Recruitment. Planting Toxic Seeds in Fertile Soil: The Knowledge Acquisition, Achievement, and Behavioral Beliefs Inculcated into Teach For America Corps Members of Color

• In Event: AERA Teachers of Color Handbook Session 1

Abstract

Teach For America (TFA) has historically been a primarily White organization. To stave off continued criticism related to this point and to purportedly address the teacher-student ethnoracial demographic disparity in the US, TFA has recently sought to expand the number of non-White corps members within its program. Critical perspectives in the literature have argued that the organization has a legacy of employing a White savior mentality while enacting pedagogical and behavior expectations for students that align with White cultural assumptions of knowledge acquisition, achievement, and behavior. In this chapter we consider the counternarrative in the field on how teachers of color in TFA are trained and experience cultural competence, colorblindness, White-racial identity attitudes and cultural differences.

Authors

• Amber Kim, Independent Scholar

• T. Jameson Brewer, University of North Georgia

• Julian Vasquez Heilig, University of Kentucky