What School Movies and TFA Teach Us About Who Should Teach Urban Youth

Abstract

White teacher savior films (WTSFs) depict the teaching profession as one for which conventional credentialing is unnecessary. White teachers with little training and experience perform miracles in urban classrooms where trained, experienced teachers have failed. This same narrative is echoed in alternative credential programs such as Teach For America (TFA). This article compares the WTSF and TFA narratives with the educational research and finds inconsistencies that unravel the myth. The author suggests that the WTSF and TFA narratives serve instead as public pedagogy, teaching movie-goers that urban schools need only well-meaning, less expensive, underqualified and inexperienced White teachers despite the research showing otherwise.

Keywords

urban students White teachers school movies critical race theory public pedagogy

Introduction

Recent urban school¹ movies depict a common representation of the teaching profession as an easy entry/exit field for which little or no training or conventional credentialing is necessary for White teachers of urban youth. This rash of “White teacher savior films” (WTSFs),² occasionally biographical and often Hollywood produced, suggests that those with the least classroom-teaching experience succeed in inspiring and capturing the attention of otherwise unruly and unmotivated urban youth of color. Without seniority, these novice teachers are often placed into low-tracked classrooms, populated with Black and Brown, low-income students. As the formula goes, these teachers initially struggle in their challenging teaching assignments but ultimately find the work rewarding and excel in raising academic achievement where credentialed, experienced career teachers have given up hope.

This formulaic plot is echoed in the public narrative surrounding easy entry/exit alternative certification programs such as Teach For America (TFA), which recruits recent college graduates to a 2-year teaching commitment in a “low income community” (see http://www.teachforamerica.org). Vasquez Heilig (2012) described the TFA narrative as “an array of feel-good stories [that] profile fresh-faced college graduates choosing to teach” (n.p.). With a 5-week intensive-training course under their belts, corps members—most of whom are White and the majority inexperienced—enter classrooms populated by rural and urban youth; 90% are students of color and almost all are low-income. The corps members supposedly begin the program motivated to do “something ‘real’” and do “something valuable for society” and to “mak[e] a difference” and, after their commitment ends, refer to the program as a rewarding experience (Kopp, 2001; Rubenstein, 2011). This narrative is so well-known that it appears regularly in satirical skits (see Mad TV skit “Nice White Lady,” Season 12, Episode 15) and articles (see Onion articles “Inner-City Teacher Inspires Students to Stab Him,” 2007; “Teach For America Chews Up, Spits Out Another Ethnic-Studies Major,” 2005; and, most recently, “My Year Volunteering as a Teacher Helped Educate a New Generation of Underprivileged Kids,” 2012; also see “Doctor for America to Debut this Fall,” 2013, in the Huffington Post).

This present article examines the intersection of WTSF and TFA narratives to explore the ways that they similarly construct notions of low-income urban youth of color and normalize perceptions of who should teach them. I then compare what these narratives teach us about the types of teachers who succeed in urban classrooms (and their pedagogies) with the educational research on successful teachers of urban youth. Although the WTSF and TFA narratives glorify the influence that a single White individual can make in the academic lives of low-income urban youth of color, there is substantial evidence to the contrary. I argue that these WTSF and TFA narratives instead serve as familiar and comfortable dominant stories that simultaneously reflect and normalize public perceptions of urban youth as undeserving of the highly qualified teachers that research shows matter to increased educational outcomes. Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT), Cole’s theory of the White savior industrial complex, and Giroux’s notion of public pedagogy to frame this analysis and discussion, I find that these narratives do more than find their ways into the pockets of movie-goers and the imagination of the public; they propagate images of urban youth as “in need” and White teachers as saviors and construct a dominant narrative largely irreconcilable with the research.

Theoretical Framework

Critical Race Theory (CRT)

CRT provides a theoretical framework to consider the roles that race and racism play in the construction of educational inequity and injustice (Dixson & Rousseau, 2005; Ladson-Billings, & Tate, 1995; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Critical race theorists argue that racism is ordinary and pervasive and support speaking and analyzing data from multiple, overlapping locations with the power structure. They provide a way, for example, to think about how Whiteness and gender intersect in the pedagogies of White teacher saviors in WTSF and TFA narratives. Particularly relevant in this article is the concept of interest convergence.

