Get promising young adults into the classroom, give them the opportunity to help children learn, and you’ll hook them on being teachers: That’s been Teach For America’s mantra for more than 36 years.
The national nonprofit, which trains and places college students in high-need schools, has faced challenges in recent years. New corps members fell from a high of 6,000 incoming teachers in 2012 to 1,600 in 2022, with a commensurate loss of TFA staff declines following the pandemic. The organization’s efforts to regain momentum have faced broader reluctance among college students to commit to teaching’s relatively inflexible hours and lower pay compared to other college-educated professions.
Now, TFA is going all-in on expanding its five-year-old Ignite tutoring fellowship and leveraging it to drive new interest in its teaching corps. The program’s rapid growth suggests a corps model with a lighter initial commitment and a focus on smaller-group, rather than full-class, instruction may help hook wary Gen Z college-goers.
TFA’s core program asks high-performing college graduates to commit to teach two years in a low-income school. Ignite begins while these talented youth are underclassmen, and requires they commit to only five hours a week of tutoring during K-12 school hours.
This year, the number of Ignite tutoring fellows outpaced active first- and second-year teaching fellows at 5,500 tutors, compared with 4,170 teachers. More than 500 Ignite fellows have so far transitioned to the teaching corps.
"[The tutoring corps] is growing so fast, and I think it speaks to the optimism and yearning to serve of so many college students today,” said Daniel Porterfield, TFA’s incoming board chairman. “As a learning opportunity ... this is really helping us recruit talent.”
The transition path is key to the tutoring model’s success, according to Aneesh Sohoni, who became TFA’s chief executive officer a year ago.
While Gen Z has repeatedly ranked purpose and impact as important factors in choosing a career, “we are hearing clearly from them, they have a lot of anxiety about their career,” Sohoni said. “They want to understand how their first job will set them up for their success alongside, of course, the success of students.”
About a quarter of TFA teachers remain in the classroom at least five years, and studies suggest they improve as educators more rapidly than non-TFA teachers in their early years.
Education Week spoke with Sohoni about how the group plans to adapt to changing pipelines for teacher recruitment and training. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How is the Ignite program broadening your teaching pipeline?
Our competitors [in other professions] are meeting students earlier and earlier, starting as early as freshman year, and trying to compel them that their pathway is the one students should pursue. Sometimes I hear students [are] worried that in their freshman year, if they don’t get into a consulting club on campus, then they won’t be able to get the internship that comes with being a part of that club, and that if they don’t get that internship, they won’t get a job.
Ignite’s been powerful because it serves as an early opportunity for sophomores, juniors, even seniors in college to try on what it means to work in education. The students we’re recruiting oftentimes are not education majors. It’s not their plan. We’re working to see how we can help them see this as an initial step in their journey. And we have found that many Ignite tutoring fellows then do apply and join our [teaching] corps.
How are you matching teaching to students’ long-term career goals?
The next generation certainly appreciates that education may not be the highest income they can achieve compared to other opportunities, but when you combine that with the impact, the purpose-driven career, the type of community they want to be a part of, [teaching] excites them.
The skills you get by having to work with students, motivate those students to achieve their goals, to work with other adults in the system—these are all very real leadership skills. Especially in the age of AI, they’re starting to see how teaching ... balances the best of what technology has to offer with what humans have to offer. At the end of the day, learning is very relational. It’s very much about working and having conversations, motivating and engaging students.
How is TFA dealing with mental wellness and stress for incoming tutors and teachers?
Gen Z cares about their well-being in all sorts of ways. When I was in the [teaching] corps, in the toughest of my own moments and challenges with my students and with my school experience, I had other corps members that I would turn to that would support me, that would remind me that I can do it, that I’m capable of achieving great things.
[Gen Z college students] are looking for community. They’re looking to be around other values-aligned people. I think they’re a little leery of what has happened with social isolation, given smartphones and social media, and also COVID. We actually hear from this generation that being part of a broader corps and community is very motivating for them.
Why is TFA including AI as part of new teacher and tutor training?
It is abundantly clear to me, having traveled to many classrooms across the country now, that AI is here. Students are using it both inside and outside of school, and teachers are using it both inside and outside of school. As our educators work across a variety of contexts and these contexts have adopted a variety of tools and a variety of guidance on how to use it, it’s our responsibility through preservice training and ongoing coaching and development to ensure our corps members both understand how the technology works, are fluent in how to utilize that technology, and also form their own judgment and discernment about when the technology can support and advance student learning—and when it actually could harm student learning as well.
