Last week, I received a review copy of Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches with Teach for America.  Thought it was worth taking a minute or two to say that I’m definitely a fan of the book.  I’m impressed with the way the author, Donna Foote, has captured the different teachers, students,  administrators, and classrooms and painted them as actual human beings dealing with complex issues and feelings as opposed to one-dimensional cogs in the educational machine. #

While the book’s set in Los Angeles, I recognize many of the folks, or at least the types, she’s written about.  Kids who disappear.  Teachers who will do anything to see their kids do well.  Teachers who burnout.  Administrators who try too hard – and aren’t successful.  The folks who show up because they’re supposed to, but who’ve given up.  I appreciate the portrait.  It’s real and honest and captivating and certainly not pretty.  A fine example, one with which I’m more familiar than I’d like to be, is this paragraph, a stream of consciousness from one teacher struggling to figure out how to help a student he noticed was cutting herself: #

Who am I kidding?  I don’t know what I’m doing.  The fact that it’s left to me to identify a girl who is on the verge of killing herself is ridiculous.  You can fake the teaching, but when it comes to this stuff, you can’t.  How can it be that I’m the one diagnosing or even realizing that this girl is in trouble?  I don’t even know who her guidance counselor is.  If something happens, I could be held liable.  I don’t know who to go to.  And if I don’t write it on my hand, I won’t remember to even report it.  It’s crazy.  Oh God, I hope she’s okay. #

As for TFA – any alumni out there want to comment on the program?  While I dig their goals, it doesn’t seem to me like the program is necessarily going to result in systemic education reform.  Although, I might be getting cynical on the whole idea of education reform – small group of committed citizens, right?   And perhaps TFA, as only a 20-ish year old organization, isn’t mature enough yet.  Foote, in this interview with U.S. News & World Report, talks about the “two-pronged” approach of TFA as a reform group: #

TFA has a two-pronged theory of change. In the short term, it will send smart, energetic, committed young people into these terrible schools. But the longer-term vision, and the one that is most likely to bear fruit, is the idea that, because TFA has culled so carefully for leaders and because these young teachers will be so informed by this unbelievable experience of teaching in underperforming schools, they will go out and make big changes. #

Now that the early corps members are approaching their early 40s, we’re starting to see signs that these leaders that have been embedded in society are starting to rise up. If you troll the education reform movements, the big nonprofits, and philanthropies, you’ll see TFA alum[s] in their ranks. I think a real marker was laid down last spring when TFA alum Michelle Rhee was named chancellor of the D.C. schools. #

I’d be curious to hear from anyone with TFA experience.  And I’m looking forward to the rest of the book.  Not because I suspect the ending’s a positive one – but because I so appreciate the humanity of the story. #

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Yet another quote from Deborah Meier’s book: #

Expecting
teachers to take responsibility for the success of the whole school
requires that they begin to accept responsibility for both their own
and their colleagues’ teaching. #

This made me think
of something Ron used to say a lot – "Care enough to confront." He was
referring to students, but I think the same thing applies to our
colleagues. I think we need to respect our colleagues enough to ask
hard questions of them. That’s part of what I’m trying to do with this
staff development – ask hard questions of each of you (and myself) to
make sure we are doing all that we can to make our school a success. I
don’t think it’s okay anymore (if it ever was) to just say "I’m going
to close my door and do whatever I want." It’s not enough to be
successful as individual teachers, we need to be successful as a staff
if we want our school to be successful – and if we want our students to
be successful and achieve to their potential. #

Of course there’s a
fine line between pushing our colleagues to do their best teaching and
conveying the impression that "my way is right, your way is wrong." But
I think that’s a line we need to walk. I think if we fail to approach
the education of our students as an entire staff – with a coherent
approach and clear goals for what we want to achieve – we will be
mediocre at best. And I guess I’m at the point in my career where I
refuse to be mediocre – or part of something that is.
If
we intend to dramatically improve the education of American kids,
teachers must be challenged to invent schools they would like to teach
and learn in, organized around the principles of learning that we know
matter. #

If the point is to acclimate them to what will be the essential
publishing tools of their day (a cause I can get behind and push),
then, [expletive deleted], will Journalism and English please step up their
curriculum, pronto? Otherwise, will someone link up the post I’m
missing? Because until someone explains how wikis will increase
Instructional Value while decreasing Minutes Expended then I’m content
to play wallflower at this party. #

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