Teach For America's Vanilla Alumni Induction Will One Day Be Neopolitan

TFA's Phoenix Alumni Dinner (I'm on the left in the yellow dress)

The clock could not hit three fifteen fast enough on Friday. I knew that my family and friends were on their way to Arizona and even though I love my students, I was ready start my weekend. Teach For America's alumni induction dinner was the only thing standing between me and my gente. Responsibilities come first, so I had no other choice but to attend my TFA event.

Jorge and I scarfed our food and twiddled our thumbs for an hour at the alumni induction and zoomed straight over to my parents' hotel room at the Embassy Suites. Of course they asked how it went. I said, "It was the same the same ol' same ol': a sea of cream faces, bland food, and nobody talked to us." So in a nutshell, TFA's induction dinner embodied my two year corps experience. The parentals expected this and replied, "Well, at least its over." No kidding, I thought to myself.

Two years ago, I naively entered an organization that I believed would be diverse and would help me serve a demographic that was similar to my own. Throughout the two year stint, I realized that half of what I thought was true. I would help low SES students, but my cohort was not diverse. I had two options: become bitter at the entire organization or be a realist. I strategically chose the latter. After all, TFA is a big powerful name and with it comes many open doors.

Who are the teachers in Teach For America?

Teach For America is known for recruiting the best and the brightest from institutions of higher education throughout the United States and the majority are affluent and also happen to be White.

Is this a coincidence? 

No, I have seen many qualified Latinos turned down by TFA. What boggles my mind is that those who are turned away end up in prestigious graduate schools. Why is TFA turning them away and not schools like UCLA and other Americorps programs? The answer is simple. They did not fit the TFA mold. The rubric that TFA uses during the final interview round is difficult and Latinos are not as polished as their White counterparts. So even if Latinos are just as brilliant, they blow it during the interview as a result of their lack of interview skills and practice.

So then how did I get in and what was it like?

Practice and even then, I probably barely made it through. Not only was I one of the handful of Latinos, I was probably from one of lowest SES backgrounds. Since my Arizona cohort was not diverse, I had an extremely lonely first year. Even my MTLD (a fancy acronym for advisor), did not know how to help me. I couldn't blame her, she wasn't Latina or from that low of an SES. I felt that her and I had a mutual understanding; we both knew that all she could do was give me space to find my own rhythm in a storm of difficulties.

Hard is an understatement. TFA challenged every bit of my moral fiber. I was pushed to the brink and was finally able discover my authentic self. I joined the Helios Pilot Program during my second year and in it they addressed some of the corps' diversity issues. I give TFA credit for acknowledging that there were diversity issues in Phoenix, but that did little to ease the isolation that I felt during my time in the corps.

So why do I care about the TFA name now, if I never cared about it before? 

There are numerous problems with TFA that I am not about to get into and I may go into psychosis just thinking about it. Despite all of the ugliness, there are two distinguishable perks - the power of the name that they have successfully built and the desire for change. I am moving forward as a TFA alum with battle scars,  a need for diversity and change, but most importantly a powerful name on my resume. 

Did I join for the powerful name?

No, I had no idea that TFA was such a powerful machine when I joined the corps. I genuinely wanted to teach kids who had a low SES background like myself. It was only after joining the corps that I learned from my peers that TFA was prestigious.

The exact name that I despised all of 2011, my first year, is the same that will allow me to be competitive enough to get into a position of higher power. My mentor, Dr. Caesar Sereseres, once told me that high powered positions are where the most influential changes can be made. My corps experience will allow me to do just that, truly make changes that can positively affect my community on a broader scale. 

Do not mistake my words for believing that the teaching field is unimportant. Teachers are golden and should be treated like royalty and they sadly are not. I cannot be in a profession that is not valued. A profession where learning is confined to a standardized test and racist laws (HB 2281). Face it, our nation is not teacher friendly. Controversial or not, the truth is that I will make a larger impact on the Latino community if I get out of teaching now. The one thing that I do swear by is to always support the work that teachers are doing in their classroom. They are over worked, underpaid and expected to take all the blame for the problems in our education system. Yes, there are bad teachers, but the majority are good and hardworking and do it solely because they love educating. It is obviously not for the money, so more people need to cut them a break.

So What Now?

I have a retreat and one more meeting with my MTLD and I complete my service with Teach For America. This was a bittersweet experience. I appreciate the life lessons that I have learned from 2010-2012, but I'm ready to close this chapter in life and move onto the next step, law school.

Being Latina is complicated.