TNTP Teaching Fellows Reviews

Cons

The summer academy is really intense, and if you're making a lot of sacrifices to go through it, it's a big risk. About half of the fellows at my site dropped out or were cut during the summer, some on the very last day. I made it, just barely in "green," but it was the worst 6 weeks of my life. I was constantly sleep-deprived, stressed and anxious.

There's some luck involved in terms of who you get as your site coordinator, your coach, your students, etc... and it stinks if you get dealt a bad hand and fail because of it.

Some of the TNTP staff is really nice, but sometimes I felt like they were mocking us for struggling in the summer program when they had no idea (or had forgotten) how grueling and scary it was for us.

Not sure whether this should be a "Pro" or a "Con," but a dirty little secret... you can end the summer on "Green" (pass) "Red" (instant fail if you go too far into red at any point to come back out) or "Yellow" (they'll think about it.) Basically, if you end on "Yellow," they'll pass you if you have a job lined up and fail you if you don't.

Cons

The DC Teaching Fellows program (summer 2016) was unprofessional, disorganized, and full of condescension for it's participants. It was unbelievable to me that the trainers/organizers treated these very impressive and well educated participants with such such a stern, authoritative, and frankly (at times) disrespectful approach. The demands were inhumane. The unpaid hours involve in training were extraordinarily demanding. I felt like I was in the military. It did not build me up and inspire me. Instead, the approach seemed to be one of "breaking" people. Belittling the participants was commonplace. Many of the trainers boasted of their "five years" teaching in the public school system. For some reason, they thought that this made them experts, but their performances would suggest otherwise. Most of the trainers were arrogant and unsympathetic to the problems the participants faced. I had to leave. It was a very unhealthy environment. Many people relocated from all over the country and had to support themselves during this training. The total amount that people lost (in dollars) would be staggering. I know many people who left as I did. I happened to live in the DC area, so the loss wasn't as great as many of my fellow participants.

Cons

Your working for free for 12hrs a day in the summertime. They hid a lot of things until you actually get to the program. Your going to be doing a lot of work.

Cons

There is no due process in this organization. Fellows are voiceless and threatened with being kicked out of the program each day. Expectations are unclear and oftentimes arbitrary as new punishments and threats of being barred from being able to teach in the fall arise.

Cons

Where to start... There is absolutely no support beyond the 6 week summer training. TNTP assigns "virtual" coaches that live around the country. My coach had 60 other fellows to coach and as you could imagine, could not coach any of us in the way that a first year teacher in the inner city needs. My suggestion- find another program or go back and get your masters. Don't waste your time or money here. This company is all about making money and don't care if you succeed or not.

Cons

Exploitative
Unhelpful
Misleading
Callous

REMEMBER:
- TNTP gets +/- $1,000,000 grants from school districts to provide and train new teachers. By end of summer, there were no more than 50 teachers who passed PST. Out of 120+. Some of these left in the first week of school, utterly unprepared.

- New teachers move from all over the country to train during summer. Many leave their jobs and commit fully to teaching. Training is role-playing and repeating by rote certain phrases and reactions, especially from "Teach Like a Champion." Lost $

-Teachers then placed in a summer-school classroom. My training was in a high school. The main teacher did not have any lesson/curriculum planned. No guidance. I never saw a full lesson in my content area over the summer training. I never met an experienced teacher in my specialty and grade level over the summer (or for my whole time teaching). I struggled with lesson planning, but was given no models of successful lessons to read and watch. Yes, we saw excerpts. No, we never saw a full lesson with real students.

-Teach unpaid for hours each morning, train in afternoon, plan lessons at night. No chance to retrieve lost income over summer. The teaching and planning requires us to impart a semester's worth of learning to our students in 12 days of summer school. At the end of every session, the main teacher passed her students based on who had showed up every day and marginally attempted the worksheets she gave. When we weren't teaching, we all sat in the field room, planning lessons and supervised by 1 or other coach.

-Encouraged to take a job at the first school that offers to hire, not to reflect or question fit at school. Some teachers miserable.

-No actual training in content area during summer or schoolyear. Instead, we had online learning modules about lesson planning on "Blackboard." In PST, we spent hours sitting in a classroom together staring at screens, reading breakdowns of NexGen standards and watching snippets of classroom videos. Never even saw a video of a full lesson.

