I’m really not doing as good of a job of keeping this thing updated as I did last year 😦

I realize my last post was kind of a downer, and things are going somewhat better now.  But not before they got a bit worse.  I had an awful week two weeks ago.  Every day, it was a struggle to get out of bed and get to school.  I think a big part of it was the fact that I had been ill for a couple weeks, which was really sapping my energy, and I think my lack of energy made my mood so awful.  I was beginning to get concerned that if things didn’t change, I wouldn’t be able to keep it up.  Fortunately, this past last week went a lot more smoothly.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about TFA and education, in general and in the inner city.  I don’t think I’ve quite reached any conclusions, but I’ll probably start writing my thoughts down to really figure out what I’ve really learned from this whole experience.  I haven’t quite boiled it down to something concrete yet.

But one thing I feel pretty confident in saying is that I don’t see myself teaching as a career.  That probably seems painfully obvious if you’ve read anything I’ve previously posted.  But I have tried really, really hard to make this whole thing work out.  Last spring, I had all but decided not to come back, because I knew then that even if everything went more smoothly, just like everybody promised, I could still see that it wasn’t for me.  Well, everything generally is going better, but even on the best days, this job is a more-or-less joyless struggle.  But while I’m here I’ve still gotta try to do the best for the kids that I can do.

My TFA program director and my administration have been very supportive ever since I got put on my improvement plan.  In the City, at many schools, an improvement plan is nothing more than the first step toward booting your butt out the door, so I’ve got to hand it to them for actually putting in the effort toward literally trying to improve my skills.  And I’m trying, but I just feel bad that people are doing their jobs backing me up, but my heart’s really just not in it anymore.

It’s not that I don’t care about the kids, I just don’t believe that I could do a much better job even if I put more effort into it.  And I don’t think I have much reserve effort to put in.  Either my job’s not built with the framework for the students to ever possibly be successful, or I’m not built to do my job successfully.  I know I’m supposed to be framing my thoughts on what I can do for my students, increasing student achievement, building relationships, and so on.  And I really do try to do all of that.  Maybe I’m just selfish, but I have trouble seeing past my own unhappiness.

In any case, I’ve got two 5-day weeks until Thanksgiving.  Time to get my head back in the game.

Wow, it’s really been almost a month since I last posted.  This is bad because not only am I doing poor job of keeping people up to date, but I’m probably also losing thoughts I will wish I had written down to look back on in the future.  I had this crazy idea when I started journaling that maybe when I can see my whole TFA experience in perspective, there will be this “aha” moment when I see some radical insight that’s invisible to me in the moment.  Now mid-September through mid-October will be the missing piece that ruins my dream.  Oh well.

Seriously though, the last month has been pretty rough.  I’ve felt too bogged down and exhausted to keep up with most things outside of the day-to-day, much less journaling.  There’s a lot I’d like to write, if I had the time, but to make a long story short, I’m pretty frustrated and demoralized.   Sure, my room isn’t the circus it was last year.  But I’m frustrated for/with my students and I’m demoralized about my own performance.

I wrote this partial entry 10 days ago:

I am so frustrated right now.  We’re almost 6 weeks into the school year, and I’m still in Chapter 1 in my curriculum.  I have no idea what to do with these kids.  I feel like there is something going awfully wrong in my room.  I have spent 2 weeks on teaching students how to find the measure of angles in diagrams using angle relationships (like complementary and supplementary angles).

My first strategy was to give my Honors students packets with examples and definitions, and to have them read the packet and attempt the work.  Then, they were to come back to me with questions, which we would address as a group.  They, after all, should be capable of reading and interpreting examples.  The only difference is that I wouldn’t be reading it to them.  They threw an absolute fit, that I wasn’t going to go through examples first, yelling that I wasn’t teaching them.  After my administration witnessed a full-scale rebellion in my class against my strategy, they sat me down for an intervention concerning my methods.

So this week, I’ve brought the rigor waaaay down, and we’ve been talking about acute, right, and obtuse angles.  As it turns out, my kids are still struggling with the very basics.  But it almost seems as though I can’t possibly make class move slowly enough for everyone to succeed.  Today, we spent our second day on the very basics of complementary and supplementary angles with my regular geometry class (simply put—they  are pairs of angles that add up to 90 and 180 degrees, respectively).  I told them after reviewing the material that we were going to have a short, easy quiz.  I told them that the only 2 things they needed to know to score 100% on this quiz were that a) complementary angles add up to 90 degrees and that b) supplementary angles add up to 180 degrees.  I told them that if they had trouble remembering which was which, they could think of it this way:  90 comes before 180, C comes before S, and complementary comes before supplementary.  One of my classes just missed an 80% average, but my second regular geometry class averaged about a 65%.  My last class was so crazy that we didn’t even get to the quiz.

