Will Brehm 2:44
Jameson Brewer, Kathleen deMarrais, and Kelly McFaden, welcome to FreshEd.

Jameson Brewer 2:48
Thanks for having us.

Kathleen deMarrais 2:50
Happy to be here.

Kelly McFaden 2:51
Thanks for having us. We appreciate it.

Will Brehm 2:54
So, the three of you wrote a book in 2015 on Teach for America and it provided first-hand accounts, more or less, of the program by alumni -by corps members-, people who used to be in Teach for America. And in many respects that this volume contained counter-narratives that more or less critiqued the program in many ways. What sort of reception did that book receive when it was published in 2015?

Jameson Brewer 3:25
So, that first book, that was a collection of narratives from Teach for America, domestic United States of both corps members and alumni. I, myself, I am a 2010 metro Atlanta Teach for America alumni. And so both as a traditionally trained educator as well as a Teach for America, corps member, now alumni, this has always been work that I was interested in, and as I was a couple of years out of my experience with TFA, and doing some critical work of the organization I would continually get letters and emails from current corps members, or former corps members -alumni at that point- expressing some frustration with the organization. And there was sort of a general theme that usually rose from it: that they did not feel that they really had an outlet or a place to share these frustrations. So, what I did is, I partnered with Kathleen to provide a platform for a collection of some of these critical perspectives that -and I think from that, that text, it becomes clear that Teach for America as an organization had fought, for years to suppress and marginalize. And so that book came out in 2015. I think that the response from the organization, it was a critical response. It was a concerted attempt to once again marginalize the voices of these corps members and alumni, which is something that we specifically critiqued them of in that first text. And so, it sort of received a lot of attention both from TFA from TFA’s supporters and defenders. But it also became, for lack of a better term, the first sort of publicly facing official collection of narratives that provided a different perspective of Teach for America, other than the ones that had gone through Teach for America’s filtering public relations arm. And I think that that disrupted the sort of national narrative that Teach for America had built over -at that time- 25 years, that TFA is this great organization. That you know, it might have some struggles, but effectively, everything that they do is for good. They are not hurting students; they are not hurting communities. And then here is this text where people from the inside for the first time were able to unify their voices together and tell a different story. And that disruptive nature, I think, was difficult for Teach for America to work through for the couple of years after the text came out. And I do not think that it was specifically because of our book, but I think that it contributed to it -Teach for America had a significant reduction in their recruitment in the United States. And I think again, that’s part of what became a growing tide of a national conversation of looking deeper into this organization.

Will Brehm 6:28
Did that response surprise you in any way?

Jameson Brewer 6:31
No. Having come from the organization myself, they’re very intentional about putting forward the best possible image. Which I think we can agree that every organization, or corporation, does and that is well and fine for what that is worth. But I think that their animosity towards people speaking out, effectively reified and reinforced what some of the narratives that we had collected were trying to say: is that they had for years felt as though their voices had been silenced. And then here is this multi-million-dollar organization, spending millions of dollars per year in their public relations, working overtime to keep those voices silent. And so, again, you would expect that from sort of corporations and organizations, but when we are talking about an organization that is dedicated -in theory- to helping children, to helping students, at least for me, those two things are difficult to square.

Will Brehm 7:33
So, fast forward five years from that original collection about Teach for America. And now the three of you have teamed up to publish a collection on Teach for All, which is more or less the global organization that is trying to implement Teach for America-like programs in other countries. How did this book come about?

Jameson Brewer 7:55
Yeah, so I will take this one as well. As soon as we published our critique of Teach for America domestic United States, I likewise received dozens and dozens of emails from across the world from Teach for All corps members, or alumni, or fellows as they’re called, effectively asking for a similar type of possibility for them saying that everything all of the critiques that they had heard of, and particularly from our first text about Teach for America, they were seeing themselves and experiencing themselves in their various different countries underneath the larger Teach for All umbrella. And of course, that can include it is a Teach for … and then fill in the blank country, generally speaking, using the English language. And so we slowly at that point, but we started to piece together this realization that not only did our first edition provide an outlet that was obviously necessary and integral to this national domestic conversation, but as Teach for America has expanded, and exported, it is sort of colonial approach to education across the globe, these corps members across the globe, or fellows, were experiencing the same things in their conversations with us, you know, sort of informally. What they were seeing happening to the local communities, and the students that they were teaching was nearly identical to what was happening with Teach for America. And so, we felt a sense of general obligation that if we weren’t going to tell the story of Teach for America, that we could not ignore the organization’s efforts to export that sort of very narrow, market privatization controlling efforts towards pedagogy across the globe. And that is what brought us to piece together, effectively, what you can call, I guess, a second volume of this text that expands this perspective beyond the borders of the United States.

