Teaching Lessons from Teach for America

The Atlantic has a great article about Teach for America (TFA), which aims to end educational inequity by recruiting recent college graduates to teach in low-income schools for 2 years. 

According to the Atlantic article:

Until now, Teach for American has kept its investigation [of teaching] largely to itself. But for this story, the organization allowed me access to 20 years of experimentation, studded by trial and error. The results are specific and surprising. Things that you might think would help a new teacher achieve success in a poor school—like prior experience working in a low-income neighborhood—don’t seem to matter. Other things that may sound trifling—like a teacher’s extracurricular accomplishments in college—tend to predict greatness.

Read the rest here.

TFA and its member Steven Farr have also recently published a book themselves on this topic: Teaching As Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher's Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap, available on Amazon here.

MR