I have some informal skeletons of blog posts halfway planned out in my mind, but I’m postponing those after spending some time perusing the current TFUs buffet. I felt a little bad after writing the post before last. Maybe it’s obvious and maybe it’s not, but I’m in this weird place of trying to figure…
read more »Before my summer is officially over tomorrow morning for my campus retreat, I’d like to join the fray and respond to some posts and comments in the TFU airspace. The topic is, broadly, how to best achieve reform. A couple of TFU bloggers have gone to the mat for consensus-building. To borrow a turn of…
read more »I wanted to write about TFA orientation while it is still fresh in my mind. I think it’s important to air our grievances as a matter of conscience. Many if not most of TFA’s corps members can be described as politically progressive(1). I think a great deal of the disillusionment that many corps members feel…
read more »“Everyone here is so young and dynamic!” This was something I overheard at Institute last year, and it was definitely a declaration of pleasant surprise. For each corps which is predominantly early 20-somethings, you go through most of your schooling in environments run by…old people. Not old people, but people indeterminately older than you. Then…
read more »Lately, when I hear TFA described by anyone not already involved in it, the phrase “national service organization” leads the description. I’ve been unsure how to word it myself. Most of the time, I’ve said something to the effect of “It’s this thing where mostly recent college grads get placed in urban and rural schools…
read more »My English teacher my junior year of high school told me it’s impossible to read without a pen in hand. I don’t have a pen–just a bag of hot fries. I do, however, have a blog… Pedagogy of the Oppressed seemed very black and white. The whole world can be categorized and chunked up…
read more »As an optimist, I tend to find things to be happy about—especially in things that are too late to change. So maybe this lovely August feeling I have is part of that coping mechanism. BUT. That said. Can I just take a second and talk about how happy I am that I’m not writhing with…
read more »In case you didn’t know, I was featured in the Fall 2011 One Day magazine (page 13, what!). I’m TFAmous, people. I never did read the rest of the magazine, though. Someone asked me recently whether I’d read “the Diversity Issue” of One Day, and I didn’t realize this was the very issue they were…
read more »As a white lady who has recently decided her life’s calling is racial justice work, I spend a lot of time thinking about how my knowledge of race issues, necessarily, comes second-hand. I spend a lot of time wondering whether I, as a white person, am the right sort of person to be inserting my…
read more »When TFA was conceived twenty some-odd years ago, founder Wendy Kopp outlined four goals in her senior thesis at Princeton for the organization: Goals: A. To help solve teacher shortages. B. To focus positive attention on the education system and on the profession of teaching. C. To attract the ‘best and the brightest’ to teach.…
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