Dear Danny

“Only 1 in 10 low income students will graduate from college. You can change this.”

So say the powerful signs planted in gardens across Penn’s campus. Teach for America (TFA) is recruiting corps members to lead the fight against poor education in many American communities. And their efforts are paying off. In this first round of applications, 47 Penn students applied.

Teach for America is pretty simple: get graduates of elite colleges and universities into under-funded urban and rural classrooms. While the corps members inspire and motivate their students, their subject knowledge will help them to teach, and their enthusiasm will propel their classroom forward.

It’s a great idea, with plenty of critics. While teachers from traditional backgrounds spend a year or more doing specific training, TFA graduates have one summer to prepare before entering the country’s most difficult classrooms. The diversity, the bureaucracy, and the attitudes may be too much for fresh, idealistic Ivy Leaguers to handle.

Even 2006 College alum Stefanie Williams told me in an e-mail interview that at first she felt like she had no idea what she was doing in her Miami classroom. But TFA “really supported me as a teacher, constantly having me reevaluate my methods in order to best help my students succeed.”

Nancy Lee Bergey is the coordinator for Penn’s undergraduate Urban Education minor, which can lead to teaching certification. “The first year of teaching,” she told me, “no matter what your background, is really hard…being fresh is important.”

And Matt Reamy, recruitment director for TFA Philadelphia, agreed. “Teaching is an art that you learn by doing,” he said. “We train more people to teach in low-income areas than anyone else. We’re very skill and tool-based, very practical. I think that is an important distinction.”

And when Reamy taught in north Philadelphia, he found the diversity of his fellow corps members to be an outstanding resource. “We are speaking with the leaders of the minority community [at Penn],” he said. “[Many] have become invested.”

Even so, he doesn’t push his applicants to take education courses while still at Penn. “Every time I see the TFA lawn signs,” said Nancy Lee, “I want to put one right behind it that says, ‘Take an education class while you’re still here!’”

Any TFA applicant should seriously consider the effect an education class or two would have on their students. TFA is unique and revolutionary - its effects shouldn’t be hindered by too harsh a learning curve.

Dear Danny appears every Monday and Wednesday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 12:55 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.