Well, today, 10 days later, we did a quiz today in class over complementary and supplementary angles, at a level of true high school rigor.  Frankly, they should have been ready for it.  At this point, we’ve spent more than 2 solid weeks on one concept.  The results were not encouraging.  My honors class averaged 63.5%.  My two regular geometry class that typically stay on task averaged 53.5% and 41.5%.  My last period class averaged an absolutely dismal 27.5%.

At the root of the problem, my students seem to be refusing to think critically.  I can slow down the material.  I can review.  I can reteach.  But eventually, the kids have to do it on their own.  And it’s not happening, and I don’t know what to do about that.

Which brings me to my second point.  I really don’t have any faith left in my ability to do my job successfully.  And by “my job”, I mean achieving the goal of providing expanded life opportunities for all of my students.  It’s not okay for me to have a lasting impact on just a couple students’ lives.  And that’s not just my own personal standard–it’s not okay by my administration, TFA, or many of my students’ parents.  But I am not reaching that standard, and I don’t know if I realistically can ever come even close.

I’m struggling just to achieve the awful results I’m achieving, and I’m drawing fire from every direction.  I’m not writing and delivering effective lessons and I’m not properly keeping up with my professional responsibilities.  Last week, the shoe finally dropped when I was put on an formal improvement plan.  I’m going to try with the little bit of reserve capacity for additional work I think I can put in to fulfill my improvement plan.  I’ve been working on new systems to help keep myself organized and to hold the students accountable.  But on the whole, I’m not going to lie, I just can’t visualize myself improving a whole lot.

There are people who do this job well, and there are fabulous teachers in some of the inner city schools.  I used to believe I could do most things that someone else out there is doing.  After a year and some change in teaching, it appears that teaching is not one of those things.  I feel like my efforts are severely misspent.  Hence the title of this post.

But, all of this is somewhat beside the point, because, dismal data and personal failure aside, at 7:50, I still need to be in school, ready to go again.  And it’s the prayers and encouragement of all y’all who are far away and the support of my ever-optimistic girlfriend that make it possible.  So I despite my dark mood, I do have plenty to be thankful for.

Week 4 of school started today, and I’m glad to report that I’ve been so quiet lately because things are generally running fairly smoothly.  It’s far from perfect, but things are going alright.

I have benefited greatly from having better management structures in place in my own room, and team-wide, although I know I still have work to do.  I need to be more consistent about giving immediate warnings.  Kids are getting too many chances to disrupt before receiving consequences.  Also, it’s tough to keep an eye on the little things like uniform issues, that slip my mind.

My main issue right now is investment.  The first couple weeks, I was really impressed by how motivated my students seem to be, but now I can barely keep them awake.  Sure, my lessons are dry, but even when I try to mix it up, I’ve got a lot of non-participators.  I think I might try to instate a daily points system again, although I am a bit leery of the additional paperwork that would involve.  Paperwork is my Achilles’ heel right now.  I am seriously lagging on my grades, and that is exacerbating the lack of student investment.

This year, I am trying to take a more active role in my school, and it’s going alright.  I feel like I’m producing more, as opposed to last year, where I felt like a drag on the system.  It definitely helps that the school day has is shorter and that I don’t have Hopkins class to worry about.  Still, I don’t feel I’ve escaped the grind, and I probably never will.  Back to work!

I’ll leave you with the speech I delivered at the TFA retreat yesterday.  I thought I’d be in front of 100+ people, but turnout was awful, and it ended up being more like 20.  Still, it was well received by the corps members and staff, dark humor and all.

Welcome Teach For America Baltimore Corps of 2008 and 2009.  I want to begin by expressing how extremely honored I am to have been chosen to address you today.

To the ‘09’s, if I calculated correctly, you have been in the classroom for only 14 days, but I bet it feels like a lot longer doesn’t it?

Even though it seems like forever ago, I still remember clearly driving up Pennsylvania Avenue for the first time to begin my TFA adventure at Coppin State during Induction.  I also remember how impressed I was with the rest of the ’08 corps and the energy you all brought that week.  It felt like if any group had the brains and drive to take on the achievement gap, it was us.  That Induction experience was also what motivated me to get so involved with Induction for the ’09 corps, and it was amazing to get to know you as well.  So once again, it’s a tremendous honor to stand in front of you.

