TNTP Teaching Fellows reviews

BCTR makes this experience more stressful than it has to be, but blames it in you. They have unrealistic expectations. They expect to own all of your time. If you have a family, just don’t. You are better off spending the next two years working full time elsewhere or completing an actual graduate program that isn’t subjectively graded on a single pass/fail basis at the end. There are no grades or transcripts to prove your work. All you have is the voice of your observers. Leadership picks favorites and lets some students redo their formal evaluations until they receive a better score but deny that opportunity to others. They will lead you to believe you are passing and ask you to fork over money for student supplies, transportation, and living expenses for additional weeks of free labor for them just to cut you for something that was resolved on the first day.

The DC Teaching Fellows program (summer 2016) was unprofessional, disorganized, and full of condescension for it's participants. It was unbelievable to me that the trainers/organizers treated these very impressive and well educated participants with such such a stern, authoritative, and frankly (at times) disrespectful approach. The demands were inhumane. The unpaid hours involve in training were extraordinarily demanding. I felt like I was in the military. It did not build me up and inspire me. Instead, the approach seemed to be one of "breaking" people. Belittling the participants was commonplace. Many of the trainers boasted of their "five years" teaching in the public school system. For some reason, they thought that this made them experts, but their performances would suggest otherwise. Most of the trainers were arrogant and unsympathetic to the problems the participants faced. I had to leave. It was a very unhealthy environment. Many people relocated from all over the country and had to support themselves during this training. The total amount that people lost (in dollars) would be staggering. I know many people who left as I did. I happened to live in the DC area, so the loss wasn't as great as many of my fellow participants.