Will Brehm 9:57
So, I guess maybe it would be helpful for some listeners to explain a little bit about, you know, what Teach for All is.

Kelly McFaden 10:04
So, as Jameson alluded to in some of his previous response, Teach for All is really the international arm of the domestic Teach for America program. And in that construct, what they are doing is they are taking sort of highly credentialed, sought after graduates from prestigious institutions -at least that is where it started- and training them over a relatively short, five to six week, sort of boot camp-esque training session, and then placing them in low or underperforming schools. And so, the idea here is that these really well-regarded graduates are going to come in and fix these inherent problems in that education system. And so, it was initially expanded, starting in 2008, with a couple, I think four or five partnerships around the globe, and now they are in 54 countries, on six of the seven continents. And I think one of the other important things to think about as we are talking about and conceptualizing Teacher for All and even Teach for America, is they are not actually a program designed to create teachers. Their explicit mission is to develop leaders and to develop leadership to fix the sort of problems of existing education systems.

Will Brehm 11:27
So, does that mean they expect their recruits and corps members to move beyond the classroom? Or to be leaders inside the classroom? How does being a leader and not a teacher actually play out?

Kelly McFaden 11:41
So, you know, they certainly in their public marketing don’t say not to stay in education. But I think that the experience of many former corps members speaks for themselves and that they typically don’t remain in the classroom. The idea is that they are developing these leadership skills, and then they’re going to move into potentially leadership within a school building or a school system, into politics, into law, into entrepreneurship. One of the things, you know, if you peruse the Teach for All website, is they offer the sort of dangling connections to some prestigious graduate schools that if you’re a Teach for All participant, you know you’ll get extra scholarships and an extra special treatment at graduate schools. And if you look at the list, it is very impressive. It is Harvard, it is Stanford, it is Oxford, none of which are graduate programs in education. They are business schools and their law schools. You know, so I think they are not really training people up to be educators and leaders in the classroom. If that happens, it seems more incidental to their overall mission as opposed to purposeful.

Will Brehm 12:50
Hmm, interesting. So, it is like part of the CV building in a way. These applicants really do know what they want in the future, and that might not include being a teacher forever.

Kelly McFaden 13:03
Absolutely.

Will Brehm 13:04
So, then is there any interest and appeal to the teaching profession that, you know, these applicants -I know we’re speaking in generalities here, but you know it just seems like the way it is being painted is that a lot of these applicants are either naive and don’t understand what’s happening, or they’re sort of very strategic and just using Teach for All and you know its affiliates to get to the next stage in their career development.

Kathleen deMarrais 13:32
I want to kind of build on what Kelly has said. I think we have to look back at TFA when it was first envisioned by Wendy Kopp, and this was in the late 80s and early 90s. There was a tremendous critique of education and education schools. She called the system “dilapidated”. The need was for these bright, well educated, highly motivated people. And it was a time when there was a lot of volunteerism out there. So, she really capitalized on this. And she recruited people from these highly selected colleges. The whole notion of this elite corps was really important at the time. And with that two-year commitment and the economy wasn’t the best, this was a way to have two years where they could delay any kind of job search, the challenge of you know searching for that corporate position right out of college. And so, they could take a break. They were altruistic, 20-year olds, and this was a resume builder. They were promised connections to corporate executives. Kopp was really well networked, and she was part of a network at Princeton that connected CEOs with the organization. So, I think this has a long history of a temporary organization that is a resume builder. The organization has connections to graduate schools. There is all kinds of benefits to people going into this. But at the same time, there is a bit of naivete, and you know, 20-year olds want to do things that give back. They want to help the community, and this was one way of doing it. I think that you know, this is not a new idea. People went to the Peace Corps, people went to VISTA, people went to AmeriCorps right out of college. So, this is not a novel idea, but it has been built into this mega organization.

Will Brehm 15:45
It is interesting. So, how many of these narratives that you received are they typically 20 something-year-old writing into you? Or is it upon like reflection after many years thinking back at their experience in Teach for All?