Had the regional office wanted to pick a TFA cheerleader to speak to you today, they certainly would have picked somebody else.  I’m not going to name any names.  But the only reason I imagine they would pick me is because they know I’m not going to sugarcoat it.  It sure isn’t because I rocked the achievement gap my first year.

In fact, it’s no secret that I had all but decided not to come back for Year Two.  I know I didn’t have the worst placement or the most difficult administration, so I really can’t pass on the blame to anyone else.  I just got dominated by the challenges of the occupation day in and day out.  My first year of teaching required me to absorb more constant failure than I have ever experienced in my life and I didn’t think I could handle it for another year.

Like all of you, I sometimes get frustrated with teaching.  And I’m not just talking about the daily aspects of classroom management, planning and paperwork.  What I mean is that some days, I feel like the entire profession of teaching is faulty, and that I’ve been set up to fail.  I mean, anybody can show up every day and babysit, but my school and Teach For America expect me to be preparing kids for college.  And I take that charge completely seriously, because these students absolutely deserve every opportunity that the kids out in the top school districts have.  I feel that the occupation of being a successful classroom teacher is more than enough work for a small team of people, let alone one person.  And following that logic, if the game is rigged, then why play?

I am sorry to say that I really don’t have a canned story about Teaching For America for Little Timmy, who entered my Algebra class on a 2^nd grade math level and passed the HSA.  To be completely honest, Little Timmy doesn’t get me out of bed at 6am on a Monday morning.  No offense to Little Timmy.

I decided to come back for two reasons.  First, I knew I had signed up to do a job that needed to be done, and I knew I could do it better.  I also realized that there were changes I could make to my routine to make my lifestyle more sustainable.  And secondly, I came back because I’m still trying to find my role in changing the system.  The only way I can do this is by continuing to learn through experience.  I’m not sure I’ll ever be the teacher I would like to be, but I know that the students are systematically being shortchanged.  It’s clear to me that, despite the efforts of many hundreds of well-intentioned people, the system is completely messed up, and I want to be a part of the process of creating permanent change.

In the meantime, I am excited about a lot of things this year.  I am taking a more active role in getting involved in the lives of my students outside of class.  I am starting a computer programming club, coaching basketball, and tutoring students to get them ready to retake the Algebra HSA.

I don’t have much in the way of inspiration, but I can pass on what I have learned.

To be mentally able to return for year two, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was never going to be completely in control of the job.  I’m going to drop the ball on a regular basis, but that’s okay.  It’s also okay for me to say that I’m doing the best I can do.  So my first piece of advice is that when you mess up, it is okay to tell students, parents and administrators that although you haven’t gotten everything figured out or finalized, you are doing the best you can, and that you will be glad to take their recommendations into account going forward.  Because, simply put, you are not going to get everything right the first time.  And if you’re like me, it’s going to be mostly wrong.  To try to be a superhuman is to set yourself up for failure.

My second, and more important, piece of advice is to never forget that your purpose is to provide these students with an excellent education.  You may fail to live up to this, but if your decisions are driven by this vision, you will always be moving in the right direction.  For example, when Little Tonya is in your face and maybe not saying the most complementary things about yourself you’ve ever heard, you will be tempted to “get smart” back at her.  And while doing so might actually make her back down, it will also permanently damage your relationship with her.  It may feel less satisfactory, but if your only response to her is that your expectations are in place so that she can get an excellent education, you will always preserve your own dignity.  The same advice goes for interactions with parents and other adults, in the face of difficult and complicated interactions.

Last, but not least, maintain your work-life balance.  I know I’m preaching to the choir, since you are here at North Bay on a school night.  But seriously, although there is always work to be done, unless you are well rested and healthy, mentally, physically and otherwise, you are not capable of doing your best work for your students, no matter how awesome of a lesson you planned at 2am.  So let’s have some fun!

Thank goodness for long weekends.  If I were in charge, every first week of school would be followed by a long weekend.

My first week went pretty well, but I was exhausted again already by the end of day 1.  Granted, it was a ridiculously long day 1.  Due to computer difficulties, the student schedules were all sorts of jacked up.  Kids were double scheduled for certain periods, or not at all for others.  It was madness.

