

Ask News.YC: Teach for America? - trekker7

Don't know if this is appropriate for Hacker News. But I'm guessing some of you are in college and thinking about what you're going to do 9 to 5 after you graduate, if you don't go IPO before school ends.<p>Anyone have experience with Teach for America (www.teachforamerica.org)? Any thoughts about the organization?
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yummyfajitas
If you are a hacker (you are posting to hacker news), I suggest you avoid it.

I don't know anything about Teach For America specifically, but several people
in my graduate program did work for a variant of it (local and math focused).
None of them were happy with the program, though several stuck with it for
financial reasons. One of them was put in charge of statistical analysis,
since he was the only person in the room who knew what a standard deviation
was (I'm not exaggerating). His conclusions:

1\. Except for the grossly incompetent, teacher quality doesn't matter. He
could not reject the null hypothesis (teacher quality doesn't affect student
outcome).

2\. Students do not benefit from being in the program, unless it removes them
from a dangerous school. He couldn't reject the null hypothesis here either
(accepted students perform the same as rejected ones). (This fact is usually
well hidden: students accepted by special teaching programs as well as
students who apply but are rejected usually perform better than students who
do not apply.)

According to him, other programs usually get similar results (well hidden in
the appendix of a report), at least when the results are reported.

Overall, he said it is a waste for a talented individual to go into teaching.
You won't make a difference. As a software person, you will.

Leave teaching to people who can't do anything else. They have a comparative
advantage (even if they lack an absolute advantage).

~~~
teach
[Disclaimer: I've been teaching computer science at the high school level for
nearly eleven years now. My B.S. is in computer science from the University of
Texas at Austin, and I set the curve in some of my courses.]

I hesitate to disparage the analysis of an anecdotal person I've never met,
but I disagree with the claim that statistically teacher quality doesn't
affect student outcome.

The current leading meta-statistical analysis of teachers and teaching methods
and their effect on student learning is "Classroom Instruction that Works", by
Marzano, et al. They have statistics on good teacher/bad school, good
teacher/good school, bad teacher/good school and bad teacher/bad school and
the effect on student performance. The average effect size when comparing
multiple studies shows that good teachers _do_ make a significant and
measurable difference in student achievement.

I think leaving teaching to "people who can't do anything else" is a cop-out.
I've taught the basics of programming to over 1000 students in my career thus
far. I know of at least a dozen who now do it for a living, including some who
say that a career in programming never crossed their mind before taking my
class. Do you think I've had a net positive effect on the industry? I can
write a lot of code, but teaching others to code eventually produces more.
"Teach a man to fish" and all that.

I do agree with Prrometheus below that a lot of public education is "an
inflexible, pathological bureaucracy."

I also agree that if you don't enjoy working with young people, don't bother.
Further, if you can't set healthy boundaries, you'll eventually get burned
out. Also, if you're a hacker at heart, you'll need to keep coding somehow, or
you'll go mad.

Of course, I don't know anything about Teach for America either, but I do know
that I really enjoy teaching, and I'm glad I went that route rather than
industry or starting something of my own.

Just my two cents.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Well, keep in mind what I'm describing is one special program in math. Also,
everything I know I heard over beers, while complaining about our advisors.

Regarding teacher quality, he found the best fit was a failure model. Most
teachers perform adequately, and these teachers are statistically
indistinguishable. Some teachers fail, with varying degrees of failure.

Basically, think hard drives. Most work, and these are all the same. Some
fail, with varying degrees of data loss.

If the sample in the study you mention comes from the partially failing
region, they could easily find an increasing relation. Or possibly this
program was special, that I don't know.

However, I do stand by my statement to leave teaching to those who aren't
great at other things. That's just basic comparative advantage.

You are comparing your students with you as a teacher to your students with no
teacher. The proper comparison is "you program, joe blub teaches" vs "you
teach, joe blub programs." If joe blub teaches almost as well as you, but you
program much better than him, then it's far better if you leave the teaching
to him.

Of course, if you enjoy teaching, you certainly are not obligated to do the
most economically efficient job. I'm certainly not (postdoc in math here).

~~~
teach
Yes, but the number of students in my program is higher than the other two
(wealthier) schools in my district, and a lot higher than schools with
comparable demographics.

Even if Joe Blub teaches nearly as well as I do (and I'm willing to accept
that he may), I _recruit_ a whole lot better than he.

