<p>My daughter joined TFA after graduating from Yale, then taught an additional year. She will be working full-time for TFA when this school years ends. A few random thoughts in response to your (OP) post and the thread. </p>
<p>Administrators don’t have to hire TFA teachers. They choose to, and so there is a certain amount of buy-in on the part of a principal, although there may not be on the part of teachers or assistant administrators. At my daughter’s charter school, almost everyone on staff was in TFA after college and chose to stay in teaching. The culture of the school is influenced by TFA. Her school is widely considered one of the top charter’s in the city. My daughter’s partner teacher has been teaching for a number of years now and started out in TFA; there are TFA teachers who stay in teaching. My point is that there are schools that love TFA and deliberately seek out TFA teachers, particularly schools that are data-driven. In those schools, there is no clash of values, etc.</p>
<p>We can debate if TFA teachers are effective until the cows come home. My guess is that some are going to be more effective than others, which is true of all teachers. After all, all teachers start out as first-year teachers. I know that every year my daughter has taught, her kids have improved considerably on benchmark and standardized tests. Her first year she taught for the Los Angeles Unified School District and while her principal deliberately chose a TFA corp member, her fellow teachers gave her a hard time. They warned her that she better not bring down the scores they had worked so hard to raise. Her kids exceeded the school’s scores as well as the state’s. (She was laid off along with all the other new teachers in our district which is how she ended up at a charter school.) Many of the kids in her remedial class (7th grade) had never read a chapter book in their lives. By the end of the year, those same kids were reading one book after another. They caught the reading bug. Even if you don’t believe in test scores, it’s hard to deny that when kids who boldly asserted that they “hate” reading turns into real readers, something positive and life-changing has happened. </p>
<p>So, setting aside the whole issue of the efficacy of TFA teachers, I’ll move on, since I’m fairly certain that’s not what your parents are worried about. I’d suggest you go to the TFA website and have your parents look at the “After the Corps” section. Here is what I know from the young people I’ve known, the ones who did not stay in teaching long-term. (There are a number who are still teaching, but that’s probably not what your parents are wanting to know about.) I know one young woman who did TFA, then worked for the US government in the area of education and is now going to an Ivy League law school with a full-ride. I know another young man who is now at an excellent medical school. I know a young woman who did the Peace Corps and is now in grad school at Harvard. It’s not a secret that graduate and professional schools like TFA (I know less about the Peace Corps). I think it’s for a a couple of reasons. One is because by the time you’re hired by TFA, you’ve been vetted very thoroughly. Another is that you’ve shown you can stick with something difficult. </p>
<p>I’m not sure how difficult it is to get into the Peace Corps. I am certain it is very difficult to get into TFA. Every year the number of applicants goes up and, this year, Congress has reduced funding and many states are in a full-blown crisis with teacher lay-offs, etc. It may impact the number of corps members and placement, etc. So it may not be worth fighting about until you’re accepted by one organization or the other. A lot of parents need some time to get used to the idea of their son or daughter working in the inner city or postponing graduate school. I’d suggest you get your parents the book “Relentless Pursuit” which follows the stories of four TFA corps members in one of the toughest schools in Los Angeles. You should read it yourself too and see if it still seems appealing. Your parents will probably be horrified by the first several chapters, but they may understand where you are coming from by the end (you should probably look at it first since you know better how they’ll react). </p>
<p>Ultimately, this is your decision. It’s your life. The older I get, the more I’m convinced that people should take advantage of their twenties to do the things they feel passionately about because you won’t always be as free to go off and live in another part of the world, or take two yeas to follow your passion.</p>
& your skills may only loosely fit your assignment, according to those I know who have been recently placed.</p>