WASHINGTON — Last year, Cary Wright graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English. This month, the Teach For America corps member started his second year as a fifth grade teacher.
But Wright doesn’t teach English; he teaches math.
Teach For America corps member Matthew Kennedy says the challenges of being a new teacher would be the same regardless of what subject he taught. (Emmarie Huetteman/MNS)
Founded in 1990, Teach For America selects, trains and places recent college graduates as teachers in low-income communities. In an education system struggling to keep pace, the non-profit strives to meet demand, placing its corps members where they’re needed when they’re needed — which means that an English major sometimes ends up teaching math.
It’s a program at the mercy of the system it wants to fix.
What’s your specialty?
Wright described TFA as a “placement agency,” filling the voids identified by public school districts with recruits from among the nation’s top college graduates. Corps members offer preferences about the subject matter, grade level and location of their assignments, but ultimately it’s up to TFA and the schools to decide their placement.
Because teaching positions can open up at any time and in any subject, placement can be unpredictable.
“Some people don’t even find out until the day before school where they’re going to be and what they’re going to be teaching,” Wright said. “But that’s more with the school than Teach For America.”
“We work with districts to figure out what their needs are and how many teachers they need in what subject areas, and then we work to place corps members accordingly,” said Bree Arsenault, TFA’s managing director of national corporate partnerships.
What is predictable is the demand for teachers in certain subjects. In 2004, TFA started a math and science initiative in partnership with a handful of organizations including the Amgen Foundation, hoping to intensify the recruitment and training of math and science teachers.
But this hasn’t eliminated instances of teachers placed outside their specialties. TFA does not keep track of how many corps members teach subjects in which they didn’t major in college, said Carrie James, the program’s national communications director.
James said TFA’s teachers do meet state qualifications.
“I think it’s important to recognize that states are determining what qualifies a teacher for a subject, and they’re setting the standards, and our corps members are meeting them,” she said.
Standards for teacher certification vary by state. In Connecticut, for instance, teachers must have completed a specified amount of coursework in a subject to teach it.
Kim Peck, a TFA alum who is an administrator in a Connecticut charter school, said she was disappointed to learn she did not meet the state’s requirements to teach art. Despite earning a minor in art and devoting free time to ceramics, Peck did not have enough coursework to be certified.
Peck said it’s possible an individual could know enough to teach a subject without having a degree in it.
“Most people who have had a liberal arts education could probably functionally teach elementary-level math because until you get up to pre-algebra, there really isn’t that much there,” she said.
Richelle Patterson, a senior policy analyst at the National Education Association, said the teachers’ union does not support placing teachers outside of their specialties, a problem Patterson said was supposed to have been solved by the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” policy.
“But we recognize that not every school is doing what they should be doing,” Patterson said.
Summer school — for teachers
Before beginning their two-year commitment, Teach For America corps members complete a five-week training program. They learn from experienced teachers, peers and their own experiences at the head of a classroom.
Patterson said summer school is not a good place to train teachers because class sizes are smaller and the duration is shorter.
“Summer school is not a realistic setting to prepare a teacher in,” she said.
Matthew Kennedy, who has a bachelor’s degree in law, letters and society, was originally placed as a chemistry teacher, a subject in which he had no experience. When he failed the certification test, TFA offered him a position in special education at a high school in Washington.
Kennedy, who is pursuing a master’s degree in special education while he completes his teaching commitment, said he was concerned at first that TFA didn’t offer specialized training for special education teachers. But he said the summer isn’t a good time to offer those teachers useful experience anyway.
“Our public schools aren’t in a position where there’s that great of stuff going on in terms of summer school for students with special needs in a classroom in the kind of setting you’re going to be in in the fall,” he said.
Kennedy said the summer training is intended to teach skills like classroom management, not content. Strong teaching skills are more important than background in a particular subject, he said.
“If you can teach effectively, you can learn the content,” Kennedy said. “You can figure out how to deliver that content if you’re an excellent teacher.”
Wright said the training program has optional content-specific sessions. Unaware he would be teaching fifth grade math, he focused on literacy, thinking he would be teaching kids in kindergarten through third grade.
“Had I known where I’d be placed ahead of time, then I’d be going to those math sessions over the summer,” Wright said.
There’s a pervading sense among corps members that TFA does the best it can within the parameters of a flawed system.
“I think Teach For America does their best to place everyone as soon as they can, but the way that the school systems work here… it’s just impossible for them,” Wright said.
Peck said like it or not, TFA is raising questions about the education system that need to be answered.
“If it gets down to people improving education in an effort to get rid of [Teach For America], honestly, that’s the whole point anyway,” she said. “The point of Teach For America isn’t how many young people can we get into the school system; it’s how many children can get a high quality of education.”
For more information on the history of Teach For America, click on the interactive timeline below.