But if I teach my students Java (as the AP exam requires), does that make _me_
Joe Blub?!? :)

------
mechanical_fish
Dear god, if you have the people skills to manage a classroom full of
teenagers, and the pedagogical skills to teach stuff, software engineering
_needs_ you. Can I interest you in the Drupal project? ;)

I know one person who used his new B.S. in Physics to Teach for America, and
was unhappy. I know another person who loved to work with kids, worked for
years in a science museum, then got a degree in education and worked as a high
school teacher in a rural county, and is now... unhappy.

I think that teaching is like medicine, law, marriage counseling, postdoctoral
research, and just about any other career: It's hard to know if you'll like it
until you try it for real. You can't really learn what it's like, day-to-day
and year-to-year, by watching from the outside. I've certainly met teachers
who loved their jobs, but you have to love the reality, not the Platonic ideal
in your head.

Honesty, if not my sense of social justice, compels me to observe that the
long-term happiness of the teachers I've met has been correlated to the
selectiveness of their schools -- they work at Catholic schools with tuition,
magnet schools, private schools, or schools in districts where only doctors
and lawyers can afford to live. I think the main reason for this is that the
students in such schools are relatively well motivated: they either care about
the material or care about their grades. (It's not just pay -- the Catholic
school teachers I knew were paid considerably less than their public-school
colleagues. But then, if you've read _Peopleware_ , you could have predicted
that.)

The happiest hacker-turned-high-school-teacher I know started off in industry,
burned out after a couple of decades, then switched to teaching. You might
consider that path. OTOH, the advantage of Teach for America is that it gets
you in front of students (a) quickly, without having to go through as much
bureaucratic hazing -- no education degree required; (b) temporarily -- you
can quit in a couple years with no dishonor; and (c) when you're young, so
that it will have minimal impact on your future career.

~~~
Prrometheus
"I think that teaching is like medicine, law, marriage counseling,
postdoctoral research, and just about any other career: It's hard to know if
you'll like it until you try it for real. You can't really learn what it's
like, day-to-day and year-to-year, by watching from the outside."

A difference with those other fields is that teaching is ensconced in an
inflexible, pathological bureaucracy. Although, that could be my ideological
bias talking.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Wait, are you saying that medicine and counseling _don't_ have pathological
bureaucracy? Have you asked your doctor to describe exactly how much time and
effort it takes to get money from dozens of separate insurance companies, all
of which are using every trick in the book to avoid paying? Or are you lucky
enough to live in a civilized country?

And, please, don't even ask about postdoctoral research and the attendent
interactions with university bureaucracy, departmental politics, and Federal
grant review processes. Or I might need counseling. And my insurance doesn't
cover that. :)

------
geebee
My brother did this - taught French in a Louisiana middle school for two years
after college. However, he was a humanities major who went on to a PhD program
afterwards; aside from a bit of stats in R, he doesn't do any hacking.

It was a good experience for him, and it is an admirable thing to take on. He
said that it was largely crowd control, and a little bit of teaching. The
schools that serve low income people in Louisiana are in pretty grim shape,
evidently.

I don't think it would help a hacker much at all. But there are things other
than hacking in life, right?

I dunno, from the sound of it, I don't think it would be in the best interests
a 22 year old hacker, who is almost bursting to get out there and work with an
innovative startup, to step out of the game at age 22 to teach basic math in
an underfunded school. The excitement, creativity, and freedom you have at
that age won't be there forever.

I'm sad to say that, though - because I personally _do_ think that talented
teachers make a positive difference, and I think that a more public-mindedness
among technology workers would be a good thing (there's a strong undercurrent
of distain for politics and legalisms - but if we don't participate, lawyers
will be more than happy to regulate technology for us...)

------
mainsequence
I'm not a programmer, but I did TFA for three years in Compton after
graduating with a BS in Physics. I would say that if you are serious about
your start-up, it's probably not the best fit for you: you simply won't have
the time or energy at the end of the day, especially in your first year. This
of course assumes that one would do TFA because one wants to actually tackle
the problem of educational inequality, and not just because one thinks it will
look good on a resume someday or one has a martyr complex.

A typical day is: get to school at 7, plan, hold before-school tutoring, teach
all day (with a lunch break of 30 minutes), kids go home at 3, hold after-
school tutoring until 4, plan, go home at 5 or 6, eat, grade papers until you
fall asleep. This was my experience at least.

I loved it because for me it was about connecting with people who had a
completely different upbringing than I do. The skills I learned in the
classroom have colored most of my professional life. I found that students, in
aggregate, are excellent judges of character, and I really had to step up my
game to gain their trust.

Common Criticisms and responses: "It's crowd control..." -only if you're a
lousy teacher (and there are plenty)

"TFA is a cult..." -it is, but after your initial training, which is actually
very useful, you can choose to be as involved as you want (I wasn't very)

"Teaching is for those who can't do anything else." -Maybe there's some truth
to this. I think it depends on what a person believes is important. Effective
teaching in an inner-city school is definitely not easy, and to be honest, I
think it's a problem in need of a new solution. I think the world could use a
better model of education more than it needs a better way to use RSS to find
out what one's friend had for breakfast. So if you have the raw innovative
skill, it's a huge opportunity.

