In response to the June 24 article about Teach for America coming to the Twin Cities: I am both a Teach for America (TFA) alum, serving in New Jersey from '97-'99, and a certified teacher here in Minnesota, receiving my teaching license through a local university well-known for its excellent teacher prep program. Having been through both programs and having taught in inner-city schools both here and in New Jersey, I can say unequivocally that the preparation and training I received through TFA was superior in every way to the "traditional" teacher prep program when it came to dealing with the challenges of working in an inner-city school.
While the university was academic in its preparation, TFA was pragmatic. For example, in the "multicultural" class I took, I spent a semester reading books, discussing them with classmates who were nearly all from a similar background to my own, and writing long sample lesson plans in which we had to show how we were addressing a long list of diverse needs. On the other hand, one of our monthly TFA meetings saw us inviting parents of our students to come and discuss challenges facing their families with regard to education. It was a very diverse group of parents, representative of the students in our classrooms, and they taught me more that night about how to connect with and teach their children than I learned in that entire semester of multicultural education. The fact of the matter is that there is a huge achievement gap in this country, and I believe that there is more that teachers can be doing to reduce it. However, our traditional methods of teacher education are failing to prepare teachers to take on that challenge. Teach for America, on the other hand, is addressing that problem head-on. Is it a replacement for traditional college-based teacher certification programs? Of course not. But as a targeted approach to tackling the achievement gap, it has a lot to offer. The new TFA teachers coming to Minnesota classrooms this fall will have both a passion and training for addressing the needs of children being "left behind." Education Minnesota President Tom Dooher needs to stop thinking about protecting the status quo and embrace the opportunity for growth that this represents. CHRISTY PETTIS, MINNEAPOLIS
