"I have a huge passion for civil rights and want to play a role in ending educational inequity." This was my typical TFA-approved spiel, one that I repeated on many occasions over the course of my time as a corps member. This is what I said when I interviewed for the position. It's what I said whenever, down the road, I faced some kind of monumental hurdle and considered quitting, and my leaders would inevitably ask me, "Why are you here? Why did you join Teach For America?"
The response was never entirely untrue -- I do have a huge passion for civil rights, and I do want to play a role in ending any type of social inequity -- but to say that these are the reasons I applied for Teach For America would be disingenuous, at best. The truth of the matter is that I didn't know much about Teach For America, or what it stood for, when I first applied. What I did know is that they recruited people with mere bachelor's degrees -- people without teaching licenses or certifications -- to be full-time, fully paid classroom teachers. Even though I found, down the road, that my values did align with TFA's (supposed) values, the real reason I applied was because I saw them as a bridge to a career that otherwise seemed unattainable -- an end to the steep hill of dire career and financial situations that I had begun to plummet down.
I would only understand later that this is one of the biggest criticisms people have of TFA -- that those who don't really want to be educators use their time with TFA to gain access to a professional field, or as a two-year resume booster, or as a stepping stone to careers in law or politics. All of the above is notoriously true of some TFA corps members ... I just didn't realize that I was becoming a statistic in the "using the education system" game until I was already neck-deep.
Teach For America founder Wendy Kopp probably had good intentions when she launched the program back in 1989. Her undergraduate thesis from Princeton discussed a possible revolution in education if only there could be a stream of highly intelligent, highly motivated college graduates recruited to teach. She wanted to see graduates of prestigious universities go into teaching for the sole purpose of making a real difference in the world. (Never mind what this says about educators who don't happen to fall into this "prestigious" category, or what Kopp assumed their motivations were. That would be a criticism to hit her program down the road.) She launched Teach For America as a corps similar to the Peace Corps, with young, bright-eyed college graduates recruited to make sure that, as is commonly spoken within TFA even today, "one day, all children will have access to an excellent education."
Teach For America, then, selectively chooses college graduates to teach for two years in some of America's toughest school districts. Corps members commonly teach in areas plagued with poverty, violence, and other typical barriers to quality education. The idea is that corps members will enthusiastically teach in places most other teachers either don't want to, or "won't," teach in, and provide an off-the-charts education for all children involved. This is the story, anyway ... the story I heard many, many times before taking over my own classroom in 2013.
But I digress. I knew none of these things when I applied. Again, all I knew was that this program could give me the opportunity to teach even though I had no license or certificate to do so. And, in the quagmire of low wages and long hours I'd found myself in at that point in my life, that seemed incredibly appealing.
I divorced in 2008 and spent the next three years completing first a bachelor's degree, and then a master's degree, as a single parent. My undergraduate and graduate degrees (both in literature and writing), once I'd acquired them, armed me with an arsenal of reading and writing skills, analytical debate skills, and a fair amount of academic prowess with which to face the world. I dreamed of a career in writing and academics, where I could create lives and stories on paper and make a living sharing them, or affect politics and actual legislature through philosophizing, debating, and passionate writing. I've always been a perfectionist dead set on coming out on top in my chosen field.
It didn't take long for reality to set in -- and by "reality," I mean the realization that a graduate degree in English literature and writing does jack shit for most people out in the "real" world. Some of my classmates went on to doctorate programs in the field, with the hopes of becoming professors and publishing their academic work (with the unfortunate knowledge that such positions in humanities continue to be cut every year). Others became adjunct teachers at the community college level. A small handful began the process of adulting with the same hopes of becoming a professional writer as I did. I do think, though, that all of us found ourselves mulling over the same question at one point or another: "What the hell is this degree, and why did I spend so much time and money investing in it?"