~~~
geebee
I feel a little bad saying it was "crowd control" because those are my words,
not my brother's (who was the one doing the program). I think he was a good
teacher, and he would probably object to that characterization.

He told me that once he left the room for a few minutes because a kid was
sick, and heard a huge crash. When he rushed back in, it turned out that a
girl had tried to smash the overhead projector on top of the head of another
student. Glass was everywhere This was the result of leaving the classroom for
2 minutes.

But when he was in there, I don't actually think it was all crowd control. He
had the respect of the students, and he was able to teach.

You made an interesting observation about the "cultish" quality of TFA. He
said that he had no illusions about how much of himself he was giving. He said
his attitude from the start was "This school has 30 teachers. Two of us are
TFA. The other 28 are just doing their job." That attitude helped him out a
lot, I think.

~~~
mainsequence
There's definitely an element of crowd control in the sense that the students
are kids; they naturally like to get into trouble, and don't come pre-
installed with self-management skills.

I think that it's important to be cognizant of how to manage crowds, but it's
easy to get bogged down in just maintaining the peace. There's gotta be a
reason to pay attention, a reason to behave, other than "do what I tell you or
else"...this is what I meant by lousy teaching.

Sounds like your brother knows what he's doing and I'd bet his students are
lucky to have him. With regards to his story about the overhead projector, it
brings back fond memories of pretending to leave the room but really just
standing right outside the door to see which students were the first to a)
realize I'm gone and b) start trouble. The classroom can be a hilarious
laboratory for the study of human nature. (I do certainly hope that the victim
was alright and that the perpetrator was held responsible.)

------
mattchew
Yes, not sure how it relates to Hacker News. If you're trying to choose
between TFA and running a startup, you've got your head twisted around
somehow. Very different paths. If you have notions of doing both at the same
time, give those up. First year of teaching is very demanding.

But if you're still interested anyway, sure, look into it. I did TFA for a
couple years (95 Rio Grande) and it was a good experience. I wouldn't teach in
a public school again unless I was starving, but it was the right thing for me
at the time. Feel free to email me, mspambox@yahoo.com, if you've got
particular questions.

------
tphyahoo
Teaching is a tough gig -- I tried it, and it was too tough for me.

The downside of tfa is that they are somewhat cultish and will want you to
drink cool aid. The upside is that you get some training, and will meet cool
people. (Many don't drink the cool aid, and even those that do are well
intentioned positive thinkers.)

For those who are born teachers, who love kids, whose calling is to teach...
TFA is great. For those who aren't, it could be a catastrophe in a rosy
coupon. Most people will fall somewhere in the two extremes.

So, the simple answer is: run away. But, maybe you are a born teacher and this
is right for you. No harm in applying, I guess.

~~~
tphyahoo
Note: I applied, and was negged, by TFA, but know many people who did it and
told me of their experiences.

I taught briefly in an urban public school, where basically anyone with a
college degree could get a job because there was such a teacher deficit. (They
were quitting in droves.)

I probably could have used the training I would have gotten in TFA, as going
in there completely green was a _bad_ idea :) Oh well, I probably taught a few
kids some stuff they might be able to use later in life. Mostly I just tried
to keep them in their seats and not setting the building on fire.

One final note: The hardest thing about teaching is the workload. 100 hour
weeks is just words until you've experienced it. (To be honests, I am not sure
if it was that many, but it seemed like it. And this isn't 100 hours staring
at a spreadsheet, but chasing down kids, grading illegible homework, calling
parents, dealing with bureaucracy, dealing with classroom observations and job
ratings from the assistant principle who doesn't give a shit about your fancy
college degree... yikes.)

Teaching would be a lot more doable if you had fewer students, or if all the
classes you had to teach could follow the same lesson plan. I was preparing
five different plans a day. A tough schedule even for an experienced educator
with years of semi-prepared lesson plans that he has already taught a few
times and knows what works and what doesn't.

