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DETROIT
From Page 4B
Academy High School, a TFA partner school
in the city that already has a graduation rate
above 90 percent, principal Danielle Jack-
son said the corps members are positively
impacting student learning.
"They've been able to do very well and
grow as young teachers," Jackson said.
In an interview on Jan. 19, Wendy Kopp,
founder and CEO of Teach for America, said
while it's not ideal to have TFA members in
mostly charter schools, TFA will work to
place its members in more traditional public
schools.
TWO YEARS
From Page SB
new job at a high school.
But not all corps members felt unprepared.
University alum Joel Berger, a current
2010 Detroit corps member, said while he felt
nervous about entering a new job, he could
not imagine better preparation.
"I feel like I was as prepared as I could have
been going into that first week," Berger said.
During her talk at the University, Kopp
further defended the criticism about corps
members' inexperience, lauding their lead-
ership against the experience of traditional
teachers.
"I really question the theory out there that
the answer to this problem is to recruit vet-
eran teachers in high income communities,"
Kopp said. "I just think there are alot of mis-
conceptions out there."
Entering the classrooms
Once in the schools, some corps members
struggled under what they felt was a lack of
support from Teach for America.
Dobbs said he felt he wasn't getting sup-
port from TFA after his first year because his
students weren't meeting the standardized
test results expected by the program.
"They focused on that test result and less
on that teacher as a human being," he said.
Dobbs said he also felt pressure under the
program's tenet of "pursue relentlessly," one
of the program's six principles of leadership,
to work around the clock for his classroom.
"I believe the word 'Orwellian' comes to
mind," Dobbs said. "I can't help but think
of reading '1984,' and all of the slogans and
group speech."
During her speech at the University, Kopp
acknowledged that corps members some-
times get lost in the bureaucracy of TFA. It's
something she said she wished she had re-
evaluated before the program expanded five
years ago.
"I think we have lots of systems and
lots of metrics and lots of goals and lots of
accountability at Teach for America and
(we've) invested a lot in that, and it took us
"I think the situation in Detroit, given the
economic constraints, budget constraints,
fiscal issues in the district, has, in the past,
prevented us from placing a lot of people in
DPS," Kopp said. "That being said, that will
change. --
"Given how Detroit is progressing, we
could be placing hundreds of people in the
highest-need schools," she added.
Brown attributes the prevalence of TFA
members in charter schools to the increas-
ing number of charter schools in the city.
"When we came in, we made a conscious
effort to really think about how we would
partner with both charters and DPS,"
Brown said. "Just because charters serve
so many of our kids, and kids keep going to
charters every year as DPS' enrollmentgoes
down."
The problem with public schools
Johnson filed a class action grievance
against the Detroit Public School District on
Sept. 28 for placing TFA members in posi-
tions that laid-off teachers were capable of
filling, according to the DFT website.
Johnson and the teachers union only have
jurisdiction over traditional public schools
and the 14 Detroit charter schools currently
authorized by DPS, so they can't contest hir-
ing practices at other charter schools in the
city.
America to come into Detroit Public Schools
is if there is a shortage of teachers in that
affected area, like math, like science, like
foreign language," Johnson said.
At all other times, Johnson said he doesn't
want to see TFA teachers in the schools.
"I do not intend to ever have Teach for
America as a stand-in within Detroit public
schools and the DFT," he added.
However, Brown contests the idea that
TFA teachers are taking jobs from school
teachers, as TFA members are the last to
go through the same interview process to
allow professional teachers priority access.
"We're not taking jobs," Brown said. "We
just set a great group of folks in front of
principals and ask them to decide."
far forward, but I think I would rebalance-
the energy that has gone around that," Kopp
said, addingthat she would have invested the
energy in "culture building" instead.
In Louisiana, Rickard was the only foreign
language teacher ina school newlytaken over
by the state. The lack of support was one of
the reasons she said she left the school and
TFA after two months.
"There was very, very little support both
from my school and from TFA in south Loui-
siana," Rickard said.
Rickard added that she was told in training
not to tell other teachers that she with TFA
because some teachers looked down on the
program for having only a two-year commit-
ment.
"One thing that they advised us pretty
early on was not to advertise the fact that we
were here with TFA," Rickard said.
University alum Brittany Turner, a 2010
Los Angeles corps member, also said she felt
that other teachers thought of her and other
corps members differently because of their
membership in TFA.
"Other teachers had a stigma against us
because we were Teach for America," Turner
said. "That definitely happened."
Berger added that the initial training he
received wasn't the extent of his own learn-
ing.
"I get ongoing support even now from
Teach for America that I consider sort of my
introduction into teaching," Berger said.
Two years to teach: beneficial
orjust a "pit stop?"
While TFA says it's committed to reshap-
ing education, some question the program's
level of commitment because each TFA corps
member is only bound to a two-year teaching
tenure.
In Detroit, Johnson said he feels the two-
year commitment doesn't help the schools, as
TFA teachers are not tied to the profession.
"They come here to just do two years,
to have something to put on their resume,"
Johnson said. "Then they go on to their real
careers. We need people who want to make
teaching a career, not a pit stop."
Kopp said in an interview after her speech
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Are you reading a good book right now?
I started the "Hunger Game" series. It is a really great
read.
What is your favorite movie?
"(500) Days of Summer." It has more of an artsy
feel to it than a lot of the other movies that I've
seen. And I am a big Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan.
What is on the top of your Michigan bucket list?
I want to be at a game and get to rush the field with
the crowd because I've never gtten to do that.
What do you plan to do once you graduate
from the University?
a week of daily stories
University students camped outside the
Michigan Union last Wednesday night to get
free tickets for President Obama's speech at
the Al Glick Field House.
C ?~t ft h cale o c - e a-I- of c P
Sundance USA came to the Michigan The-
ater for a third time, hosting a showing of
"For a Good Time, Call..." last Thursday. A
Q&A with the director followed the film.
that TFA was designed as a two-year pro-
gram so it could attract college seniors while
remaining competitive with other corpora-
tions and organizations that also ask for two-
year commitments.
"College seniors think two years is the rest
of their life," Kopp said. "And we see that if
we even move to a three-year commitment,
our applicant pool would drop in half."
She added that out of 24,000 TFA alums,
two thirds are still working in education,
either in the classroom or as administrators.
For Turner, the Los Angeles corps mem-
ber, the length of commitment was part of
the attraction.
"I thought Teach for America was a great
thing to do in between college and law
school," said Turner, who is now deciding
between attendinglaw school and continuing
to work for TFA.
Others, like Berger, say they're now seri-
ously consideringteaching professionally.
"I'm really committed to being a teacher
for more than two years," Berger said. "I real-
ly want to get good at it."
Though Dobbs has completed the Teach
for America program, he still teaches at an
elementary school in Virginia. While he had
problems with the program, he says its two-
year commitment is not a problem in the face
of larger educational issues.
"The rate of turnover is so high that part of
Teach for America's mandate is to put highly
motivated - to some extent brainwashed -
teachers in the classroom who are going to
work hard, and at the very least, be there."
Hadas Brown
WOLV-TV anchor
I want to be a reporter I would like to do, ideally,
political investigative journalism.
The Michigan men's basketball team lost
to Ohio State in Columbus on Sunday. The
Buckeyes' persistent defense stifled the
Wolverines in the 60-49 loss.