Saturday, January 12, 2013

Letter To A TFA Applicant

I recently received a Facebook message from a distant acquaintance, a senior in college who is considering applying for TFA and had heard that I had survived the experience. She's not the first person to ask for my advice or perspective, and she's not the first person I've been honest with about it all. But I'm not sure my response has ever been quite this honest or this thought-out. I think this could serve as a pretty good response to anyone who asked me about my experience, so I of course had to share. Read on.

Letter To A TFA Applicant

I joined TFA right out of college, and I will be very honest with you....it is a huge challenge. While most of your friends' first jobs will be 9 to 5s that don't require a ton of emotional commitment, TFA drains you of everything you have. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad. You never stop working, and if you do, you feel guilty about it. I think everyone who applies for/gets accepted into TFA thinks that they will be the exception, that they'll find a way to make it work and that it can't possibly be as hard as everyone says, but let me tell you, IT IS.

I've always wanted to be a teacher, but didn't study education in college, so TFA was a good way for me to get my foot in the door. Except that it's more like getting body slammed through an open door on a second-story balcony and falling onto the concrete below. And still being expected to get up and go to work the next day. I say this not to scare you, but because I wish someone had been completely honest with me about exactly how hard it was. I heard a lot of "It's a huge challenge, but it's worth it and it's rewarding and you know you are making a difference, blah blah blah..." Truth be told, there were many days that I was sure that all I was doing was ruining lives and having mine ruined, too.

That being said, I wouldn't take it back. I think anyone who joins TFA and survives their two years would say that, too. I now work in a charter school with a handful of TFA alum, all of whom had equally if not more difficult experiences than I did, and they still stand by their choice. We were actually joking last night why people who have heard about our experiences would ever go and join TFA, but one of my friends said it best: it's because all of our terrifying and awful stories end with, "but I don't regret it". Truthfully, I don't. But you do need to know that it totally takes over your life and it wrecks you in a million ways before there is even a glimmer of hope. You can't apply to or join TFA for selfish reasons, or you'll never survive. You have to be willing to drop everything, move anywhere, and work under any conditions.

Some people's TFA experiences are more pleasant than others. They end up in almost "normal" schools, only qualifying as a TFA placement school because of the percentage of their students on free and reduced lunch. Most corps members are placed somewhere where there is little administrative support or discipline procedures, a lack of resources, and no curriculum development support. They find themselves "up the river without a paddle", with no idea what to do, and drowning in the unknowns (this was my experience). Some TFA teachers end up in schools that resent TFA and therefore treat them hatefully. A small portion of people are placed in charter schools or magnet schools, where they face different challenges like an overbearing administration and incredibly high and seemingly impossible expectations (which, ironically, is my experience now in Nashville). And none of those brief descriptions even begins to encompass how difficult each of those different placements are. One of the scariest, and sometimes falsely comforting things about TFA, is that you never know what you're going to get until you are placed in a school. I spent a lot of time thinking it wouldn't be "that bad", and as a result my world was rocked. But despite how hard it was, I fell in love with my kids and my co-workers, and somehow made it through. In the end, I left my placement school after my 2-year commitment because there was so much corruption in my district, and because I was in a rural region where there was not even a chance of having a social life. Not a day goes by that I don't think about my first "babies" and how that experience shaped me in so many ways.

I always laugh when people ask me if I "liked" my experience. I never quite know how to answer that question. It was the hardest, most exhausting, and sometimes most painful experience I've ever had. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can prepare you for it. But I formed some great relationships, grew in so many ways, and by my second year I could definitely see the impact I had in my students' lives, even if it was just a few of them. Did I like it? Most days, no. Could I imagine doing anything else? No. Would I recommend it? No. Would I discourage you from joining? No. It's an incredibly personal choice that only you can make.

The End.

Sounds harsh, right? Maybe unnecessarily so? Absolutely not. It would be deceitful of me to paint a picture that is bright and cheery and happy, glorifying the fact that "you are making a difference!" or that your work is "meaningful". It took two years for me to realize that I had actually made a difference, and even then I doubted the longevity of it. Or that it was "challenging" but manageable. It was challenging, for sure. Manageable? Ha. Most days I barely managed to get out of bed. I feel compelled to be honest, no matter how harsh it seems, because this is too much of a life-changer to be anything but. I think my fellow corps members would agree.

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