The Teach For America Teaching Model

Move 'em, use 'em up, move 'em out:

“I’ve heard a number of our alumni—people who are running schools and school systems—think a lot about different models for the teaching profession,” Kopp says. “Models sort of like in the law profession, where people come in and have to meet a very rigorous bar to make partner, maybe in year seven. You could consider a structure like that, where you try to recruit folks to spend five or seven years in teaching, and then retain a very, very few of them.”

I'm better at year ten than I was in year one through nine.

Where I have especially improved is in how I handle the problems students are dealing with OUTSIDE of the classroom that affect them INSIDE the classroom.

I am better at this part of the job because a) I have learned from previous years how to handle situations in productive way b) I have learned when to push and prod a student and learned when a hands-off approach would be better c) I am in my 40's and have developed socially, emotionally and psychologically above where I was when I was in my 30's so I instinctively know how to handle situations with students that, quite frankly, used to baffle me.

I have more life experience. I have more teaching experience. I have more work experience. I have less energy than I did in my thirties and I couldn't do the 10 hour/6 day a week that Kopp and the the other ed deformers want their missionaries to do.

But I am a better teacher.

In Kopp's world (or the KIPP world, or For-Profit Geoffrey Canada's world, indeed, even in Barack Obama's world), I am TOO OLD and TOO EXPERIENCED to be a good teacher.

This is an amazing thing to me.

When I first started this job ten years ago, everybody asked me if I had any experience at the job. Experience was a plus to getting work.

Now, if you have experience, you're on the chopping block.

Welcome to the new 21st century feudalism - the corporate overlords make all the decisions for your life and some are based simply on age and experience.

Too old, too experienced?

Move on.