Interest convergence

Milner (2008) proposes that researchers draw from CRT and, more specifically, Bell’s concept of interest convergence to theorize teacher education. I extend that argument to include the analysis of alternative certification programs; interest convergence is appropriate to theorizing TFA (and other alternative certification programs) as racist racial projects (Omi & Winant, 1994) and, thus, to “explain and operationalize race and racism in the field. It can serve as a tool to elucidate and help make sense of the salience of race and racism in teacher education policies and practices” (Milner, 2008, p. 332).

Derrick Bell (1980, 1987) contended that progressive legislation, policy, and social action are likely to succeed only when they actually support the interests of those already in power. Policies, such as those that proliferate alternative certification programs such as TFA, purport to improve educational outcomes for urban youth. An “interest convergence” analysis, however, suggests that they actually help White college graduates find jobs and build their resumes. Interest convergence encourages a more rigorous examination of how WTSFs and even the abundantly available public narrative about TFA contribute to shaping public perception and reception of policies that invite novice White teachers into urban classrooms.

The White savior industrial complex

CRT recognizes majoritarian stories, such as WTSF and TFA narratives, as representing a political voice that privileges Whiteness, defining it as normal, while simultaneously framing people of color as deficient. These narratives comprise a larger phenomenon, what novelist Teju Cole referred to as the White savior industrial complex. In a widely read Atlantic article in the spring of 2012, Cole characterized the work done by White do-gooders in Black and Brown spaces as part of the White savior industrial complex:

Africa serves as a backdrop for White fantasies of conquest and heroism . . . Africa has provided a space onto which White egos can conveniently be projected . . . [A] nobody from America or Europe can go to Africa and become a godlike savior or, at the very least, have his or her emotional needs satisfied. Many have done it under the banner of “making a difference.” (Cole, 2012)

Although he wrote about White intrusions into countries on the African continent, the very same savior mentality sets up shop right here in U.S. urban cities. Urban schools have “provided a space onto which White egos can conveniently be projected”—a space into which a White underqualified teacher can enter and “become a godlike savior” of Black and Brown urban youth as I will show is seen in WTSF and TFA narratives. This narrative is told over and over again in the form of WTSFs and the folklore surrounding alternative certification programs such as TFA. Whiteness is rationalized as necessary and celebrated for its intrusions into Black and Brown spaces for the purpose of saving low-income urban youth of color. The White savior industrial complex proposes band-aid solutions in the form of White saviors, ignoring the deeper entrenched forms of institutional racism.

Public Pedagogy

WTSFs contribute to the proliferation of images of who acts on and who is acted upon; that is, they constitute a public pedagogy that perpetuates the White savior industrial complex and, thus, normalizes programs that assign underqualified, White teachers to classrooms populated by low-income urban youth of color. WTSFs and TFA celebrate Whiteness and ignore the historical and political contexts responsible for the defunding of urban schools (Ladson-Billings, 2006).

It is too simplistic to say that these narratives cause the public (and schools and teachers, more specifically) to think in limited and racist ways. Nor is it fair to say that they are blameless mirrors of a reality far too common in urban schools. Rather, these narratives operate as a form of public pedagogy. Giroux (2002) argued that these “films both entertain and educate” (p. 3). WTSFs and TFA narratives “enabl(e), legitimiz(e), and reinforc(e) discursive practices” (Giroux, 2002, p. 245). They reflect and create anew, contributing to the efforts to control public dialogue about urban schools and who should teach in them.

Media representations of Black and Brown students and their schools have ramifications for how these students are perceived by and treated in schools. Ferguson (2001) found in her research that Black men and boys were represented in media simultaneously as criminals to fear and as “endangered species,” victims of their own behavior and circumstances. In her research, popular culture representations of Black and Brown youth took on significance in schools as Black students were mistreated, underserved, referred to special education, suspended, and expelled at higher rates than their White peers. In urban schools, Black boys were “adultified” and their actions framed as criminal behavior.