Don't get me wrong -- I've always known that my degrees in lit have served me well, not necessarily because of career prospects, but because of how they've helped me grow as a person. Learning to analyze literature as a window to humanity, and learning how to write in the most creative and beautiful ways you can, are both life-changing events that have assisted me personally, mentally, and emotionally. And my time spent in these programs truly boosted my self-esteem, because I was good at school. Whatever I'd been mediocre, or downright bad, at growing up I made up for in college. I struggled with my self-esteem for years, for a number of reasons, but realizing that I was smart, and had skills in writing, debate, analysis, and communication had a sincerely profound effect on me. I left college and grad school a much different person than I had been going in (a good thing, in my opinion).
I did get frustrated, though, once I found myself armed with academic skills in a world that, I found out, seemed to care very little about whether or not I had said academic skills. I dumped those academic skills onto job application after job application after job application. Nobody seemed interested in my schooling ... they wanted experience (sometimes, it seemed, half a life's worth of experience).
I applied for writing positions, but lacked experience. I applied for editing positions, but lacked experience. I applied for online teaching positions, and, although I didn't lack experience in this area, still found no employment. What was missing from my resume, it seemed, was any kind of internship (you know, that time in many undergraduate students' lives when they essentially work for free, just to gain the experience that will allow them to land a real job later).
Again, I digress. I began applying for jobs outside my field -- jobs that would not utilize my skill sets, but would still bring in a paycheck. And, having relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area to try and make my career dreams come true, a paycheck is no small thing. So I found myself, before long, living in an apartment with my son while I sold makeup at a department store. At that job, I earned $11 an hour, plus commission. After a year or so, I moved jobs and became a bank teller, where I made $12 an hour (plus a form of commission that the bank called a "solution," which essentially meant I'd be rewarded with extra money if I could get a customer to sit down with a banker to discuss credit cards, loans, or other types of financial sales). At both jobs, my commission money was practically nonexistent -- I am not a salesperson (and I can totally admit that). I'm terrible at it, and the degrading methods that these companies used to incentivize us to push people into buying products or opening up credit cards (much of which, admittedly, I wasn't personally "sold" on) weighed on me and did not motivate me to want to do better. Some of the colorful posters used to track employees' sales or "solutions" were, at times, something akin to a Kindergarten reading tracker.
I wasn't happy in these jobs, and I saw no future for myself in them, but the biggest issue was that I could not make ends meet. $11 or $12 an hour in the San Francisco Bay Area doesn't even come close to covering all expenses (particularly when you're living on your own with no roommates and taking care of a dependent). I felt like I'd waded up the proverbial "shit creek" without so much as a boat, let alone a paddle. I honestly didn't know what I was going to do, save for continue to send job application after job application and hope for a better break.
I thought about going back to grad school to get my doctorate. But it seemed like a ridiculous solution to not being able to find a decent job, so I began looking in other areas of employment. I analyzed my skill sets and experience. I knew that I could teach, and I'd had plenty of experience teaching introductory-level classes at the college level. The problem was, I'd applied for some college-level teaching positions, and had not landed an interview for any of them.
So I thought about other teaching positions. High school, perhaps. There was only one problem -- I was not licensed or credentialed. And thanks to the deprofessionalization of teaching as a career (read about that here, here, and here), I mused, like many other Americans, "Why on earth do I need a credential? I've been to college. I have a motherfucking master's degree in English -- of course I can teach English to teenagers!" And this mentality, unfortunately, caused me to begin feeling resentful that I was essentially barred from what I considered to be a viable career path. I looked into nearby colleges, thinking that I could just go back and get credentialed to teach in public schools, but I quickly learned that there was no possible way I could work full time and pursue a teaching credential (at least not where I lived). I'd be required to attend classes on a pretty rigorous daytime schedule, and then be required to student teach (unpaid work!) on top of it.