-The work for the modules is involved but mostly busy work. During schoolyear, it takes 3-8 hrs that can be poorly spared from a busy schedule. When projects are turned in, 4 tepid comments maximum, mostly praise. No advice on how to improve, even though I described in detail the challenges my students and I face.

-Most of my students had no concept of foundational standards to our grade level. I was docked points in 1st observation because the lesson was remedial. Kids did not know what atoms, or phases pf matter were, but I was supposed to stick to the standard on kinetic theory rather than have a review lesson. Even though it was remedial was aligned to the grade level standard; the observer did not know or understand my content area.

-No support is provided in the school-year, beyond ~20 min bimonthly "coaching" meetings

- No advocacy for teachers

-For all this, you get to pay $5,500 tuition. I was buying breakfast, pencils, supplies on top of paying off the cost of moving, settling in a new city, rent, student loans. $550 is my groceries for 2+ months. I had a passion for teaching and loved my kids. However, I did not receive support or guidance. I still have never seen a full lesson in my content area (whether to adults or children). I spent hours on lesson plans. By Christmas, the other teacher in my content area had resigned. For 2 months I planned for both classes and differentiated for his EC kids. There was no recognition of this extra work or support when I described my stress and need for advice. I was inadequate. I was a new teacher with 150 kids of my own whom I loved, but who also had immense challenges. The other teachers at the school could commiserate, but not help. My coach gave a couple tepid sentences of advice when I asked her about lesson planning, teaching kids who could not read or speak English.

I resigned. I am still on the hook for the rest of the $5,500 and am getting calls. By my calculations, TNTP already got almost $20,000 per new teacher from the school district for this school year. They put new, idealistic teachers with insufficient training into classrooms. My coach had about 10 other trainee teachers in our Blackboard group. Where is all the district's money going? Certainly not serving the students.

The first response from the coordinator in my area after I told TNTP I was resigning?

"Even if you resign you still have to pay the full $5,500."

I never mentioned the tuition.

Cons

-Quit/fired? No problem. They still want your $4,500 and will be down your throat to collect
-Feedback is GREAT during pre-service training. It's contradictory during your in-service coaching
-Coach will SHUN you if you are fired (you'll never hear from him/her again)
-TNTP will defend the school before they defend you as one of their members
-Some graders score much more harshly than others
-MANY members are fired/quit, but they won't tell you that
-Remember, it's a BUSINESS first, a NON-PROFIT second--they just really want your $
-I wouldn't trust the numbers/stats they show you at PST
-Work/life balance is non-existent

Cons

The summer training was the worst and most intense 8 weeks of my life, there was a huge variation in quality and style between the different school sites and coaches, and a lot of my friends quit or got cut (even on the last day).

Honestly, if I had known what percentage of my fellows would quit or get cut, I probably wouldn't have done the program. But now I have passed and I am happy -- so just consider the following:

- Can you be miserable, sleep-deprived and depressed for 8 weeks... and still get to the school at 7 am, play nice with the staffers, and have a smile painted on by the time the kids arrive?

- Can you graciously take tons of advice from different people and apply it towards mechanically passing a rubric that at times feels very arbitrary or even wrong?

In the end, it's only 8 weeks, and those two factors were the major deciding factors (at least at my site) for who quit/got cut and who made it.

Cons

The program is disorganized and dishonest. We were constantly getting information at the last minute or taught how to do something after we should have been doing it. We were told we would get our certificate in one year, then later told it would take three. And then, when we are struggling because we are under-prepared and over-worked we are told that we don't care enough about the students. The way that the leaders interact with the fellows is rude and condescending. I am angry because of the way I've been treated, and I'm stuck having to do it because I racked up debt over the two months I couldn't work this summer and now I have to pay an additional $5000 on top of it which would be immediately payable if I quit. It is even worse because the students I teach are left with an unprepared and chronically exhausted teacher who isn't able to do her job. I regret doing this and I can't even get out of it right now.

Cons

High work load. Stress inducing nd energy zapping boot camp. Idealistic at times. Easy acceptance into the program allows for negative and pessimistic people with poor work ethic which ruins morale.