Stuart Wells and Serman (1998) argued that, starting with Blackboard Jungle, WTSFs have presented unrealistic, dramatized, and highly formulaic solutions to urban schools, stereotypically portrayed as out-of-control and violent.³ WTSFs exhibit a strange hold on the U.S. imagination and exert a powerful influence over mainstream movie-goers; to the sum of more than $120 million, movie-goers have frequented movies such as Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers (see the Internet Movie Database, IMDb). It is a subtle power that shifts perspectives, confirms longstanding myths, and buttresses dominant cultural narratives.

Freedman (2003) showed episodes from the Dangerous Minds television series to preservice teachers to ascertain how viewing stereotypes of youth of color affected their perceptions of youth of color and, in part, their work as teachers. She found that preservice teachers in her study accepted the stereotyped images of “at-risk” youth as confirmation of their own views and experiences. As well, it confirmed what preservice teachers felt they needed to do to save students of color.

Trier (2005) screened these films to preservice teachers to instigate discussion that might challenge their preconceived notions of urban youth. He noted that, in showing these films, some preservice teachers admitted “that their own images of inner city schools were probably derived from having watched such films as these” (Trier, 2001, p. 128).

McCarthy (1998) contended that these urban tales fulfill “a certain bardic function, singing back to society lullabies about what a large cross-section and hegemonic part of it ‘already knows’” (pp. 31-32). McCarthy wrote that these dominant narratives are so powerful that they become more than two-dimensional representations of Whiteness and “otherness.” Instead, they create a new reality of urban youth transformed into their caricatures.

These stories are about more than entertainment; they suggest and reflect the perception that urban youth do not need highly qualified, experienced, and trained teachers. In fact, they don’t need resources at all; instead, all they need are well-meaning White teacher saviors, willing to provide appropriate rewards and/or punishments.

Overview of Article

This article provides an overview of four WTSFs set in underperforming U.S. high-school classrooms of low-income, urban youth of color; each school is represented as challenged by the violence and underperformance of its youth and, to each of these schools, arrives a White teacher, underprepared for the task of teaching. Against the odds, these teachers find a way to educate the “uneducable,” becoming White saviors amidst a sea of incompetent (yet trained and experienced) teachers and within an under-resourced educational system. Each film is analyzed with attention to how they describe the characteristics and classroom pedagogies of teachers they glorify as “good.”

The results of these analyses are then compared with the narrative of TFA and educational research literature that identifies the characteristics and pedagogies of effective teachers of low-income, Black and Brown youth. Comparing the spectacle of WTSF and TFA narratives with the research allows us to question what it is that these narratives actually teach us.

Method

Data

There are two types of data analyzed in this article: the WTSF narrative and the TFA narrative. I present both, analyze them, and then contrast them with the educational research on effective teachers of urban youth.

White teacher savior films

In 2008, I started a list of school movies that I posted outside my office. Students at my college added to this list over the course of 2 years—reaching over 100 movies that ranged from movies set in schools to those that were tangentially related to youth. I also scoured academic articles written about school movies including Bulman (2002, 2005), Chennault (2006), Considine (1985), Dalton (1999, 2010), Farhi (1999), Giroux (2002), Hughey (2010), Shary (2002), and Trier (2001) to identify school movies. I used online websites that have compiled lists of school movies such as “filmsite.org” and “ranker.com” and newspaper websites that keep similar lists. From the list of movies compiled, I identified the most referenced autobiographical and nonautobiographical movies that emerged as programs such as TFA were founded (1990s). As well, I looked for movies in which the teacher is White and the story takes place in urban schools populated primarily by youth of color. Like Chennault (2006), Dalton (2010), and others, I focus on films that were major releases in the United States and in which the teacher teaches required courses in core subjects (unlike Music of the Heart [1999]). I also excluded parodies such as High School High (1996). As I wanted to look at the classroom pedagogy of the celluloid teachers, all movies in this analysis included scenes in the classroom with the teacher teaching a group of students. I selected movies that showed at least two classroom scenes with the protagonist teaching. This left Dangerous Minds (1995), The Substitute I (1996), The Substitute II: School’s Out (1998), and Freedom Writers (2007).

Dangerous Minds

Dangerous Minds is a loose biography of a retired U.S. Marine, LouAnne Johnson, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, who became a teacher in an urban school. Although she had not completed her teaching credential, LouAnne is assigned to a low-track classroom of students, all of whom are depicted in the film as Black or Latino/a and low-income.