Concerned for how long it would take to sort everything out, two of the tenth grade teachers and I volunteered to stay late to create a new master schedule.  I summoned some of my skills from my time interning in the corporate world to create a spreadsheet to track class sizes as we went.  I have to give a lot of credit to my AP and one of the teacher on my team for coming up with original and revised schedules that allowed us to successfully schedule all of the students in a way that allowed every student to get the honors sections they needed.  The way the school budgets work here in Baltimore, schools have to make due with just enough staff to be able to cover the number of students.  It took till 9:30pm to get it done, but we made it happen.

Then I went home and took another couple hours to create the mail merge template to generate individual student schedules.  And then, I was up another couple hours still finishing my lesson plan for day 2.  It was 1:45 when I finally went to sleep.  The rest of the week went pretty well, but residual tiredness from my long Monday did bring down my energy.

The biggest difference so far between this year and last year is that I feel a lot more confident, and that’s making a big difference in classroom management so far.  That’s not to say that there haven’t been issues already, but I’m a lot better equipped to deal with them.  There are a lot of kinks to work out, but so far, it’s an entirely different experience.

It’s the night before the first day of school, and I’m feeling strangely peaceful.  If you had told me I’d feel so good about year two 4 months ago, I would have thought you were crazy.  But here I am.

Then, when I think about it, things really couldn’t be more different between now and this time last year.  My entire school is coming back with a year of operating experience that we didn’t have last year.  We’ve got school-wide discipline systems in place, and we’re prepared to get classroom culture right school-wide from Day 1.  I’m feeling relaxed from vacation time incredibly well spent.  This, as opposed to being fatigued from 5 weeks of Institute, followed immediately by 2 weeks of Summer Bridge, for which I was completely unprepared.  I’ve coming in with good materials and technology, as well a strong knowledge of my curriculum.  I don’t have the stress of being a tested subject.  I won’t be tackling a full-time load of grad school classes.  I’ll be teaching 10th graders, who I’ve already spent a year getting to know and whipping into shape.  I’m going to be assistant-coaching basketball, which I’m psyched about.
And most of all, I think the school schedule is going to facilitate teaching and learning, rather than impede it.  This year, we’ve got a 5-period, 70-minute schedule.  Most teachers I’ve spoken to agree that 70 minutes is the sweet spot of period length, and from my experience 4th quarter last year, I’d have to agree.

It took me a while to get my sanity back this summer, but I’m ready to get my teach on, and hopefully be a lot more effective, healthy, and happy this year.  Keep me in your prayers, as well as every other teacher in the city, especially our first year teachers.  My heart goes out to them!

School starts in less than a week, and I’m actually feeling pretty good about it.  I am completely refreshed from an awesome summer of travel.  Since the beginning of last week, I have been reporting to the building to work on curriculum and hash out upper school policies with the rest of the 9^th and 10^th grade teachers.  I am very excited that it looks like we are going to have strong administrative support from Day 1, and systems in place for making sure we have a much stronger level of classroom culture and discipline.  I’m personally trying to make sure I have all my T’s crossed and I’s dotted on Day 1, so that I can have a much more successful, much less stressful year.

The HSA scores came back a couple weeks ago, and I am very happy to report that disaster was averted.  Ultimately, 28% of our students passed the HSA.  This is not a number I am proud of in absolute terms, but it is 2% better than the city average.  And it’s pretty darn good, in context of the fact that for most of the year, we made due with barely half of the instructional time in Algebra I of the typical school.  I demand better performance from myself, but it has been redeeming to get acclaim from people who know how hard I tried and what roadblocks had to be negotiated.

In the results, there were some surprises.  Some students who goofed off all year put up exceptional scores, and one kid who barely showed up 2^nd semester even passed.  It just goes to show what these kids could accomplish if we could get them invested in their educations.  I also had some bright kids who put up disappointing numbers.  But for most students who didn’t pass, it wasn’t too hard to think back to blocks of misspent time that might have made the difference.  Hopefully it will be a lesson learned.

The goal now is to get as many of the remaining 72% over the hump for the next testing session.  Students who do not pass the test after by their junior year go on to be enrolled in the dreaded HSA Bridge Plan, the bane of all schools.  Basically, it involves kids being pulled out of classes to complete massive algebra work packets, and it throws schools into instructional chaos.  Undoubtedly, some of my students will end up having to do this, but minimizing this number will be absolutely crucial.

Thanks to everyone who has kept up with my teaching life. My journal will continue this next year, but it is moving to a new location. Here is the link: http://alanjayteaching.wordpress.com

I had this idea in my mind that after HSA’s I was really going to get the chance to relax. But then there were still finals, and I thought to myself, well I just have to make it to finals, then I can relax. But then I had to take down my room and watch the handful of kids who still showed up. So then I thought, well, I just need to wait until the end of school…

To make a long story short, it took pretty much the rest of the month of June for me to start to decompress. It didn’t help that my schedule stayed pretty full for most of June. The first week after school was pretty much booked up with a 3 day, full-time school-wide professional development seminar. And I spent much of the rest of the week helping organize Induction ’09, the official welcome for the incoming TFA corps members.

