Secrets of the City

I hear he will be assigned to serve on a government death panel for babies with developmental disabilities.

Not Little Trig!

I find it interesting that she fears young people being put into mandatory service. If the draft came up again, I doubt she would oppose it.

Except that she will oppose every single thing Obama presents, but that is beside the point.

And good for that kid. We need more people in service to this country. A year of service should be a requirement. It would give HS grads a chance to try out a vocation of some sort before committing in college/tech school/life.

The only politico I know of who has been talking about a draft is Rep. Charlie Rangal, who is a liberal Democrat. His motivation seemed to be that there wasn’t enough kids from middle or upper middle class signing up, so force might be needed.

I think Bachmann would oppose a draft. I think conservatives is against a draft because they want a volunteer military, not someone who doesn’t want to be there.

But they do support reeducation camps for people who don’t want to be there.

The main problem I have with TFA is that after two years are up, most of them leave. So they’ve come in, hopefully made a difference, and then instead of sticking with it, most go to business school or something else more “meaningful”.

Bachmann is scared of it because it’s mostly for and done by non-white folks.

@ironic: TFA isn’t meant to be an occupation. It is meant to be like the Peace Corps, Job Corps, etc.

TFA being a mandatory service? Christ, it’s harder to get into that program than Harvard, practically.

Bachmann is batshit crazy, of course, but I have my own set of issues surrounding TFA.

1) Replacing unfilled or cut FTEs with college-aged kids with no real classroom training.

2) Using urban or poor or otherwise at-risk populations of students to better one’s resume seems patronizing, shallow, and better yet, upholding the status quo of the “help” people in these kinds of need really, actually benefit from.

3) Yep, the two-year thing. If for some reason things DO go well for this young Ivy League-er in the school he/she has been assigned, you can be relatively sure that when the gig is up, it’s up. Off to write policy and whatnot.

I do realize that this is a truly debatable subject. Perhaps at the core TFA has everyone’s best interests at heart, but to me, why not hire some of the multitudes of young, passionate, and fully-educated teachers with some experience under their belts who happened to have gotten pink-slipped last year (and the year before that, and the year before that)?

Full disclosure–I’m a tenured teacher. So, you know, biased and stuff.

I think the demand for teachers is way more than the supply, Yo, Teach.

why not hire some of the multitudes of young, passionate, and fully-educated teachers with some experience under their belts who happened to have gotten pink-slipped last year (and the year before that, and the year before that)?

TFA, MTC and similar programs pay for the education of their students at the same time. How do teachers up becoming “young, passionate, and fully-educated teachers with some experience under their belts” in the first place.

I know several people who’ve gone through TFA and other similar programs who’ve gone on to do quite well teaching and remained working with inner city students. If teachers suck that much, they tend to get fired.

Given that pesky thing called, I dunno, reality. I have no problem with TFA. Although, I was talking with a TFA administrator and I said instead of targeting young, idealistic kids who want to give poor kids hugs, they should go after the students who are likely to try to join the military and go through OCS. In inner-city schools where stuff gets crazy, THOSE types of students (who obviously have a passion for teaching) are the one’s I’d rather have. More realistic. In theory.

I agree with some of what you say, Bixby, especially with TFA and other programs working into a career in teaching. Those numbers are small, unfortunately. But then, around 75% of all teachers quit the field within the first five years. Ouch.

Students who want to be teachers are required to spend some time volunteering in the places they are from. In the program I went to, a requirement for merely applying was a minimum of 100 hours of classroom experience. How do you make that happen? You are proactive. You make calls, make personal visits to schools, etc. I am a big believer in this approach, because if you don’t have a wherewithal to promote yourself, you certainly won’t make it in a classroom.

The reality is that there are way more teachers (especially young ones) without teaching positions than you may think. Teaching jobs are highly competitive, even in math and science (really!). What happens is that many of those young teachers give up after applying for jobs for a few years. They move on and do something else. I’m not saying it’s right–it certainly isn’t. But it is real.

So, is it better to have a temporary relatively unsure volunteer for two years than to pay for a more confident and able licensed teacher who really wants tenure? Well, I suppose it comes down to what the district can afford. And nobody is adding FTEs these days.

Considering that people are teaching physics to high schoolers with general science degrees, I’d say that simply having multiple unqualified applicants isn’t a very optimistic definition of “competitive”.

Yes, because people who graduated from college have two years to dick around as a volunteer before starting their careers. I’m not particularly sure I’m understanding your preference. Or how it is at all rooted in reality.

I take issue with the two year thing solely because if you talk to any teacher about their first year, they will tell you it sucked. Even the lady who is head of DC schools said this about her first year with TFA. Having one iffy year out of an entire career isn’t such a big deal, because you have to start somewhere, but with TFA that’s half of their experience.

Jeff–

Many teachers don’t have specific degrees in their field, rather, they have a degree in education with a specialization in, say, social studies. I have a degree in my field and have a post-graduate degree in education. I’m not sure what you mean by a “general science” degree–do you mean a BS? Even beyond that, teachers in MN (at least in public schools) must have a teaching license which necessitates quite a few classes and credits itself. I’m not sure of the differences with private and charter schools.

Unfortunately, the more educated and experienced a teacher is, they more they cost. We joke around (darkly) that once you have taught five years and/or have a master’s degree, you better like where you teach because it’s not too likely you’d be hired anywhere else.

Bixby, most people who want to go into teaching complete their volunteer hours either during their undergrad (if they know that early what they want to do), or finagle their work schedules in order to get into the school. I have had a number of full-time workers take vacation and/or work longer hours on certain days in order to make sure they get classroom time.

I think lots of young people “dick around” for a while before settling into a career, so I’m not sure I understand your point, Bixby.

There exists a B.A. that is literally “general science”, that is, a tiny bit a few different science fields, specifically aimed at high school science teachers. In more humanities-oriented fields, I think a teaching degree with a specialization is fine. But there’s a few “hard science” fields I’d like to see taught to high school students by people with an actual major in that field. The material is simply too specialized to adequately teach it after haven taken one or two college-level classes. Then again, I should be the last one to complain, since I meet this qualification and have no interest in teaching.

I’m with teach, however. One of my friends lost her job because her position was cut (they cut EVERY non-tenured teacher in her district), but they replaced her not with a tenured teacher, but with TFA.

And I get that we need to help a specific population with TFA, but the issue that no one ever talks about is how the TFA members become part of the community and then are gone. Thus the departments, the students, and the admins have to start all over in some ways.

Remember, TFA is not a general teacher position. It’s solely based on helping kids to pass the NCLB tests. Sure, they may have a normal position, but the idea is to get the kids ready. That’s it. That’s why they don’t have to pass the tests that real teachers do.

As an example of where TFA teachers go, go watch the HBO documentary “Hard Times at Douglass High.” It’s about a school in Baltimore.