Schooling Teachers: Teach For America and the Future of Teacher Education

by Megan Blumenreich, Bethany L. Rogers

Overview

Schooling Teachers tackles the perennial and pressing issue of how this nation will attract, prepare, and retain high-quality teachers for all students, particularly those in our most challenging classrooms. Drawing on participant voices from the inaugural 1990 cohort of Teach For America, this book situates their experiences within the larger context of teacher education and reform of the last three decades. Through an investigation of one of the more influential departures from traditional teacher preparation during this period, the authors examine the “teacher problem” and illustrate why solutions remain elusive and limited. This book moves beyond the purported dichotomy between university-based teacher education and alternatives such as Teach For America to consider their common challenges, suggesting a starting place from which to create a future of more effective teacher preparation.

Book Features:

• Illuminates persistent issues associated with conventional practices of teacher recruitment, education, and teaching.
• Explores the early assumptions and experiences associated with a key reform effort designed to challenge traditional practices.
• Highlights why traditional teacher education and TFA have struggled to solve the problem of preparing teachers to be ready for to the contemporary demands of education.
• Shares important stories about individuals’ personal experiences and actions that reveal the broader collective and social forces at work.
• Uses richly detailed qualitative data to draw insights that address larger issues of staffing and supporting urban schools.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807779231
Publisher:	Teachers College Press
Publication date:	05/07/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	837 KB

About the Author

Megan Blumenreich is professor of childhood education at The City College of New York, CUNY. Bethany L. Rogers is associate professor of educational history at The College of Staten Island, CUNY.

Table of Contents

Contents (Tentative)

Foreword Michele Foster

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Beloved Alternative: Teach For America
Conventional vs. Alternative Teacher Education
Studying the Inaugural TFA Cohort
Structure of the Book

1. TFA and the Paradox of the 1980s
1980s Writ Large
“The Sky Is Falling”: Education in the 1980s
A “Kinder, Gentler Nation”: Student Idealism in the 1980s
Conclusion

2. A Mission, a Lark, a Job: Choosing Teach For America
Choosing to Teach vs. Choosing TFA
The Right Job at the Right Time: Factors Affecting the Choice to Join TFA
Conclusion

3. Preparing to Teach for America: The Summer Institute
Teacher Education, Circa 1990
The TFA Summer Institute, 1990
Participant Recollections: Lessons and Implications
Conclusion

4. “Multiculturalism Run Amok”: Identity Politics at the Summer Institute
Multiculturalism in 1990 America: A Debate “Older than the Nation Itself”
Multiculturalism and Teacher Education
TFA Participant Experiences of Multiculturalism at the Summer Institute
Conclusion

5. Ordeal by Fire: The 1990 Corps in the Classroom
“Survival and Discovery”: The Beginning Teacher’s Experience
New Teacher Challenges of the TFA Participants
Participant Responses
Conclusion

6. University-Based Teacher Educators in the Crosshairs: Responding to TFA and the New Reforms
Teacher Education: How Did We Get Here?
The 1980s: Unleashing Change
Responding to New Pressures
Conclusion

7. The Legacy of TFA
Measuring TFA’s Impact
Implications: Alumni Experiences and the Making of Teachers
TFA Alumni: Influence on Education
TFA Influence on Participants’ Lives
Concluding Thoughts
Conclusion

Appendices

Notes

Index

About the Authors

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Megan Blumenreich and Bethany Rogers have written Schooling Teachers: Teach For America and the Future of Teacher Education, a powerful account that draws on the experiences of 30 members of the first cohort of TFA. Using oral histories, Blumenreich and Rogers capture the lived experiences and all the complexity of those who, depending on your point of view, were pioneers or guinea pigs—or, in all likelihood, were both.”
—From the Foreword by Michèle Foster, Henry Heuser Jr Endowed Chair for Urban Education Partnerships and professor, University of Louisville

"Blumenreich and Rogers have gifted the field of teacher preparation with a long-overdue account of the pedagogical, sociocultural, and political complexities of Teach For America’s alternative attempts to recruit and prepare high-quality teachers for some of our nation’s least-resourced communities. Their oral histories meticulously animate the tensions inherent in an educational reform based on free market principles and entrepreneurial logic—both at personal and societal levels. The result is an elegant analysis of the enduring challenges to building a socially just, professional teacher workforce in a culture where educator preparation has always occupied an inferior position.”
—Tina M. Trujillo, associate professor, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley

“Should teachers receive ‘traditional’ preparation in university-based education programs, or should we develop ‘alternative’ pathways into the profession like Teach For America? That’s the wrong question. Looking closely at the lives and careers of the first TFA cohort, Megan Blumenreich and Bethany Rogers show how traditional and alternative approaches have influenced each other. Anyone who wants to understand the recent history of teacher education—and anyone who wants to improve it in the future—will have to read this wise little book.”
—Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of history of education, University of Pennsylvania

“Schooling Teachers brings significantly more light and less heat to the fierce battles that have been roiling teacher education since the 1980s by deeply listening to the sometimes pain-filled voices of one group who experienced the education first hand—the first 1990 TFA cohort. This book lets us hear them speak.”
—James W. Fraser, professor of history and education, New York University

Editorial Reviews

Schooling Teachers: Teach for America and the Future of Teacher Education is a practical-minded examination of how to attract, prepare, and retain high-quality teachers in America. Chapters scrutinize the 1990 cohort of Teach for America, in the context of efforts to train and improve teachers from the 1990's to the present. Extensive notes and an index round out this thoughtful, methodical, and highly recommended study.”

—Midwest Book Review

“This book situates TFA within the larger context of decades-long political and economic tensions regarding how best to educate teachers and the purpose and reach of public education.”

—Teachers College Record

“This work reminds us that no one system has a monopoly on teacher preparation, and as times change, so too must the access to and modes of teacher preparation—whether one decides to teach for America, or just teach at all.”

—History of Education Quarterly

From the Publisher