Now, mind you, there's no way in hell that I'd ever expect to walk into a career as a lawyer without proper training and expect to be taken seriously. I wouldn't expect to do that as a doctor either, or a scientist, or an architect, or any other damn profession out there. But teaching, as I mentioned before, has been so deprofessionalized that many Americans -- myself, at the time, included -- assume that it's an easy job that anybody can perform. It's part of the reason why people feel justified in teachers being underpaid, and why they assert that teachers barely work (even though, in reality, many teachers work 50+ hour weeks, and work through weekends and holidays, too). It's a problem within the mentality of America, and I admit that I'd fallen victim to it.
As a result of this mentality, I made it my goal to figure out how to become a classroom teacher without having to go through the expensive and time-consuming ordeal of certification and licensing (and yes, I do realize now just how privileged and entitled that sounds when speaking of a career path -- bear with me). Most states have programs that help people attain teaching licenses while they teach -- meaning that a non-credentialed, non-licensed person can teach in a classroom while in the process of getting their license. These programs, sponsoring a sort of a learn-as-you-go technique, are called alternate route to licensing programs (or ARL for short). Lots of teachers go through ARL programs these days to become teachers which has, in turn, led to fewer people that enter traditional teacher training programs ("Hey, I can always fall back on teaching no matter what I do, so why would I go into that to begin with?") and has called into question the very value of traditional teacher preparation programs.
I don't know if you'd ever visit a lawyer who went through an "alternate route" to licensing (i.e. not law school), or a doctor who was in the process of learning and attaining her medical license while treating you, but in this day and age, plenty of children enter classrooms with teachers who do just that.
Yes, I was one of them. I did look into California's alternate route to licensing program, but at the time there were so many credentialed, licensed teachers out of work (California laid off quite a few teachers from around 2008-2012) that most schools weren't overly interested in hiring anyone from an ARL program. ARL programs can be tricky, too, as many of them require you to be hired in a teaching position before you can officially join the ARL program while, at the same time, schools are reluctant to hire you if you don't have evidence that you're going to be in the program. It's one of those catch-22s that some people pull themselves through, and some people don't. Personally, I found it to be rather difficult (again, mostly because of California's overabundance of teachers who had been laid off).
I spent many evenings online, looking into different ARL routes that I might be able to take and researching various private and charter schools that might hire me without a credential or license. After putting in plenty of applications, I managed to land an interview for a high school English position in downtown Oakland, but after two interviews I never heard from them again (and all inquiries from my end resulted in a dishonest, "We'll have so-and-so call you back later" -- no one ever called me back). Once I gave up on hearing back from them, my crushed self returned to writing and editing applications. And when nothing came of those, I returned my broke ass to the computer to look, once again, for a teaching position that I might be able to talk my way into attaining.
This -- the endless hours on the Internet searching for anyone who sought a non-credentialed person to take a stab at teaching -- resulted, ultimately, in my discovery of Teach For America. When I first came upon their website, on an early evening in October, I assumed that this program, whatever it was, only hired credentialed teachers. But further investigation proved me wrong, and I realized that TFA did not require that their applicants have any training in teaching whatsoever. The only thing, it turned out, required of all applicants was a bachelor's degree, and I definitely had one of those. So, without thinking any more about it -- and without further researching the program -- I applied.
My initial application involved a submission of my CV/resume, a cover letter detailing why I wanted to join Teach For America (and also any hardships or experiences I'd ever faced that would make me a good candidate), and information about leadership positions I'd held in the past. I submitted all of this the very same day I learned that Teach For America even existed.
Only after I'd applied did I do any real research on the program, but I did learn a few interesting things about it, such as their main goal of providing an excellent education to underprivileged children in America, and the fact that TFA is highly selective of those it chooses to do so (with annual acceptance rates typically below 15%). I became more excited the more I read, because getting to work with an organization dedicated to social justice and moving into a career at the same time sounded right up my alley.
But applying for the program because, first and foremost, I wanted to play a part in ending educational inequity? No. This is not something I ever admitted to anyone involved in TFA with me, but, at the end of the day, however taken I was with TFA's mission and goals, I was still broke as shit and ultimately desperate for a career break -- and that is what drove me to apply.
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