Reply to How do we get top students (as defined by high school SAT and GPA) to enter public school teaching?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Top students shouldn’t enter teaching unless they love it. It’s a waste of their brain power.  If you look at the studies, teachers don’t make much of a difference in kid outcomes. Hard working, well trained, entertaining, happy teachers are more important than brainiacs, who would get bored anyway. [/quote]

I thought TFA was full of grade from elite schools who didn’t know what else to do. If they really wanted to be teachers, why didn’t they go the traditional route? All of our TFA teachers basically said they didn’t know that they wanted to do and people said TFA would look good on their resume. [/quote]

1.  Most high school seniors don't go off to college at 17 or 18 knowing what they want to do for the rest of their lives.

2.  Many high achieving high school students set their sights on elite colleges, and most (there are exceptions, obviously) elite colleges don't offer four year "traditional" education degrees -- probably because the demand for them is so low.

3.  I don't know who "all of your TFA teachers," but there are a lot more current and former TFA teachers out there who you don't know than who you know.  The ones that I know more often than not decided to join TFA because they viewed it as volunteering in a sense -- even though they knew they would be paid.  They did it to give back.  The cynics among you may think it was all about not knowing what else to do and/or padding a resume, but many top graduates of elite colleges do, in fact, choose to embark on a variety of volunteer projects after college before starting a career, and some actually do this for altruistic reasons.

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And THIS is the problem with TFA mindset and culture. Making 22 year olds think that they are giving back to the community by taking a job that they are criminally underqualified to do in a field (especially in the places TFA teachers work) that require expert and experienced teachers. This isn't like a semester abroad or a fun gap year project. Teaching in high needs areas shouldn't be looked at as a cute volunteer opportunity or resume padder.[/quote]

Blah blah blah.  They ARE giving back to the community, or at least trying to.  They are assisting in schools with difficult if not impossible to fill positions.  It's not like they're taking from or denying jobs to all of the "expert and experienced teachers" who are waiting in line to fills those spots.  If there were enough "expert and experienced teachers" around, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

And, let's be real:  what real world job is [b]any[/b] 22 year-old "expert and experienced" enough to do?    [/quote]

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