Kathleen deMarrais 15:59
I think that would be that reflection. One thing about narrative work is that people live through it, think about it, move on to something. And when they are ready, they can critique it. They can look critically at the experience.

Will Brehm 16:17
Yeah. So, what were some of the critiques that, you know, some of these applicants or these former core members offered?

Kelly McFaden 16:24
So, I think one -and this is sort of going back to your initial question as well about naivete- I think some of the participants, you know, have come to Teach for All, as Kathleen was saying, out of a desire to do something good. And I think it taps into this larger narrative that many societies have around teachers as saviors. And the idea that I am going to go in, and I am going to save these kids from themselves. They have a terrible life. They have a terrible school, you know I am going to care about them in a way that other people don’t, and I’m going to go in, and I’m going to, you know I’m going to really be that person for them. And I think that comes from a really wholesome place. But I think it is also a very problematic narrative that’s perpetuated by society and the media. And so, I think, you know when they are coming to this, I think they are coming often with very good intentions. And I think sometimes what we sort of saw in the narratives is those intentions were very quickly disillusioned, right. So, they came in very optimistic and very excited and then they realized, in many cases, some more quickly than others that this was not quite the sort of utopian panacea that was promised and that in many cases, they felt like they weren’t achieving the goals that they set out in terms of helping students or in terms, in some cases of helping themselves. Some of them had some really negative experiences in the schools because there are a lot of conflicts that come as well between traditionally trained teachers and teachers who are coming through these sort of fast track programs, and the sort of inherent conflicts that can come between those two groups as well.

Will Brehm 18:12
Hmm, interesting. So, the sort of discourse that they might have bought into during the application stage quickly changes once they hit the ground inside classrooms and start teaching and realize that it’s not exactly as Teach for All might have purported.

Kelly McFaden 18:31
And some seem to come to that conclusion relatively quickly. Like, for example, the Argentina narrative. It was a co-written piece, and one of the authors was saying, from, you know, sort of week two or three of the six-week boot camp, they were starting to question, and they were starting to have doubts. And then there were others who are, you know, five years out of their experience and only upon reflection have now said, “Now that I’ve lived all the rest of this part of my life, I now question my decision to have participated, you know, years ago”.

Jameson Brewer 19:06
Which I think is something that I noticed across both the text that we have but also from my own personal experiences with the organization. There is a chapter in our first book that part of the title of the chapter is “bait and switch”. And so I think it speaks back to what both Kathleen and Kelly are reflecting on here is that these corps members, or these alumni, being reflective in their process -and I just want to say, how brave I think it is for these individuals to speak out, because I agree with Kathleen, most corps members, or fellows, across through Teach for All -I genuinely believe that they go into this work with a sense of wanting to do good and with good intentions. And I think that it’s very difficult to reflect back on that experience and realize that the organization might be nefarious, and it might be doing harm but in particular, recognizing that as an individual affiliated with that having to deal with the questions of what does that mean for my role in this process. And so, I think that it takes a lot of courage to reflect critically on that organization but in particular, an organization where you felt to begin with that you were doing good, and now you’re reflecting that maybe the organization itself is doing harm, and what that means about your relationship with that. And again, it is very difficult to be reflective on their own, to think back through these experiences. And that is not exclusive to Teach for America or Teach for All, but then to be able to do so, from this point of realization that the organization likely is doing some harm. It’s a multi-level process, I think, that people come to and we have plenty of corps members and alums from across the globe reach out to us and share their stories, but I had not yet come to be comfortable sharing them just for their own personal reasons. But we also had individuals who wanted to share their stories, but for fear of what their reflectivity might mean, they asked about using pseudonyms for fear of reprisals from both organizations. And so, again, just to put a pin on this point, I want to be very clear about how brave and courageous I think it is to speak out against a multi, multi-million dollar company about the role that the organization plays in perhaps doing harm for students.

Will Brehm 21:37
I mean, it sounds like many of the authors are, in a sense, being whistleblowers.

Jameson Brewer 21:41
Yeah, I think that is exactly right.

