Leftist Social Justice Cult that supports Right-Wing Education Reform - Corps Member Teach for America Employee Review

TFA is a bizarre organization, in that its training and culture pushes borderline contemporary Marxist ideology, especially around issues of race, and to a lesser degree, class. You will spend as much or more time "unpacking your privilege" and learning how to "decolonize your pedagogy" than actually learning how to design effective lessons or manage your classroom. You will have racially segregated discussion groups with your peers - and your peers of color will be openly encouraged to express sentiments that white teachers don't belong in urban schools, for instance. If your white and say anything about your black colleagues making you feel unwelcome, you will be accused of "minimizing the real pain felt by PoC and wrongfully centering yourself" in the conversation. I highly suggest you read John McWhorter's (black UPenn Prof) critique of Paolo Freire's 'Critical Pedagogy,' as TFA is obsessed with Freire and wokeness, and believes that any teacher who does not endorse hardline leftist social justice principles is complicit in white supremacy at best, and an active and willful perpetrator of it, at worst. You will be indoctrinated to believe that all PoC think monolithically about issues of race (they don't; many are more conservative than left-wing white people), and frequently told to "shut up and listen" because "it's not about you" and "your lived experience isn't relevant," if you don't fit TFAs mold for a PoC social justice educator. Granted, you'll come out of training with more sophisticated and thoughtful views about social justice (while also probably better understanding why so many mainstream Americans think the far left is insane), but at the expense of not having spent enough time learning how to actually teach and control your classroom! So, here's the real kicker: TFA also supports awful right-wing educational reform and has for decades, like high-stakes testing and no-excuses charter schools! The consequence of spending so much time indoctrinating 22 year olds in leftist cultural thought is that they emerge from their scant 10 weeks of training frighteningly ill-prepared to actually teach black and brown students the tangible skills they need to gain economic and political power in society. Anyone who tells you that the kids that TFA teachers usually teach don't have major behavioral problems is lying to you. Classroom management is by far the most important skill first-year teachers must learn, but TFA is more interested in indoctrinating Corps Members to believe that their students' misbehaviors are the teachers' fault. The consequence of this is that TFA teachers have to lean harder on Deans and Principals to dole out punishment, because they have no strategies for handling disrespectful black and brown students in their own classrooms. This is a direct result of being aggressively conditioned by TFA to view discipline as a manifestation of "white power over black bodies." Ask any seasoned black educator, and they will tell you that white teachers and black teachers alike have to be very stern and strict. Obviously, this preparation failure hurts black and brown students because they get suspended more frequently as a result of having teachers ill-prepared to manage their classrooms. Also, TFA is obsessed with standardized testing, despite repeated evidence showing that standardized testing harms students in myriad ways. As a TFA teacher, you will be measured primarily by your students' test scores - while again, not being given near adequate preparation to actually deliver effective, differentiated instruction, as TFA would rather have you in diversity sessions for hours a day. So, if you want to become fluent in wokeness (which truly is something one can become fluent in), while learning next to nothing about how to actually improve the material lives of black and brown kids through education, while also being an unwitting pawn in right-wing education reform, go for it.