In spring 2009, I joined Teach for America's early childhood education corps in Chicago, Illinois. After participating in the rigorous summer institute, I worked in an early childhood education center for six weeks as an assistant teacher before opting to resign from the corps and enroll in a traditional teacher education program.
Two years later, I have my master's degree in teaching, a certificate in elementary education, and a wonderful job teaching 2nd grade in a Chicago public school. Choosing to leave Teach for America when I did was a decision I made with much trepidation. Would I be missing out on an opportunity to be part of a larger movement for change? Would I be able to find a job in such a tight market without the assistance of Teach for America's placement team? Would my teacher education program be as rigorous as the summer institute? And, perhaps most important, as someone who hoped to stay in the classroom as a career teacher, was I making the better decision?
Alternative or Traditional?
Some time has passed since that crossroads, and I've been able to reflect on the contributions that each preparation experience made to the teacher I am today. Was one program more valuable than the other? Did one do a better job preparing me to teach?
What I Learned in Teach for America
Teach for America, like many alternative certification programs, offers a swift and intensive path to the classroom. During the five-week summer institute, I learned how to design units with the end in mind; align my learning activities and assessments to measureable, student-centered learning goals; and write a lesson plan that had checks for understanding built in at every turn.
My fellow corps members and I read Carol Ann Tomlinson, Anne Cunningham, Grant Wiggins, and Jay McTighe; we were exposed to the heavy hitters in education theory and asked to put those theories into practice as we planned our summer units and lessons. It was, in no uncertain terms, instructional planning boot camp, and I couldn't have wished for a better introduction to the ins and outs of the first domain of the Danielson framework for teaching<FOOTNOTE><NO>1</NO>The Framework for Teaching, created by Charlotte Danielson, identifies aspects of a teacher's responsibilities that have been proven to promote improved student learning. For more about the framework, visit http://charlottedanielson.com/theframeteach.htm.</FOOTNOTE>—planning and preparation.
However, once I was teaching, I had education classes two nights a week after working a nine-hour day, weekend professional development, and regular meetings with my supervisor. At the same time, I was expected to teach while, truth be told, I was still learning how to do it. My students were my guinea pigs, and I was exhausted. Sure, I could plan a year's worth of standards-based units over a weekend, but was I truly prepared to face the kids on Monday? I felt that I was wildly reaching in the direction of good teaching while never having time to work toward true mastery of the craft.
I decided to leave the corps for a number of reasons, the most important of which was my desire to teach elementary school. Teach for America's goals for me and my goals for myself were not well aligned; although I wanted to teach 3rd grade, I was placed with 3-year-olds. Moreover, being an older corps member, I thought I should enroll in a program that better matched my career goals as soon as possible.
What I Learned at the University
I enrolled at Chicago's National Louis University in fall 2009 and hit the ground running. When it came time to write lessons, I was ahead of the curve. When my practicum professor articulated the merits of using backward design in planning our instruction, I thought to myself, "Is there any other way?" Many of my classmates struggled with turning state learning standards and benchmarks into lesson-sized learning objectives, but for me, thanks to Teach for America's intensive summer training, these tools of the trade felt more instinctual and less like a new language to master in short order.
However, my traditional program offered one important element that was unavailable in the Teach for America model: time. Over 16 months, I had time to delve deeply into domains two, three, and four of Danielson's framework for teaching—classroom environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities. Although corps members address these domains during their two years of teaching, my Master of Arts in Teaching program gave me the chance to do so before taking the helm of a classroom full of young people. I had the time to build skills and then practice those skills with support, a truly scaffolded learning experience.
I observed teachers in at least five different classrooms, and I student taught under the watchful eye of a veteran teacher. I made strong connections in my student-teaching community (which takes time) while knowing I could look to the university for guidance and support. I had the steady hand of an expert cooperating teacher, who had her own deep roots in the school neighborhood, to show me tricks of the trade and teacher-tested techniques that I use in my classroom today. Just as our students need time to master skills in the classroom, as a preservice teacher, I needed time to absorb, make sense of, and find ways to implement my own budding ideas about teaching. The traditional program afforded me that time.
This wasn't the case in Teach for America. There, we wrote classroom management plans during the third week of training, after having worked with students for no more than 40 hours and without the benefit of having watched master teachers manage their classrooms. (We did watch four or five videos, each 10 minutes long, of particularly effective Teach for America teachers.)
In contrast, in my traditional program, when it came time to plan a classroom management system, I had already spent more than 100 hours observing master educators in several classrooms and had been part of a cohort of preservice teachers for almost a year. I had seen management systems in action, read about them in books and articles, written about them for my professors, and talked them over with my colleagues. In this second attempt at preparing a management system, I felt much less harried and much more knowledgeable.
Different Programs, Different Goals
Teach for America and other alternative certification programs are well aware that it takes time to build a strong teacher—and that most teachers hit their stride between years three and five. If there's merit in Malcolm Gladwell's argument that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at any craft, I can expect to master my craft (as much as anyone can master a craft like teaching) at around year nine.
So then why does Teach for America only require two years of teaching, and why is the training program only five weeks long? From my own experience and considering the organization's stated mission ("Teach for America is growing the movement of leaders who work to ensure that kids growing up in poverty get an excellent education"), its goal seems to be to foster leadershipoutside the classroom—that is, to provide a classroom teaching experience for young people who are likely to leave teaching and either enter other fields or become leaders in education. In contrast, my master's program had the clear goal of preparing teachers for careers in the classroom or, down the road, as teacher leaders.
After looking over the Teach for America training materials, a friend of mine referred to the program as a "mini-MBA" (master of business administration). There's truth to the remark, because the training focuses on Danielson's first domain of teaching: planning for success. The skills associated with mastering backward design and planning with goals in mind are easily transferable to other fields, like business and law—which were touted as common options for Teach for America alumni during the information session I attended.
These skills, however, cover just one portion of the work that goes into creating a classroom in which children not only pass tests and show quantifiable academic improvement, but also love to learn and grow into independence. So asking whether Teach for America adequately prepares teachers for the classroom may not be the best question to ask. The better question might be, Is the organization cultivating the kind of leaders it wants, and if so, how does this translate into educational change?
Other alternative certification programs, like National Louis University's Academy for Urban School Leadership, require a five-year commitment from their participants. Although the academy has its controversial points—like its focused work on turnaround schools in which entire staffs might be fired en masse—it gives its preservice teachers a longer view and a better chance at becoming fluent enough in the work of a teacher to stay in the field and make a difference.
And then there are traditional certification programs, like the one I completed and thoroughly enjoyed. Yes, the program took a full 16 months, and yes, at times I wanted to hit the fast-forward button. However, hindsight has shown me the virtues in taking the time to learn from experts, observe veterans at work, and then take those skills with me to my first teaching job.
I wouldn't trade what I learned during my Teach for America training for anything. At the same time, had I stayed in my alternative certification program, the fast pace, grueling demands, and the feeling that I was flying blind might have landed me where so many who participate in the program find themselves after two years: somewhere other than in the classroom.
