grab the attention of your highest ability students right away, they will learn to tune you out since they will unconsciously decide they don’t need you.  I have two tried-and-true ways to do this.

            a.            Don’t tell your students anything they already know.  For example, instead of saying something like, “In our class we have three ways of using math to decide what’s average.”  Instead say, “ Who can tell me a way to use math to decide what’s average.”

            b.            For Storytime, pick a book that is age-appropriate for your students, but on the upper end of readability.  Have extra copies of the book available for students to read along or read ahead.  Also, have other books by that same author or on the same topic for students to read during their SSR time.


Why mention ELL in the same breath as your gifted?  They share the same problem: establishing a habit of not paying attention.  Often these ELL students are quiet and compliant so they don’t demand extra attention, but it’s vital to get them engaged right off. 

The best way to do this is to pair them with a buddy who is constantly checking for understanding.  Change these buddies frequently to reduce impact on the rest of your class.

5.            Last Day of School Preparation

During the first week, you can set up a powerful and effective last day of school.  Decide what activities on that last day would help your students feel proud of their progress and feel confident for the next year.  One thing I like to do is the Secret Scroll.  This is actually an interest inventory of what the student likes and dislikes.  You can include questions on this about your students’ concerns and hopes for the year.  Some students do not know what their favorite color is, so I tell them it’s ok to leave some of the questions blank.

I tell the class it’s secret because it’s not shared with other students.  Do not imply that you won’t share the information with parents or law enforcement, because you might become a liar if students reveal abuse.

If you can start out the year well, it will give you much more room to make mistakes and still be an effective teacher.