Kathleen deMarrais 21:44
I am agreeing with both Kelly and Jameson here. I was struck when some of the narratives came back, and some were a little more muted in their voices than others, but some particularly the one from Argentina, they just came right out and said, around the whole program from the CEO to the trainers, they knew almost nothing about education or the vulnerable communities they sent members to. So, that six-week training -and this really jumps to how the program works out in practice here- from that six-week training, that wasn’t about pedagogy, that wasn’t about translating or helping these individuals take that content knowledge they may or may not have had and really work with students in these under-resourced communities because the trainers didn’t know the communities, they don’t know pedagogy. And so, you’ve got this situation where they’re building this solidarity within the group, and then they’re being asked to work on this accountability model where the fellows themselves are being held accountable for the learning of the students, many of whom were from communities where that wasn’t really going to be possible. These fellows were not able to do what needed to be done. They did not have the pedagogical skills to do that. They did not have the resources to do it. And they were being blamed if they did not make gains on their tracking sheets. So, it is built on a corporate model. And I think those narratives we have, the individuals saw through that model, it was not what they wanted. They really wanted to be in the communities but did not have the tools to be able to work effectively with those communities.

Will Brehm 23:52
And it really seems like this corporate model in a way that sort of promotes a one-size-fits-all solution to pretty much any education problem, it seems like obviously, is decontextualized and therefore quite problematic in reality. And it sounds like that is what a lot of these authors that you have in your collection and maybe even more of people that you have received emails from and letters from. It seems like, you know, there is this real understanding of socio-economic contexts truly matter in the way education operates in a given society.

Jameson Brewer 24:31
And I think that you know there’s always been this sort of surface-level treatment of what it means for students to come from those sort of lower socioeconomic and marginalized cultural backgrounds. And again, that merges with the corps members hope to do good. The question then, of course, should be, to what extent are those groups being exploited to provide a platform for these individuals often from well to do prestigious backgrounds that don’t match up or align with the communities that they’re teaching. How is it possible that their presence there and not just being there, but being there in sort of an educational malpractice way, how does that exploit the very groups of communities and students that the organization professes to help, and in fact, perhaps was the reason that members wanted to be affiliated in the first place. And I think that that’s something that both the organization both of them, the domestic and international, community partners that partner with these organizations, but all of us as key stakeholders in education really need to ask about the sort of predatory nature of corporate influence and corporate paradigms pushing into these vulnerable communities across the globe.

Kathleen deMarrais 25:50
I’m going to jump in I think it benefits the corporations, it benefits people in the government who don’t want to do things structurally. So, because TFA and TF All run on this meritocratic ideology that gives everybody a pass. We do not have to look at the structural inequalities in communities and schools. We just have to have, you know, a program like this, where they’re going to go in and promise great results. But there is no structural analysis there at all of poverty of defunding these schools and communities.

Will Brehm 26:35
Which can be obviously, so different across contexts.

Kathleen deMarrais 26:39
Yes.

Will Brehm 26:40
So, when you think about your two books – you know the book on Teach for America and the counter-narratives there and then this one on Teach for All and some of the counter-narratives –  they are similar programs, if not the same. I think Jameson you said earlier “Teach for X, insert country name”, but are there any differences that sort of jumped out at you when you were reading these narratives?

Jameson Brewer 27:03
That is a difficult question. I think that it is clear that the similarities are what are glaringly apparent. To be honest with you, the most obvious difference between the texts and the experiences across the members affiliated with our first and second volume is literally, for the most part, the context in which it is happening. Whether that is across the United States -and we were very intentional with our first text about getting a good geographic representation of Teach for America domestically in the United States, as well as being intentional about doing our best to get a good geographic representation across the globe with Teach for All- but outside of the unique and specific contexts in which these corps members find themselves it’s difficult to suggest that there are massive or even small differences between the approach because effectively the recruitment, the training, the sort of dispositions that include a lot of deficit ideologies about marginalized students, whether that’s race-based or whether it’s class-based, and it is pretty standard across both organizations. And again, I think that, you know, a Big Mac made by McDonald’s here in the United States, you know, might be called something different in another country, might have a little bit of a cultural or contextual tweak to it, but effectively, the goal of that corporation is to make the experience for the consumer the exact same because they’re very standardized, one size fits all approach to how they make hamburgers. And I think that Teach for America’s approach and how they think about -not just students- but how they think about the world and the world that they want to reform is standardized across the globe. And so outside of the small cultural or contextual nuances, the experiences both from the Teach for America and Teach for All corporate side as well as those from the teachers who join them are effectively identical. And again, that is by design.

Will Brehm 29:18
Now, I have to ask, have you heard from Teach for All since the publication of this book? How have they reacted to it?