Freedom Writers

Played by Hilary Swank, Erin Gruwell is a newly credentialed teacher at a high school in Long Beach. As a new teacher with no seniority at the school, she is assigned to freshman English classes primarily populated with Black and Latino students.

The Substitute and The Substitute II: School’s Out

The Substitute stars Tom Berenger as Jonathan Shale, a mercenary who is contracted by government agencies to topple drug dynasties abroad. A failed mission brings him stateside to spend time with his urban teacher girlfriend who is attacked by a student early in the movie. He enters the teaching profession to find the students responsible for her brutal beating. He has no former/formal training or experience working with youth as a teacher and, in fact, fabricates his resume to play the role of substitute in the school.

Treat Williams replaces Berenger as the substitute in the sequel. Also a mercenary who trains government agencies, he has no training as a teacher of youth. He plays Carl Thomasson, the brother of an urban teacher murdered by students. He joins the teaching force as a substitute (also fabricating his resume) to uncover his brother’s murderers.

Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers are based on “true to life” stories and are dramatizations of written books—My Posse Don’t Do Homework and The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around them, respectively.

The Substitute movies are particularly interesting to explore because they have been largely ignored in other analyses of WTSFs. They contribute, perhaps even more violently, to societal notions of race, urban pedagogy, and “White teacher as savior” mythology. Urban youth of color are violated physically and psychologically in these two movies, abused and tortured by adults claiming to be their teachers.

TFA narrative

The data is composed of online documents released by the TFA organization to advertise, promote, or defend the organization. This includes articles written by the founder, Wendy Kopp, along with articles submitted to Time magazine, EdWeek, Huffington Post, Houston Press, Rethinking Schools, and similar news sources describing the mission and work of TFA corps members. This also includes autobiographical statements recorded on video, written to these same sources and/or posted to blogs, written by current and former corps members describing why they joined TFA.

Analysis

In the analyses of WTSFs and the TFA narratives, I conduct visual (Hall, 1997) and textual (Koski & Weiss, 2004) analyses of the films and TFA documentation, which included websites and promotional videos. A visual analysis involves considering how these films work as meaning makers that define our conceptions of race and racism, stereotypically fixing what it means to be an urban student and a savior of urban youth. Rather than viewing these films, documentation, and promotional videos as representations of factual events, I considered how they instead created meaning rather than represented meaning. A textual analysis similarly requires looking at language use and the construction of meaning through imagery.

For these analyses, I watched each movie once to get an overview of the film and plot and to identify the actions and interactions highlighted as effectively contributing to the change in students. I then focused on the classroom scenes and those scenes in which the teacher interacted with students and families outside of class; in the classroom scenes in particular, I observed the teacher pedagogy, taking field notes as I might when supervising a student-teacher, noting language used with students, lesson-plan implementation, curricula use, motivational strategies, and disciplinary techniques. I also combed the data for evidence and information pertaining to the background characteristics and qualifications of teachers.

In the “Findings” section that follows, I describe the results of these analyses of WTSFs and TFA documentation. In the WTSFs, I describe scene composition, language use, and dialogue to consider how identity, pedagogy, and relationships between teachers and students are purported to relate to the academic success of urban students. I also identify themes that arise in how they teach their classes, how they speak to students, moments when they experience success in the classroom (and how success is communicated through film), and how they interact with youth inside and outside the classroom. I then turn to the analysis of TFA documentation and videos, elucidating themes in how TFA describes itself and its corps members, looking particularly for language used to describe why corps members joined and what they learned from the experience. I complete my analyses by examining the ways these data align with and diverge from the educational research on urban teaching.

Findings

How White Teacher Savior Films Describe Good Teachers of Urban Youth

Setting the urban school movie stage

Dangerous Minds, Freedom Writers, The Substitute, and The Substitute II, all open with scenes that chronicle the (Hollywood depicted) home lives of urban youth. To the song “Gangsta’s Paradise,” Dangerous Minds opens with neighborhood scenes portraying bent street signs and Black men collecting cans on streets behind Black youth waiting for the school bus.

Freedom Writers opens with scenes from the riots/uprising following the Rodney King verdict in Southern California. This scene is followed by the narration of a single Latina student’s story documenting police and gang violence in her community and family.

