If I were to become engaged after two weeks and married after five weeks of dating someone, you would think that was a poor decision.  If our military recieved only five weeks of training, we would question our national security and with good reason.  If a biology major took a five week course on cardiology, would you let him operate on your heart?  These scenarios seem ridiculous but there are many teachers starting this school years with only five weeks of education training.  Are you ready for your children to be under their "tutelage"?

Teach for America is a program that recieves much press, attention, and financial support from our government but I question its methods.  The Washington Post is reporting on new TFA recruits.  Read the article here.  TFA maintains that their college graduates, with five weeks of intense training, are fully prepared for the classroom and all the challenges that go with it.  I have had the experience of working with several TFA teachers.  The impact: less than stunning.  One TFA teacher, for example, was hired to teach Spanish at the high school level even though she only minored in the subject in college and did NOT have a spoken fluency of the language.  Another, hired to teach English, was a drama major and though she was a very talented performer, had no clue about grammar. 

I think that TFA tries too hard to make people into what they are not, or at least, into what they have not previously desired to become.  If I decide, upon my college graduation, that I want to be a commercial pilot the consumer has a right to demand sufficient training and behind the "wheel" experience.  Seriously, you can't even get your driver's license with only five weeks of training, yet we are going to allow 21 year olds with little to no classroom experience and only five weeks of training teach our children.  I don't think so.