Letter to a TFA-curious college student

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to ask you about your experience. I have a few questions so I'll list them below:
1. What grade and subject were you a teacher for?
2. Why did you choose the above subject and grade?
3. What was the most important thing you learned from your experience?
4. What was the most difficult part of your experience?

I'll preface my answers to your questions by saying, I would strongly discourage almost everyone from joining Teach for America. I would recommend you Google "should I join TFA", look up Teach for America funders, and read over Gary Rubenstein's blog starting with his most recent TFA related post.

Before you apply or join, ask yourself, why do I really want to do this? For me, I thought it would improve my chances of getting into a top tier law school. TFA had significantly more cachet when I joined than it does today. And yet, TFA did not help me get into a better law school than I would have gotten into straight out of my undergrad program.

Maybe you are looking for a formative experience to inspire a future career. Do something else where you can do less damage. Cut trail for a season in a national park. Travel abroad. Volunteer.

Maybe you actually want to be a teacher. Why not just enroll in a masters program? Doing so will put you on a path to be a part of the most under appreciated profession in America. Joining TFA will undermine that profession by messaging that anyone with a few short weeks of training can be a professional teacher. It's challenging for teachers' unions to negotiate better pay when the supply of potential replacements is artificially high.

Maybe you think that education inequality is the civil rights battle of our time. I assure you, you will not be a good teacher with 6-8 weeks of TFA training. The kids in your classroom will need a great teacher. And as a result of your lack of skill and experience, those kids will lose an entire year of instruction.

Maybe your second year goes better. Maybe it goes so well that you make up for how badly the first year went. Then what? Stay in teaching? See the above "why not just enroll in a masters program?" 

Maybe TFA convinces you to stay another year, two, or ten. Eventually you will either burn out, but have been good enough to be able to make a small living in a school-adjacent education role (consultant, sales, bureaucrat, nonprofit). The work will be significantly easier and have marginally better pay than what you are used to in the classroom. It will still be scandalously low compared to your college friends who by that time will be lawyers, doctors, engineers, bankers, and running businesses of their own.

The other option is you will burn out but not have been good enough to cash out into one of these other positions. In that case you either stay in a career you hate or you start over and make a career change. Thinking about what career to start when you finish college is challenging. Imagine what it will be like doing that a second time, but when you are thirty. If you can imagine that, why not just fast-forward to the career you think you'll change to after you burn out?

1. What grade and subject were you a teacher for?
I taught 6th grade global history for a year and then switched to English Language Arts, but still 6th grade.

2. Why did you choose the above subject and grade?
It was so long ago, I honestly do not remember all the details around placement. I do not remember choosing the above subject or grade. I think I did express preference for New York City.

3. What was the most important thing you learned from your experience?
I learned a lot about poverty, inequality, racism and the South Bronx. I learned a little about teaching.

4. What was the most difficult part of your experience?
My first year teaching was the 2005-06 school year, so nearly 20 years ago. It remains one of the hardest experiences of my life.