The Substitute and The Substitute II also begin with violence. The first movie opens with the military action of our teacher savior before he becomes a teacher, and the sequel opens with students carjacking a White woman driving a Porsche—race and socioeconomic status intertwined with masculinity, violence, and criminality.

Transition from struggling to effective teacher of urban youth

In each of the movies analyzed here, the journey from well-intentioned but novice teacher to “effective teacher of urban youth” plays out similarly. On the first days of class, the teacher attempts to use a modified version of a “pedagogy of poverty” (Haberman, 1991, 2010)—one focused on control, classroom discipline, and superficial relationships. In two instances, in the movies with female protagonists, there is even fear of losing control in the classroom. Then, for each teacher, there is a turning point and the remainder of the movie is spent showing how these teachers reach their students.

The scene on the first day of class in Dangerous Minds shows LouAnne hesitantly entering a classroom with students playing music, dancing, and talking among themselves. Students call her “whitebread” and, when she asks what happened to their previous teacher, students imply that they killed her. Emilio, the leader of the class, threatens her sexually and physically to which LouAnne responds by putting his name on the board in an effort to discipline him; this backfires and students become more raucous.

After this first day, LouAnne stays up all night reading books on classroom discipline. She has only partially completed her teaching certificate having focused on her marriage rather than finishing her classroom practicum as a student-teacher. She turns back to her books without the classroom experience to address the discipline issues that arise in her classroom. When she reads a line in a book suggesting that she write students’ names on the board when they are unruly, she laughs and throws the book aside.

Michelle Pfeiffer is dressed in a leather jacket, has on a tough game face and writes on the board, “I am a U.S. Marine. Does anyone know karate?” and thus the second day begins. She brings students to the front of the classroom to see what karate they know. After two of the students pretend to fight, she interrupts saying, “You two don’t know shit.” The students laugh at her effort to entertain them, and she, then, proceeds to teach them some karate. When the principal tells her that she must follow the curriculum and cannot teach them karate, she turns to bribery to get students to complete work in class, throwing candy bars at them as they answer questions correctly.

A similar transition happens in The Substitute and its sequel. On Shale’s first day of school in The Substitute, students are seen stealing from the file cabinet, playing rap music, dancing, and cursing at each other. All students fit the same racial profile seen in Dangerous Minds. The males are hyperviolent and the females hypersexualized. All students are Black and Brown, and only the teacher is White. Shale begins the class, asking, “Who won WWII?” He teases and berates students later saying, “Here comes a tough one. Who discovered America?”

In the first 5 minutes of class on the second day, Shale establishes himself as a physical force to be reckoned with. He greets students sarcastically and writes the topic for the day on the board. As he does so, a student throws a crushed metal can at his back. Shale turns quickly, catches the can, and throws it back—hitting the student in the face. This escalates into a confrontation that results in Shale physically assaulting two students. When both students are subdued, he concludes, “I’m in charge of this class. I’m the warrior chief . . . I am the merciless god of anything that stirs in my universe. Fuck with me and you will suffer my wrath.” Later, the principal looks in on the class and finds Shale and the students sharing stories about how Vietnam affected their relatives’ lives. The classroom is remarkably changed from the previous scene. Students and teacher share information about their personal lives respectfully.

Taking place in New York City, the sequel finds yet another mercenary, Carl Thomasson, similarly securing a fake teaching credential to gain access to a school that the murderers of his brother attend. On the first day of class, Carl enters a room defined by chaos. Students are dancing, the radio is loud, and they curse in class.

Carl also teaches History, and he starts his lesson with Vietnam as Shale did. This lesson starts with a lecture and ends with him hurling a yoyo at a student who is drinking a beverage in class. The broken glass and beverage spill over the student as Carl states, “Next time bring enough for everyone.” In this first class session, we see Carl lecturing at students—teaching more than history; he teaches about power, discipline, and control.

Freedom Writers begins with a nervous Erin Gruwell attempting to take attendance in a classroom filled with youth of color with the exception of one White student who is depicted as similarly nervous. The students are revealed to have guns and ankle monitors and actively disregard Erin. One student sexually harasses her and a fight nearly erupts.

