Pros

great resources, high-profile organization leads to great resume booster, great way to get a teaching certification if you weren't an undergrad education major

Cons

Beware because the organization doesn't fully describe the corps experience accurately. You literally are thrown into a inner city classroom with little preparation(and they don't paint the picture of this as they should... these students literally do not understand what school is supposed to look like. Be ready to get stuff thrown at you and to be cussed out simply for requesting students to sit down... you will be starting from ground 0 with these kids, even if they are in hgigh school) Sure they describe it like you're going to be making this stunning difference in your students lives but be ready to feel like, and often times be, a failure. Expect 60-70 hour weeks.

Advice to Senior Management

I know that the 'numbers game' is really important to you, but remember, we are actually people. Not Corp Member 1242.

Pros

Good for those interested in education policy, great place to start if you are a do-gooder

Cons

Inattentive staff, unfair school placement, mediocre culture

Advice to Senior Management

Focus more on CM support, ensure working relationships between local TFA sites and district management

Pros

- Abliity to work with other like-minded individuals who have extremely strong backgrounds
- Very strong professional development
- Collaborative group work enviroment (especially considering teaching tends to be very individual)
- Solutions-Oriented management
- Managers are always looking to improve your performance
- Very challenging work - but ultra-rewarding

Cons

- Not everyone is fit to be a teacher... and teaching is much harder than anyone ever tells you
- Long work hours - very easy to over work yourself and lose balance

Advice to Senior Management

Nothing major - but doing your best to help corps members find balance early on would be helpful... it is easy to burn out.

Pros

Great morale and team attitude that is truly focused on the mission of the organization
Solid name recognition throughout most industries

Cons

Inefficient with much of the decision making that is necessary for progress
Low pay for the amounts of hours and effort put forth

Advice to Senior Management

Work to streamline the process for decision making across all functions of the organization
Continue working with strong data to support staff members and corps members

Pros

Great mission. Support a good cause.

Cons

It consumes your entire life and the staff is not as supportive as they suggest they will be.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more understanding of what the CM's are going through and strive to put them before your other duties.

Pros

Great sense of purpose, interesting work on one of our nation's hardest problems
Varied job responsibilities from recruiting to mentoring to other

Cons

Sometimes the culture can be a little too goal focused when it comes to performance reviews which sometimes leads to easy goals being set.

Advice to Senior Management

I've always admired the leadership, especially after reading Wendy Kopp's book and seeing the difficulties and improvements that have already been made.

Pros

They are doing good work and truly believe in what they are doing. Many of the employees feel they are doing something special.

Cons

There is incredibly high turnover. Average tenure of less then 1 year. There is no institutional memory. Those that do stay are from the education/non-profit side and have difficulties with the realities of the business world.

Advice to Senior Management

Make a decision, are you a warm, cuddly non-profit or a corporate entity. You can't be both. When you make a change, do it with a plan, don't grow to fast. Get away from your "results oriented" mind set, all that means is you want it yesterday, and you don't care if it's even possible.

Pros

Though the job may be difficult, the ability to work with like-minded individuals made pursing the mission feasible and relatively enjoyable. TFA was wonderful regarding the amount of support available for its corps members. Loved interacting with my PDs and always felt refreshed after a meeting.

Cons

Long hours, and seemingly lack of respect from parents and administration (unrelated to TFA, but still part of the job).

Advice to Senior Management

Though many CMs are recent grads, institute and orientation should be handled more professionally and less like college 2.0. This would make the sudden transition into the professional working world that much easier.

Pros

I truly believe in what TFA does, and know that with the right people we can eventually eliminate educational inequity. The students we work with are AMAZING, and our teachers are going to work tremendously hard to see that they get what they deserve.
We are constantly completing reviews and evaluations, and the organization goes to great lengths to understand the feedback they receive, and to continue to improve on an individual and on a group level.

Cons

TFA is trying to do something that has never been done, successfully, before. Therefore, there we are constantly changing and evolving. This is necessary, and it's great that the organization is constantly working to "get it right", but this is also exhausting.

Advice to Senior Management

Still love the idea of a 3 year option for CMs with additional benefits for CMs. Also, many Program Directors make less than some of the teachers they are managing (particularly those in charter schools and higher paying districts). Finally, there should be incentives to get PDs to stay for more than one year.

Pros

This is a non-profit that accomplishes wonderful things in the world of education. The end result of the incredible effort made by you and other lower-tier employees helps improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in the United States that most need it. At the same time you become a member of a rapidly growing network that are supposed to have in mind the lessons they have learned while either being a corps member or employee at Teach For America, and have the ability and knowledge to help in the fight to eliminate educational inequity in the future.

Cons

Elitist, abusive, incompetent and you are constantly overworked with no reward, with promises of a future made but always seeing unqualified outside candidates get positions you are qualified for. The Human Assets department believes that the best way to ensure a work-life balance and fair spread of workload amongst employees and management levels is by constantly revamping the "performance" review to take more time, while most at the managerial level appear to believe that the performance review is the one item on the table that lower-level employees don't have to worry about completing.

Everything else, including taking on responsibilities that should be at the management level, is thrown upon the shoulders of those that receive the least compensation, recognition, and worst treatment at the lowest tier. One example is that "Coordinators," one of the lowest level positions are "Budget Trackers" while the Senior Vice Presidents are "Budget Managers." In practice, budget trackers are told to "manage up" the budget. This means they track, build, enforce, and present the budget to the "Managers" who just rubber stamp it and do none of the work.

Be warned, Teach For America has Human Asset "Business Partners" who are assigned to several other teams. While they insist that if you have a problem with your role or your managers, you can speak to these Business Partners anonymously. This is NOT TRUE. They WILL report your conversations to your managers and every level above they find necessary. This was not only my experience but the experience of several other coworkers, a fact that has been confirmed to me by at least one Vice President and a Business Partner's assistant.

Finally, if you are being hired into Teach For America at the management level or above, welcome to the glory days of your resume building as a social servant. You can live remotely, with all travel trips paid, work at home, reap great benefits, send most of your workload cascading on the shoulders of lower level employees that, unlike you, probably are taking a huge pay cut and living beneath their means, because they actually believe in the cause. Congratulations, you're in the club of CEOs on a non-profit holiday.

For those recent college graduates and entry-level workforce employees who truly believe in making a personal sacrifice to work for a cause, welcome to the days of being underpaid, overworked, and stepped on. And when you finally decide to leave for a better place, I would recommend against still believing in those promises of great things in your future and good recommendations. I've seen more than a handful of people get burned by vindictive, two faced managers.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn how to promote from within and advance those who are able to manage the workload of 3 or 4 people instead of miring them in a thankless dungeon of paperwork with empty promises of a better future.