My Experience with Teach for America
It’s that time of year again and people are reaching out for advice
Since leaving Teach for America prematurely in 2015 a significant amount of friends have reached out and asked me why I quit. Some were active teachers in my cohort secretly weighing their options, others were seniors considering applying, and now it’s friends who have been accepted and need to formally accept or decline their offers. As a result, it became clear that this was something worth formally writing out rather than copy and pasting some version of this in Facebook messenger. As someone who has gone through their recruiting process, I understand how conflicting all of the google search results can be. I can’t promise this will be the advice anyone is looking for but I would consider it a very open and honest opinion of the program. I merely want to share my experience as someone who was technically a great fit for the program, but left very early on, so that it can help others make a more informed decision about their future (and so I can just link people to this explanation the next time they ask).
Who I Am
Before I get into why I quit, I think it’s important to explain where I come from so my personality and perspective make sense to those reading. Again, as someone who went through the recruitment process and did the same google searches as everyone else, I was always skeptical of the experiences I read about because many were written by people coming from, for lack of a better term, “privileged” backgrounds . I did not.
Both of my parents are from Mexico and neither of them had any formal education beyond high school so I am considered a first-generation college graduate. I grew up going to Title I schools throughout my k-12 public education, this means that my schools had more than 40% of their student body come from low-income families (mine included). As a high school student I got really good grades and was accepted to a private university, the University of Southern California, on what was essentially a full ride through a combination of scholarships, Cal Grants, Pell Grants, and some minor loans. As an undergraduate student there I was given opportunities that I could never have dreamt of growing up. I was able to travel the world during my 4 years and live in 3 different cities on 3 different continents. It profoundly changed my outlook on life. Eventually, I graduated from USC with a degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering but having interned at the epitome of a corporate job the summer before I didn’t want to pursue that path. Instead, I chose to apply to Teach for America in Los Angeles with Physics as my top preference (a very rare choice apparently, I was the only one in my cohort teaching Physics).
Given my background, I thought I was a great fit for Teach for America. I didn’t necessarily want to be a teacher but I thought my story of “success” would help motivate students to understand that their options in life weren’t limited because they were poor or disadvantaged. In my mind it was simple, if I could do it so could they. Ironically, I think it was particularly because of everything I had gone through that I was pushed to resign so abruptly.
Why I Quit
After explaining my decision to so many people, I’ve been able to simplify my thought process down to 3 main reasons:
First off, I quit because being a teacher wasn’t my ultimate ambition. I didn’t always want to be a teacher and although I tried to tell myself otherwise during my time in Teach For America I never internalized it. I realized that I joined TFA because I thought I could help, not because I wanted to help. I had become entranced by the TFA mantra of “Making a difference”. But unfortunately, I’m not a saint. It was difficult for me to persevere through the tribulations of being a teacher in a high need school when I didn’t have my own internal motivation to keep me going. Graduating from my university as a first generation student studying engineering was easy because I genuinely wanted to stop being poor and saw education as the best way to do so. Getting through Teach for America because I thought I could “make a difference” on the other hand wasn’t nearly as strong a motivating factor. In fact, it was becoming more apparent that I was actually doing more harm than good.
Secondly, I didn’t feel like I was getting to “teach” anything or connecting to any of my students in a meaningful way. I didn’t expect to be an amazing teacher 2 months into teaching, but I felt I hadn’t made any significant progress in the time that I was there. And believe me I was looking for it. I spent the majority of my energy on “classroom management” and never felt like I was able to share my genuine interest in physics and science with my students. I felt even worse that I was failing those students who genuinely wanted to learn by devoting all my attention to the “bad” students (who I acknowledge I was also failing, I don’t blame the students for my shortcomings). Ultimately, I was failing all of my students in different ways and the longer I remained the more I felt I was hurting them and driving myself to hopelessness.
Finally, as undignified as it may sound, the final reason is that my desire to improve my own life overpowered my desire to “give back” in that moment. I worked extremely hard to go to college, graduate, and get out of poverty. After all of that work, being miserable at a Title I high school in a low income area all over again took its toll on my self esteem. The idea that I didn’t have to be dispirited because I had other options began to creep its way into my head with every difficult day. This eventually led me to consider the fact that maybe I would be better off pursuing my own ambitions and finding a way to “give back” later, once I had my own life in order and more to to actually give. In the end, although I chose myself over sacrificing to give back to the community, I gained the utmost respect for those that do.
What I Learned & the Advice I Now Give
I’m still happy with my decision to leave despite the fact that transitioning from my resignation to where I am at now was very difficult (emotionally and financially). If I had a choice would I go back and stick through it? No I wouldn’t. Not that it’s inherently a bad program but because I finally have a real understanding of what I want to accomplish and a program like Teach for America wouldn’t be the best way to do so. However, if I did have to go through it again I don’t know if I would have quit so quickly. My only regret is that I tried so hard to teach how Teach for America and my charter school wanted me to teach. Before any of their training, I held a specific idea of the kind of teacher I wanted to be, but I gave in to their “expertise” because I didn’t have the conviction to hold onto my beliefs. I believe I failed in teaching because I didn’t allow myself to be myself. As a result, I wasn’t able to connect with my students on a personal level and they were able to see right through my facade. I was a Frankenstein of “best practices” rather than a genuine person, which is the last thing any of my students needed.
My advice comes down to a couple of questions anyone considering this program should ask themselves. First, do you actually want to be a teacher? If not, there are a million other things you can do to give back to your community, some that might even be able to utilize your strengths much more effectively than teaching. Not everyone is meant to be a teacher and that’s not the worst thing in the world. Secondly, is your self-awareness and confidence high enough to live a selfless life? Teaching is a thankless job that will require you to give almost every ounce of your energy to others. Sure you’re going to have a “support system” through a program like Teach for America but ultimately you’re going to have to rely on yourself. If you’re barely beginning to build your own self-awareness, convictions, and confidence, as I was, you likely won’t have the strength to help your students and yourself at the same time and one will get prioritized over the other.
There’s a strong social pressure to do something “meaningful” right out of college and programs like Teach for America feed off this anxiety. Teach for America isn’t a bad program in it of itself but I feel there’s a strong lack of transparency on what they’re really asking their recruits to go through. The mission is noble but the execution can often fall short and many of the people recruited are not mentally or emotionally prepared for what they are about to go through. Don’t be afraid to choose yourself. In the end, I only hope this offered others a new perspective to consider and some valuable insight on what I know is an extremely complicated topic.
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