So I had my phone interview with Teach for America on Sunday. I think it went pretty well and I'm pretty hopeful. If they offered me a teaching position in New York, I'm about 99% sure I would do it. Nothing is ever 100%. You know how I am with the options...things always come up! :)
I have been asking around to folks familiar with NYC Teaching Fellows and Teach for America to try and be as prepared as I can be for this whole process. It looks like NYCTF is primarily looking for math, science, and special education teachers. I'm not qualified to teach math or science so that leaves special education. I'm really not sure how I feel about teaching special education. I kind of have my heart set on teaching elementary school and it doesn't look like that is a "high demand" area for them either. I've also heard that the support system for NYCTF isn't nearly as strong as Teach for America. I'm sure that is for a variety of reasons: smaller organization, funding, etc. After this year and being up here in no man's land, feeling like I serve with an organization that doesn't really give a crap about us, not having some semblance of a support system has become a deal breaker for me. So I've got some thinking to do...
I find out Tuesday if I get an interview for Teach for America so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. :)
hey--are you still waiting on NYCTF for an answer? Were you DP'd ("decision pending") and haven't heard? Ah, maybe I should read the rest of your blog.
ReplyDeleteHere's what I know:
1) Yes, there are some real problems with the Teaching Fellows program, but I also think that some (not all) of the disillusioned ones are people who went into it with a certain level of naivete and therefore were inevitably going to have problems.
2) First year teaching is HELL even If you went through four years as an ed major.
3) The NYC Department of Education is pretty much a disaster on a lot of levels . . . not sure if that's better or worse than other large cities' school systems.
but with even knowing all of this--I want in. I, too, have always wanted to teach, and decided two weeks after I started college that I couldn't major in education because I was working full-time and didn't know how I'd do the student teaching.
also, read anything by Jonathan Kozol if you haven't already.
There is a fairly active group on LiveJournal that has a lot of information about the process, opinions from current and past Fellows, etc. You can just Google "NYCTF Live Journal" and you should find it.