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.…
read more »Even as I acknowledge (and complain about) all of TFA’s things that get under my skin and make me sound like yet another angry blogger, I still love Teach For America because of the people in it, and because of its neurotically mission-driven culture. Teach For America is an organization full of people who,…
read more »I just wrote about the silliness of personifying TFA in order to complain about it. But for now, I’m talking outside the realm of my own personal TFA experience, and while I guess I could just email this straight to TFA’s Executive Vice President of People, Community, and Diversity (maybe I will), I still want to…
read more »“The issues of racism in education explained to me how I could get kicked out of school in the eighth grade. How it was that a bright Latina kid could sit in front of a guidance counselor, tell her that I wanted to be placed on a college track because I’m going to go to…
read more »..in my brain. It’s the middle of summer vacation and I am already starting to get antsy about this upcoming year. My third year in the classroom feels like my first year, since I am changing grade levels. I pretty much have to start from scratch, but I’ve built a great little network of…
read more »I’ve had a lot of opportunity to think about honesty lately, and to wonder why I’m so obsessed with it as of late. I was reminded today of something I knew once and ignored: that it’s too easy to anthropomorphize Teach For America to get out of criticizing a real person or people. “TFA”…
read more »For the last two years, it seems, I’ve been unable to think clearly unless I’m typing. If you don’t want to read my disillusioned processing, please don’t. Actually, sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t just make my blog posts private until I figure these last two years out. (And stop talking, too, ha.) Everything…
read more »