The movie tracks the class of Room 203 through the first 2 years of high school. Erin begins optimistically assigning texts such as The Odyssey to a full classroom of students. Overtime, she shifts her focus to basic grammar lessons to a diminishing number of attending students. By the third class scene, we see Erin playing Tupac for the class (although she mispronounces his name) as an introduction to poetry. Her attempt to bring youth-based popular music into class backfires when her students are disgusted by her lack of knowledge about Tupac. “Antics,” as she refers to their disruptive classroom behavior, ensue causing her to change the classroom seating arrangement; this, though, creates an unforeseen problem when she realizes that students abide by strict racial boundaries that must be maintained even in class.

Enrollment and attendance continue to decline as the days progress. However, the day after a murder in the community, Erin discovers a racist caricature of a Black student in class drawn by another student. Erin admonishes them with a lecture about racism, the Holocaust, gang wars, and genocide. What starts as a lecture becomes a conversation as the students speak about how they experience institutional racism. In subsequent classroom scenes, we witness a teacher who has found her groove and students who are engaged and learning.

Conclusion

According to these four WTSFs, effective teachers are White, inexperienced, and underqualified. The two women have an interest in the teaching profession and a desire to “make a difference” in the lives of the youth and, in the case of Erin Gruwell, attack social injustice before it is too late. The two men entered teaching “undercover” to apprehend criminals; their interest in teaching grows as they interact with students throughout the movie.

The two women, having received some training, attempt to use pedagogical strategies they learned in their teaching programs (or books) and the district recommended curriculum. Finding both to be ineffective in keeping their students’ attention, they implement their own alternative pedagogies and curricula. They come to these ideas based on listening and learning from the interests and needs of their students.

The two men use their combat training to physically subdue rowdy students. They then implement a curriculum that reinforces a White cultural hegemony. The students who continue to come to class are quiet and interested in the classroom conversations. Students are grateful for the learning space the male teachers have created and extremely loyal to these two renegade teachers who, they believe, will help clean up their schools.

The TFA Narrative About Good Teachers

The mission of TFA and its corps members

TFA is an alternative certification program that places recent college graduates from top universities and colleges into low-income schools. As noted on their website in 2010, the program was established to give the top academically talented college-educated youth an opportunity to “make a real difference in the world” (October, 2010, http://www.teachforamerica.org/about/our_history.htm).⁴

Historically, more than 60% of the TFA cohort has been White and recruited only from the top 400 universities and colleges in the United States. Presently, the TFA teaching force is 62% White, 13% Black, 10% Latino, 6% Asian American, 5% multiracial, and 4% other (non-White; November, 2012, http://www.teachforamerica.org/why-teach-for-america/who-we-look-for/who-we-are). Although more racially diverse than the overall teaching force which, according to the Schools and Staffing Survey 2007-2008, is 83% White with more than 75% being White women (June, 2013, http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_029_t12n.asp), the students taught by TFA corps members are 90% Black and Latino, while the overall student population is majority White (Milner, 2008, citing data from the Institute of Education Sciences noted that the White student population is just under 60%).

In an advertising video posted on their website (accessed November 2012), TFA administrators and teachers describe urban schools and youth with a specter of deficiency hovering. Hayfa Aboukier, a sixth-grade teacher, notes, “I was shocked when I first got some of my students coming in at the beginning of the year having difficulties sounding out words that should have been easy for them in first and second and third grade.” Ray Mesa, a Phoenix corps member states, “When I got my students in August, I still had students who could barely add and subtract, multiply and divide . . . .” Statistics flash across the screen of the video documenting the severity of this problem: Only 50% of students in poverty finish high school on time and 1 in 12 graduates college.

On the area of their website labeled “Building a Movement” (accessed November 2012), there is a video of past and present corps members titled, “Fueling the Movement.” In this video, TFA is described as an organization that recruits the “most talented future leaders of this country” (Elisa Villanueva Beard, former corps member and presently a member of the administrative team) to “ensure that all children have the opportunity to receive an excellent education” (Pearl Chang Esau, Executive Director of TFA). The video argues that TFA corps members matter in the lives of low-income youth. A Harvard University professor is captured saying, “One individual can make a serious difference in the lives of children” (David Gergen, Professor of Public Service, Harvard University).

