Why I Stopped Writing Recommendation Letters for Teach for America | Hacker News Reader

Why I Stopped Writing Recommendation Letters for Teach for America

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17 pointsdanso8 comments

My wife and I joined the New York City Teaching Fellows—a NYC-based spinoff of TFA—in 2006 at the tender age of 22. I taught in the New York City public school system for seven years and earned my masters in special education and a school building leader license along the way. Much of the article jives with my experience.

Not only is there little to no support for teachers, but it sometimes feels like because there are a few bad teachers floating around in the system, that everyone needs to be punished and inconvenienced. I like job security as much as the next person, but I was a huge advocate for getting rid of tenure as a result.

I'm still incredibly passionate about education, but suspect that being a teacher is the best way to create change. Even in my short tenure, the amount of bureaucracy had increased exponentially. When asked for advice on becoming a teacher by a college student recently, I recommended against it—which broke my own heart, because I believe that it's an incredibly important profession—just not one I would give my twenties to again knowing what I know now.

Edited to add a citation.

At many universities (certainly my undergrad) the mean and median students in the Education department are weaker than students in other departments. Taking the weakest to bring out the best in our students seems very odd. There is some research that suggests teacher certification can actually be counterproductive. [1] If we were in the situation of Finland (teachers are in the top 10% of their class) then we would not need this type of intervention.

An increasing amount of research shows that TFA recruits perform at best no better, and often worse, than their trained and certified counterparts. I do not believe this to be conclusive. TFA teachers are being tossed into failing schools and systems and meeting or exceeding their supposedly more well trained peers.

Would a biology professor write a recommendation to medical school for an English major who’s never taken any core science courses? That would be strange. It would be even stranger if the professor knew the English major was just going into medicine for a few years, as a way to boost his resume, before ultimately going on to a career in public relations.

This is the one true, and serious complaint. TFA has turned into a place for smart high achievers to spend two years before going to grad school. Ideally many stay involved in education, but not all of them. But... It still does more for society than sending another couple percent of our best and brightest into banking and consulting.

[1] http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/dobbie_fryer_re... Bottom of page 2, top of page 3.

>> At many universities (certainly my undergrad) the mean and median students in the Education department are weaker than students in other departments. Taking the weakest to bring out the best in our students seems very odd. There is some research that suggests teacher certification can actually be counterproductive. [1] If we were in the situation of Finland (teachers are in the top 10% of their class) then we would not need this type of intervention.

To the degree to which this is accurate,this flips the cause and effect. Finland, as a society, invests in its teachers and in teaching as a profession. In the US teaching isn't a terrifically paid job and isn't respected as a profession. If we invested more in teachers and teaching then we'd see those ratios start to change, maybe generationally. As it stands, though, teachers tend to get the brunt of the blame for "failing" schools - by both the right and the left politically now.

My understanding of Finland isn't that teachers are paid more, it's that they are highly respected. (Similar to Singapore) They are in a positive cycle: Teachers are respected -> The elite want to become teachers -> Teachers are respectable.

We are in the converse of that: Teachers are not respected -> The bottom want to become teachers -> Teachers are not respectable.

I'm not putting all of the blame on teachers. Some part of the problem is individual teachers. Some is the stupidity of their unions. Some is poor administration. Some is society for not demanding more out of everyone involved in education.

"For humanities majors, TFA is a clear path to a job that both pays a living wage and provides a stepping stone to leadership positions in a cause of national importance."

Universities have no incentive to steer students away from their areas of interest, but if it's this hard for a humanities major to earn a living wage, we're producing too many of them. Humanities departments have a vested interest in maintaining their output but I can't help but think that they're hurting themselves in the long run.

Humanities are an important part of a well-rounded student, and there are lots of instances where a humanities minor with a technical or business related major is a powerful combination. I'd hate to see the humanities die, but can they keep living like this? There should be more outrage among their graduates ... when that happens (and I've seen a few articles), things will get much harder for them.

As an aside, making 0xx and 1xx level introductory classes in the humanities, which are required as part of the GenEds or BDRs (Basic Degree Requirements) too hard is in many cases teaching students in other disciplines to hate you ... you should draw those students into your minors programs.

As someone who took enough history classes to ALMOST get to major reqs while an undergrad, I agree with you about class difficulty. There was actually very little difference in the difficulty of a 100 and a 400 class. The difference was in depth. Your 100 would be a European History class while your 400 would be about Postwar Germany. I loved history so I was biased toward enjoyment but I can see how those who had little background in history having real difficulty.

There's another side to that--the cool thing about history as a major was that the dept. structure was flatter. It was basically about doing interesting research. You could take 600 level classes with your TAs if you thought you could hang with them in reading. Definitely not the case in the more skill based fields.

Research, of course, is a skill, which is probably what they ought to be teaching more of in 100 level classes. Most kids when they get to college have not been asked to say, write a paper only from primary sources.

In my observation, it is very hard for a humanities major at a non-elite university to get a good job outside of sales. You can get away with majoring in history at Princeton, but don't expect a good job with the same degree from Fordham.

In terms of usefulness, I do find they help a lot in combination with practical degrees. Philosophy on it's own - not so useful. Philosophy with Computer Science - now you have someone who understand logic and linguistic processing. English on it's own - useless. English and Accounting - now you have someone can explain complex jargon-riddled Accounting statements in plain English.

I was taking education classes late in college considering what's known as an alternative certification, which is actually quite similar in structure for TfA, the difference being of course is that the teachers are TRAINED IN EDUCATION.

I had a late class and overlapping the end was a TfA class next door for people who were currently teaching. We did some joint work occasionally and I could almost always at least hear what was going on in their sessions. It was far more like going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting than a class. Students basically sat and traded horrible stories every day for at least half the class or more. There was very little instruction in proper discipline. I'd say 25% were not visibly overwhelmed by their teaching jobs and almost all of them were involved with education or they were psych majors who had been heavily involved in schools.

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