The PD seminar was useful, but boring. Most good PD’s you can get great information, and as far as PD’s go, I’d say this one was excellent. But I really didn’t want to be there, and it moved very slowly. One thing really stuck out to me, though. The PD is all about skillful teaching, and basically covers every aspect of skillful teaching (go figure). The book that came with the PD divides pedagogical knowledge–basically every aspect of the art of teaching–into a pyramid, comprised of overarching objective, curriculum design, planning, objectives, assessment, learning experiences, personal relationship building, class climate, expectations, clarity, principles of learning, models of teaching, space, time, routines, attention, momentum, discipline, and foundation of essential beliefs.

Does that seem overwhelming?

My first thought was, yep, I pretty much agree that each and every one of those things is a component of the job of teaching. And my second thought was, no wonder I was overwhelmed all year. That’s 19 different areas of performance, as the book calls them, and I was a total beginner in each one of them. The book devotes a chapter to each one of them. It’s a big book. People always ask me, what makes teaching so complicated and time-consuming. And it’s a tough question to answer. Well, that’s pretty much it right there.

The second part of that week, welcoming in the ’09’s, was awesome. This year, TFA Baltimore is bringing in almost twice the number of corps members as my year. And by most standards, my cohort didn’t exactly rock the house. We’ve lost like 15 people. So, a lot of us wanted to take the initiative to try and help build a more cohesive corps culture from the get go to hopefully get this year’s corps started on the right foot. It was a lot of fun. In some ways, it’s kind of funny to see the new kids, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to tackle the problems of urban education, not knowing what the heck they got themselves into. But in some ways, it’s also really refreshing. In any case, they just started Institute this week. Just to think, it was only a year ago that I was in their shoes–it seems like a lot longer ago than that.

P.S. I have had a number of people ask how those HSA Algebra scores turned out. As of now, I don’t yet know. I’ll be sure to post an update when I do.

Cleaning out my room this week, it has been interesting to look at my accumulated papers from the past year one last time as I throw them in the recycling bin. Glancing at all of the informational papers I received from my administration during the first week of school brings back the feeling of looking at them for the first time, not comprehending their meaning, and then depositing them into my desk drawer, where many of them would stay for the next 9 months.

I remember being completely overloaded with information on school policy and procedures and pretty much pushing it all out of mind to be able to dedicate all of my focus on the physical process of teaching—the actual process standing up in front of the class and delivering a message or lesson. In the beginning, this, in and of itself, was a huge challenge for me. It’s a lot harder than delivering a speech, because in addition to remembering what you want to say and how you want to deliver it, there is the whole aspect of actively monitoring and managing the classroom at the same time. For the first couple of months, all of this took a lot of conscious effort, and I remember that it slowed my speech to a crawl.

I also get the dubious pleasure of seeing the horrible lesson plans and materials that I saved from September, none of which is even remotely close to being worthy of keeping. I used to hand out individual, unstapled sheets for each of the activities we’d do in class, and then hopelessly try to collect them for grading, with no real plan for organizing them myself or for having the students organize them. It was absolutely insane.

Looking at my anecdotal records, individual conduct sheets, and class monitoring sheets brings back memories of how chaotic my room was at the beginning of the year (at still to a pretty great extent up until spring break). I’m reminded of what it was like to have the dreaded 901 class for 30 minutes for homeroom, 110 minutes for math, and 60 minutes for intervention, all in one day, especially when back in October when it was stacked with some of our most dysfunctional students. We didn’t lose a whole lot of students this year, but the majority of them were at one point or another in my homeroom.

I’ll be hanging on to my folder of observations from throughout the course of the year, although I’ll likely never have the desire to read them again. Some of my worst afternoons were those when I sat down to read observation reports, which were rarely flattering, and often downright discouraging.

Leaving this room, I’ll cherish memories like teaching 110 minute classes in 90 degree heat, and when my water bottle froze because it was 25 degrees in my room.

