Teach For America End of the Year Survey
Beneath is an excerpt from my end of the year feedback survey with Teach For America. Peace out TFA. For two years, you were the abusive spouse that told me I was never good enough, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how unrealistic the expectations, and no matter how many hours of work, love, and devotion I poured into you. You never listened to me and you harvested my data like milking a shackled cow, even though you will never know the faces or futures of the students who generated that data. When things went wrong, you blamed me, and when things went right, you blamed me for being delusional of my accomplishments.
Now it’s time for a greater, better, and more honest way to live my life.
Looking back at the year, what did I do that had the greatest impact on your students? Why?
I loved them. I taught with love. I was forgiving, encouraging, and I tried my best to make them into people that would survive.
Consider TFA more broadly or the work with your MTLD. What should be kept the same this upcoming year? Why?
What should be changed? Why?
The MTLD’s job description needs to be more clearly defined. If I had known that the MTLDs were supposed to inspire me instead of teaching me concrete strategies to teach, I would have looked elsewhere in the beginning for teaching strategies.
There needs to be honest discussions about real issues that happen in the classroom. What do you do when a parent yells at you? What do you do when a child attacks you, or cusses you out? How do you reclaim your position as leader in the classroom after that? There also needs to be more transparency on the fact that some of us ended up in much better schools than others, and those who ended up in better schools should not be glorified because they were able to accomplish more (i.e. hearing that a CM was voted teacher of the month/year does not make me feel encouraged to try harder, it makes me feel bitter that my principle threatened to fire me in the fax room if I didn’t cheat my standardized tests). We all have separate experiences, yet TFA gives us homogenous strategies.
There needs to be consistency in expectations of rigor for math especially. Unit plans and lesson plans should be handed out in the beginning. Teachers are in no condition to learn and develop these things for themselves when they begin teaching. Myself and multiple other CMs simultaneously and separately confided in one another that we had fantasized about getting hit by cars on the way to school, or that we were critically injured so that we wouldn’t have to go to work. Not because we didn’t care about closing the achievement gap, but that we cared so deeply and that we were unwilling to quit, but we didn’t feel adequately supported to accomplish what we wanted to.
The MTLD to CM ratio needs to be much smaller.
More instances should be provided for CMs to get to know each other, without having dinner discussions about closing the achievement gap. This would build camaraderie in a very isolating and horrifying experience, increasing retention rates and allowing CMs to network with one another. I’m leaving TFA with the understanding that TFA does not value the mental well-being of its CMs.
Surveys should be ANONYMOUS. Many CMs that I spoke to admitted to lying on feedback because they didn’t want to be targeted as speaking out against TFA. They didn’t want this to impact their future professional opportunities.
Conversations with TFA staff and CMs should not feel so scripted. Many times, I felt that when I was asked a question, the person asking it didn’t want to hear what I had to say, but rather had an objective for what they wanted me to vocalize. Eventually, I ceased my interactions, because I believed that my voice was not valued.
More opportunities should be given to CMs to figure out what to do next besides working with policy and teaching at charter schools. There needs to be more options available.
