Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/396235
P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y S C O T T B U S C H M A N TFA's five-week training program training was extremely stressful. "I averaged five hours of sleep a night," says Clinton Loo, here helping Perla Munguia. I quickly realized I was over my head. But I also recog- nized that I wanted to make teaching my life." TFA's five-week training program is open to applicants who are college graduates with a GPA of at least 2.5. Typ- ically, most do not have an education background. After five weeks, "graduates" have a two-year commitment to teach in low-income urban schools where they are placed. "The training was good," says Clinton Loo, a TFA math teacher at San Jose High School. "It was extremely stress- ful. I averaged five hours of sleep a night in the dorms." His training at Loyola Marymount University in 2010 involved one hour per day of actual teaching to summer school youths, and the rest of the day was spent collabo- rating with instructors and developing curriculum. Loo majored in information systems at Carnegie Mellon University. While working as a technology consultant in Washington, D.C., he became involved in a tutoring pro- gram and got bitten by the teaching bug. "I thought, 'Why not teach?' It had never occurred to me before then," says Loo, an executive board member of the San Jose Teachers Association (SJTA). Loo, who now has a master's in education, is proud of the "positive impact" he has had during his four years at San Jose High School. While he's not sure he'll teach forever, he's doubled the two-year TFA commit- ment he made. "If I had left after my second year, I believe that I could have a positive impact," says Loo. "No TFA teachers are exactly the same, but those I have encountered are some of the most hardworking, energetic and impactful teachers you will meet." Leah Brosio, a teacher at Live Oak Charter School in Petaluma, found TFA training inadequate in 1993. After five weeks of training, Bro- sio found herself "shell-shocked" in an inner-city classroom with 32 students. She called her mother in tears every night. She had no idea how to deal with second-graders who brought Hustler magazine to school and whose grandparents arrived wearing shirts that said, "If you don't like my attitude, call 1-800-EAT-****." Once she asked a student to spit out her gum and found the student was chewing on a condom. Brosio, then 22, was feel- ing "somewhere between brave and stupid." She applied for an emergency permit and took classes to earn her teaching credential, taking advantage of all professional development opportunities. "Overall, TFA was an overwhelming, frightening experience," says Brosio, Live Oak Teachers Association. "The peo- ple running the organization didn't support us. Most of them were our age. But I became a teacher anyway through grit and determination and a great deal of help from my mom, a veteran teacher." Looking back, she finds the basic premise of TFA to be "insulting and a slap in the face" to veteran teachers: that inexperienced novices can "fix" what's wrong in education. TFA alum Ben Spielberg also takes issue with the prem- ise that newbies can fix what others have ruined. "TFA should explicitly acknowledge that achieve- ment gaps are caused by poverty, not bad schools and teachers," says Spielberg, a former SJTA executive board member and math coach at two campuses. With complaints that five weeks of boot camp isn't enough, TFA recently launched a pilot program to provide a year of training to a subset of teachers in the 2015 cohort that focuses on learning theory, ped- agogy and cultural competency, along with increased classroom experience. Another pilot program will support teachers who have made it beyond the two- year TFA commitment. The California Department of Education created an intern certification program designed specifically for those entering teaching through a nontraditional path, including TFA members. They work toward certification through one of TFA's "credentialing partners," which include Loyola Marymount University and a UCLA extension program. Once enrolled, TFA members receive a two-year non-renewable intern teaching The biggest shame about the TFA debate is that people who care about kids are arguing with each other about teacher and school quality instead of working together to address the root causes of inequity in society. Ben Spielberg 19 V O L U M E 1 9 I S S U E 3