Posted on 01/11/2013 12:34:16 PM PST by Kaslin
Teach for America has been a breath of fresh air for public schools around the nation.
The group recruits top college graduates to spend several years teaching is some of our nation’s worst schools.
Most of these graduates did not plan to become professional educators, but they want to make a difference in troubled communities. They are focused on helping underprivileged children learn, and they have little interest in compensation issues or union political schemes.
That, of course, does not sit well with teachers union officials. They think Teach for America instructors are invading their turf and taking job security away from longtime union members.
Maybe they are. That’s probably a good thing.
The unions like things the way they have always been, with decent pay, benefits and job security, but little expectation for real learning in the classroom. When young TFA instructors prove it can be done, they make life uncomfortable for the longtime teachers who have not performed very well at all.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy, union leaders and other leftists saw an opportunity to attack Teach for America.
Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis slammed the group in the context of the tragedy, saying TFA’s policies “kill and disenfranchise children from schools across this nation.”
What a crock.
Just a few weeks prior, unconvicted domestic terrorist and education professor Bill Ayers called TFA instructors “educational tourists” and “a fraud on every level” and said their efforts will actually “undermine teaching.”
Appearing at a “Change the Stakes” meeting, Ayers implied that TFA has “no vision for the collective voice of teachers” and that TFA instructors are “not serious about the enterprise.”
That depends on what the “enterprise” is. If it’s helping kids learn, TFA instructors are very serious. If it means promoting silly union political efforts, they tend to have little interest. They actually put kids first. What a breathtaking concept for American schools.
It is hard to gauge how serious Lewis is about education, given Chicago Public Schools’ 54 percent graduation rate, or the seriousness of Detroit Federation of Teachers President Keith Johnson, given the fact that only 7 percent of 8th graders in his district are proficient in reading.
But they’re in it for the long haul, so apparently results don’t matter.
For 20 years, Teach for America has been focusing on results and improving educational outcomes for very needy children. Administrators in dozens of school districts across the nation will testify about the positive contributions they’ve made before moving on to other careers.
Can the same be said for Lewis, Johnson and the rest of the “real” teacher leaders in America?
But! But! It’s for the chillins.
Ayers is long overdue for the Ceaucescu solution in a popular uprising. Ditto for his partner in crime Bernadine Dohrn. These America-hating Communist terrorists and would-be tyrants need an appointment with destiny where justice will finally be meted out.
One of my best high school math teachers was not a math teacher. He was a retired Navy guy who had been a long-time instructor in a technical field.
He broke concepts down very well and for that reason geometry and trig were highlights of my math career.
However, he had a hard time adjusting to the baby-sitting expectations, which was sad. He quit after one year.
not ‘chillins’ but ‘chilun’ ~ although you’ll sometimes see ‘chillun’ ~ it’s already a plural form!
“Teach for America” sounds like a domestic version of the Peace Corps. It must rub Bill Ayers and Co. the wrong way to point out that their teaching methods have brought American education down to third world levels, unless that was their goal all along. This sounds lot like the SEIU beating up Boy Scouts for cleaning up parks. How can you demand professional wages when amateurs do a better job than you can ever dream of?
My son, who just graduated from Penn State Erie, will be a Teach for America teacher... in Las Vegas
It amazes me that this bomb throwing radical if it weren’t for his rich papa whould have been sentenced to life in prison is still around. What he and his protege Obama did to the Annenberg project was a harbinger for what we have now.
Good. It’s time to remove the teflon veneer from government teachers and their unions. The angrier, more threatening and more violent these thugs get the easier it will be to replace them with an individual voucher system.
You read my mind.
Congrats! Our daughter (who graduates this year) was accepted by Teach for America as well...
“Teach for America has been a breath of fresh air for public schools around the nation.”
ROTFLMAO, this is another false flag by the left. These are young leftists that don’t otherwise have a job.
I have a friend, a Division- I Football playing 6’4†260 pound black guy that did Teach for America in inner-city Baltimore for a few years. Very smart man and good role model to many of his students. He left teaching and went to law school and is now a very successful attorney. He said he enjoyed the kids and teaching but the bureaucracy, failing school environment, non caring parents, and horrible administration drove him away.
Mr. Ayers was also quoted as saying, “Blah, Blah, Blah
The same old Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah.”
Brilliant, intellectual Progressive edyoo-cay-tours will
be waiting for Mr. Ayers to make more edicts from his ivory tower constructed by the Democrat Party.
/s/
IMHO
My computer screen got a nice spray of Diet Coke when I read Bill Ayers’ description of “Teach for America” volunteers as “educational tourists.”
Ayers should take a look in the mirror. His own stint in a public school classroom was very brief and while he claims to have considered a return to teaching after federal charges against him were dismissied, that plan was quickly rejected. Gee, what a surprise. Spend time in a tough urban school, with students who lack fundamental skills and a stable home life, or pursue a second master’s and a doctorate in education, then move into a cushy job as a college professor, and masquerade as an educational reformer.
Sol Stern, who writes about education for City Journal described Ayers’ “contributions” very succinctly; calling Ayers an education reformer, Stern observed, is a bit like describing Josef Stalin as an argricultural reformer.
Yet, you are hard-pressed to find any meaningful criticism of Ayers and his buddy, former Chicago schools boss Arne Duncan, because they are heroes of the left. The few schools that have adopted Ayers’ ideas are absolute disaster areas, and many of the problems in the Chicago system metastazied under Duncan’s watch. Yet, Duncan is hailed as the greatest education secretary in a generation and Ayers work has an undue infulence at many education schools.
The biggest contribution that most Americans can make to our education system is home-schooling their kids. Otherwise, they will join the ranks of low-information voters whose thinking skills were shaped by radicals like Ayers, in failing schools run by buffoons like Duncan.
Yep...
The union got to him...It wasn’t the kids...I’ll bet a buffalo nickle on that theory...
It was done on purpose for people like you always looking to point out others mistakes. Hope I made your day.
Bill Ayers: “guilty as hell...free as a bird”
lighten up yo
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