It’s been a mostly gloomy year, but there have been some good moments. It was rare this year that I was the teacher I wanted to be, or that my students were achieving on absolute levels that I could be proud of. That’s not to say that I feel entirely negative toward the year. It’s just that the real positivity comes from remembering what it was really like in the beginning and reflecting on how much my students have matured academically and socially and how much I have improved in my job as a teacher. My students aren’t on grade level, but a lot of them have moved within reach. I’m especially proud of how far they have come in terms of their maturity.

I know am by no means a fantastic teacher, but at least I don’t still feel like the worst teacher ever. It was very validating getting a flattering end of the year review. I know I’ve still got work to do to feel as though I’ve earned it. In the end, my first year’s in the bank, and it’s one of my proudest accomplishments. I’m actually looking forward to having a much better, more productive, and more enjoyable second year.

Although my year is for most purposes over (thank God!), due to extremely weird district policy, I technically have a week of school remaining. It’s really bizarre; the kids have already taken their finals. My grades are due in Wednesday morning. And yet, the students are still technically supposed to be in class until Friday. You might wonder, why doesn’t the district just move finals until the last day of school? That’s a fantastic question. No one seems to know.

In any case, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the state of urban education, inspired by the fact that it is the end of my first year, there have been some pretty significant happenings in my district, and I have been reading a lot about urban education. Here’s what I wrote on my Teach For America end of year survey, which pretty much sums up my thoughts:

Urban education takes a focus on developing children in a very holistic way. When students come to my Algebra I class, they are often severely lacking not only in math preparation, but also in social skills and effective work habits. It is necessary to teach so many things that I took for granted that I expected of the typical 9th grader. In many ways, it’s necessary to be an extra parent.

Many of my students are not used to being held to a rigorous standard of academic work, and it has been a major challenge finding the right level of expectations for a diverse class. I have also learned that along with high expectations, I as a teacher need to provide I high level of support in order for my students to achieve.

The vast majority of my students really want to achieve, but that most of them are unaware of how much rigor and discipline success requires. I feel like this is probably the single most important thing I can teach my students, because with discipline, they can achieve in any subject.

The sad thing is that although pushing my students to a much level of achievement would be a major accomplishment, so many students graduate high schools in Baltimore only to be woefully unprepared for college level work. Very few of these students are going on to four-year colleges, and even fewer are finishing their degrees in five years or less. The book A Hope In The Unseen by Ron Suskind is a great illustration of this issue.

Many people criticize TFA for not being the answer to the problem of urban education. They argue that most TFA teachers come in to the classroom, leave after 2 years, before they become truly proficient in the classroom, and move on to something “bigger and better”. And to a certain extent, I agree. All students do deserve great teachers, and no 1st or 2nd year teacher has possibly reached their potential. But I’ve come to believe that even if you could put an excellent teacher in every classroom a low-income student visits, that student would still be at a major disadvantage. The inequalities go way beyond the classroom. I think the organization realizes this, which is why they emphasize the two-year commitment. They hope that corps members will go on to career areas where they can hopefully lead in making the systematic changes these kids need. This seems to be the growing consensus. Projects like the Harlem Children’s Zone are proving it. Still, teachers are the people on the front lines, and good teachers will always be necessary. Consequently, the issues of teacher retention and the controversy of Teach For America are not likely to fade away.

Check out these articles for some recent press on TFA in Baltimore:

“City wants to expand ‘Teach for America’ program”
by Liz Bowie
Mon, May 25
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-md.teach25may25,0,1460323.story

Inside Ed
Sun Blog
Tues, May 26
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/education/blog/2009/05/teach_for_america_and_baltimor.html

Baltimore Sun
“City Funds sought for Teach For America”
Weds, May 27
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-md.briefs273may27,0,4909764.story

Baltimore Sun
“Teach For Baltimore” Editorial
Thurs, May 28
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bal-ed.teach28may28,0,1892836.story

WBAL/NBC
Mon, May 25 5:15 PM EDT
Video: Play Clip

WJZ/CBS
Eyewitness News at 5
Mon, May 25 05:34 PM EDT
Video: Play Clip
Web article: http://wjz.com/local/baltimore.teachers.teach.2.1018555.html

WBFF/FOX 45
Mon, May. 25, 11:04 PM EDT
Video: Play Clip
Web article: http://www.foxbaltimore.com/template/inews_wire/wires.regional.md/3fb92708-www.foxbaltimore.com.shtml

WMAR/ABC
ABC2 News Good Morning Maryland
Tues, May 26 6:52 AM EDT
Video: Play Clip
Web article:http://www.abc2news.com/news/local/story/Alonso-Wants-More-Teach-For-America-Candidates/xEzIbS3H7EC03RCs3JPgZQ.cspx