Where do I begin? In 2017, TNTP/TeachNOLA received $1million from the US government to help recruit 900 teachers by 2020. The only money they spend on their fellows is on a very cheap bumper sticker and a notebook you can buy from the dollar store.
They silence voices of color, deleting comments they don't agree with, while amplifying White women who run the training as "Directors."
You are expected to pay for everything out of pocket, including copies, printer downloads of the numerous reading materials, and you are expected to scan and upload signed agreements of a handbook they don't even give you until the first day of pre-service training.
You will be living off savings, expected to find your own job without any help from TNTP or TeachNOLA, and you're not even allowed to take off for interviews during training. This program has not provided anything to its fellows except a whole bunch of lies and effective marketing.
They have a 100% placement rate because they cut the people they don't like. And you are still on the hook for the cost of the certification.
So let me get this straight, you are teaching unpaid 12 hour days with food and transportation you procure with the possibility of being cut at any time for almost any reason - my question is what the hell does TNTP / TeachNOLA offer their fellows??
The White women who run this program will do whatever it takes to preserve and uphold White supremacy, so god help you if you're not with that program because you may find yourself one of the impoverished people stuck in Louisiana with no support system or way to get back home.
Teach Like a Champion, their only textbook, written by a Harvard businessman, is a really racist book. I'll just leave it at that. Do your own research on that b.s. Instead of focusing on childhood development, trauma, educational theory, or social justice issues, the book and its accompanying horrifying videos show fellows how to teach Black children to sit up straight, pass papers back and forth, and other inane things with snaps of fingers like they are training dogs in obedience school.
TNTP/TeachNOLA claims to be all about anti-bias and ending systemic racism, but those are just buzzwords on Powerpoint slides. There is no unpacking of any of that, and anything that makes the White people in charge uncomfortable gets dismissed, deleted, or minimized.
There is no mention of salary, because God forbid the charter school system would ever be transparent about that, but I noticed a trend: the White fellows who show up to PST in business casual - even in skinny jeans and Sketchers - are the ones who get hired over the Black fellows who show up in three piece suits with more education and higher pedigrees. So, same stuff, different day.
TNTP used to be in a lot more cities. They are only in 4 or 5 now. I wonder why.
What's sad is the poor African-American students who have the honor of being lab rats by these corporate monsters in the name of educational reform.
