A 15-minute call might save you 15% on your car insurance, but if the folks from Geico really want to save people time and money they may want to stock their call centers with Baltimore principals—they need just one-third of that time to reach a hiring decision on a teacher. This blog post from a Teach For America recruit hired to teach in the school district offers insight into how little due diligence goes into hiring decisions in some tough city schools. The “idealistic young man” describes attending a school district hiring fair in Baltimore where he is surprised to hear Chancellor Andres Alonzo announce that every school year in Baltimore begins with 850 vacancies.
“This huge demand for teachers resulted in a rather confused, chaotic environment. Some teachers were being hired on the spot after a 5 minute interview at best. The lines for each school were like a meat processing plant, simply looking if you were certified in an area of need, and then moving on.”
That night, the anonymous TFA recruit bunked with a couple of Teach for America Corps Members (CMs) and was surprised by some of the war stories he heard.
“The things we heard about some schools in the district were completely crazy. I should preface this by saying that I am not at all dissatisfied with my decision to join TFA, even after hearing how rough some of these schools can be. But, I think everyone needs to know what they are up against. We heard stories of teachers quitting in their first week. One female CM quit because a gang member she offended the day before fire-bombed her classroom, meaning he threw a bottle full of lighter fluid into her room (molotov cocktail). Her principal merely encouraged her to “put out the fire and call the police”. The other, a male CM, quit after a student pulled a knife on him because he didn’t like his tone!”
Perhaps if they take longer than five minutes, they might give those idealistic TFAers time to change their minds.
