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Donate Now Since my own first year in 1991, I’ve been very interested in the quality of teacher training at the institute. Each year, I’ve done my own sort of evaluation of what they’re teaching and how well they’re doing it. It used to be the feedback forms from my workshop. Since this year, for…

Donate Now Is it better to succed at trying to be good or fail at trying to be great? This is a fundamental question that’s at the heart at my differences with TFA with regard to the training of the CMs. Looking over the curriculum and talking with CMs, I realize that TFA is holding…

A critique of the TFA ‘Classroom Managment & Culture’ booklet. At the institute they use as a text a series of books that comprise the institute curriculum. Who wrote these books, I’m really not sure. But looking over the 162 page ‘Classroom Management & Culture’ booklet, I get a lot of information about what sorts…

The ‘evolution’ of the TFA institute. You’d expect the 2008 institute, eighteen years after the first institute at USC, to be very different and superior to its 1990 ancestor. As someone who was around since the second institute, and who had the opportunity to participate in fifteen consecutive institutes from 1991 until 2005, I’m in…

The problem with ‘investing.’ This is a buzzword I’ve been hearing a lot from new TFA CMs. ‘Investing,’ they’ve learned, is a very important thing to establish in your class right away. If the students are invested, they will be motivated to learn. If they’re motivated to learn, they will learn, which will make them…