Jameson Brewer 29:25
The reaction from the second volume has been noticeably muted compared to the first. As I said, our first book specifically included a section about how Teach for America responds to criticism and in fact, sort of to reinforce that point when that first book came out, they spent a good deal of time and money critiquing and attacking the book and the individuals in it. With this text, it’s been almost silent. And two things. I was contacted a few times by the research department at Teach for All, once they heard that we were developing this book asking sort of the production schedule of the book, they were very interested to know, particularly which countries, which of their partner affiliations that we would be including chapters on. My engagement with him was courteous and respectful. Not intentionally vague. But of course, when you are developing this book, and of course, their narratives, we had individuals who again, as I’ve already mentioned, sort of were fearful and wanted to pull their chapters and things like that. So, my interactions and communications with them were as honest as they could be at the time. Since the book has come out, I’ve not heard anything from Teach for All, and I’ve not seen any sort of official stance or statement from the organization. And I think that in some ways, that’s sort of a response to the negative feedback that they got from the first time that we went into this relationship with them with our first chapter. There was a couple of pieces that came out by Nonprofit Quarterly, who specifically critiqued Teach for America’s response to our first book. They pointed out that again, the book raises some serious questions about how Teach for America tries to marginalize and silence dissenting voices. And their response to that was to try to marginalize and silence the voices. And so, this sort of, even outside of the education world, sort of started, you know, not pointing a finger but raising some questions for Teach for America: If you’re doing what they’re saying you’re doing, you can’t then say you’re not doing it. And so, I think to some extent, the negative feedback that they got from the world for their sort of harsh response to our first text likely has informed them to be very muted with our second text.

Kathleen deMarrais 31:55
I think we need to consider how well-funded this organization is. I have done some work early on and looked at just the foundation funding for TFA. And this would have been from about 2000 to 2011. And during that time, they generated $ 267 million in grants from various organizations such as Fidelity and the Dell Foundation and Broad. And that’s just part of the funding. Now, I have not tracked that since 2011, but this is a huge organization that’s highly thought of by the wealthy philanthropists and Congress. They are able to leverage congressional funds for the field experiences and so on. So, for our authors to write these narratives in the face of that kind of an organization, as Jameson said, takes a lot of courage. And I am just really thankful that these individuals could step forward and resist this huge organization and begin to get the word out that this is not all that it could be or that it promises to be.

Kelly McFaden 33:27
It is important to echo the precarious position that some of these individuals are in. Because as we’ve been discussing, there is a very strong network, not only of funding, but also, you know, one of the things that the Teach for All website promotes is because this is a quote, ‘leadership development program’. You know they’ll say, “Oh, we have 30 members, you know, who work in the ministry in Chile” or they have these sort of broad political connections in the countries in which they’re also operating. So, it is not even just … I think it is important to reaffirm what Jameson and Kathleen are saying that the willingness of these individuals to come forward with a critique is very noteworthy. And I think it would be good to see more of this moving forward, but I think there is also an inherent risk depending on what position you are still in within the country. Are you still a practicing teacher? What sort of liability are you exposing yourself to by critiquing this incredibly powerful and far-reaching organization?

Will Brehm 34:34
Yeah, it is so fascinating, because you know Teach for America obviously has deep political connections at many different levels in America. But now Teach for All seems to be establishing those sorts of connections in all different countries, plus at these sort of global level at the World Bank, places probably like the UN, and so, you know, the political power and might seem to be rising. And so, the stakes are seemingly higher. So yeah, I mean, it is amazing that people step forward and wanting to write. And it is a really fantastic book. So, congratulations on being able to pull it together. And I hope you can get more narratives from more countries to keep showing, you know, an alternative narrative to teach for all. So, Jameson Brewer, Kathleen deMarrais, and Kelly McFaden, thank you so much for joining FreshEd. It really was a pleasure of talking today.

Jameson Brewer 35:29
Thank you for having us.

Kathleen deMarrais 35:31
Thank you for having us.

Kelly McFaden 35:33
Yes. Thank you for having us.

Want to help translate this show? Please contact info@freshedpodcast.com

Related Author Projects

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After the two-year commitment: A quant/qual inquiry of TFA teacher retention and attrition

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Multimedia resources

Teach for America: The non-profit that forgot its mission

The real world of Teach for America

Have any useful resources related to this show? Please send them to info@freshedpodcast.com