TFA corps members document their successes in the classroom in this video as well. Ray Mesa talks about how his students did not know how to do math prior to his arrival; yet, they are now at grade level. He talks about the “complete utter change”:

I have students who can do very complicated exponent rules with positive and negative numbers with addition and multiplication. It is letting me know that I am doing something that is valuable to the 150 students that I see on a daily basis.

This type of influence is the “best feeling you can ever have” another corps member says (Angela Wheeler, Mississippi Delta corps member).

Corps graduates claim that they themselves also learned skills that were transferable to other professions such as managing staff and projects in other leadership positions (Rachel Hicks, now Executive Director of Mississippi First) and gaining “confidence, time management skills, planning, patience, ability to move quickly on the fly” from the experience of being a 22-year-old “CEO of [a] classroom” (Michael Kirkbride, now Investment Manager, Bank of America). The Director of Admissions at Yale School of Management, Bruce DelMonicao, says that TFA corps members have exactly what Yale looks for in candidates for law school—people who “think broadly about their interactions in the world around them and what type of impact they want to have on the world around them.”

Educational Literature on “Good” Teachers

I now turn to the research literature to compare the representations of effective urban teaching depicted in WTSFs and TFA narratives with the research.

Teacher background and identity: What the research tells us

In this section, I will review studies on the importance of teacher race matching, certification, and years of experience on student achievement generally and for youth of color specifically.

In the area of race matching, Dee (2004) examined how the racial background of teachers contributes to the academic performance of students—particularly Black students. He found that Black and White students both performed better with teachers of the same race possibly because same-race-matching of students and teachers provided positive role models for students and reduced racist teacher practices that adversely affected student performance.

Eddy and Easton-Brooks (2011) looked at whether having an African American teacher increased the mathematics performance of Black students from kindergarten through fifth grade. Using data from 1,200 students in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, kindergarten through fifth grades (ECLS-K-5), they found that racial matching mattered to mathematics scores for Black youth (although they didn’t find any differences by gender, socioeconomic status, or racial composition of the school).

Other studies have shown that there is a statistically significant and important relationship among the race of the teacher, the race of the student, and academic performance. Easton-Brooks et al. (2010), as cited in Eddy and Easton-Brooks (2011), found that the performance of Black youth in reading was higher if students had at least one Black teacher between kindergarten and fifth grade.

As Ware (2006) documented, the historical dismantling of the Black-teaching force has contributed to the present dearth of Black teachers (despite the staggering representation of Black youth in particular schools). Citing Jorgenson (2001), she noted, “As a result, 44% of U.S. schools have no teacher of color on staff, and many students will complete their K-12 schooling without having a single teacher of color” (Ware, 2006, p. 430). The research on Black teachers indicates that they provide unique instruction under which Black youth academically thrive.

In her study of two Black teachers, for example, Ware argued that their racial and cultural identities played a strong part in their pedagogy and contributed importantly to their worldview and teaching philosophy:

[T]he teachers’ warm demander pedagogy is positively influenced by their cultural/racial identity. I observed [the teachers] using their strong identification with their African American/African heritage to encourage their students. These teachers also used their knowledge and comfort with their heritage to teach students in their school about their heritage. Most important, I suggest that the cultural/racial heritage was an important variable in each teacher’s development into a warm demander. (Ware, 2006, p. 451)

In the area of certification and training, Laczko-Kerr and Berliner (2002) looked at the relationship between certification status and student achievement in Arizona and found that students of fully certified teachers outperform students of teachers holding emergency or temporary credentials including TFA teachers. Their analysis showed that students of fully certified teachers gain as much as two additional months of learning over students of teachers with less than a full credential.

Goldhaber (2007) found that teacher pathway and years of experience mattered greatly to student performance. Specifically, Goldhaber found that students of teachers who were trained through a college-recommended certification program or were Board-certified outperformed their peers who were taught by alternatively credentialed teachers. His findings regarding years of experience support prior research that students experience returns to teacher experience during the teacher’s first 5 years.

As found in previous studies, Clotfelter, Ladd, and Vigdor (2007) confirmed that race matching, years of experience, and teacher-test scores were all positively related to higher student achievement. Furthermore, they found that teachers with alternative credentials—such as TFA and New York State Teaching Fellows—were less effective than college-recommended teachers while they were completing their program.

Vasquez Heilig and Jez (2010), in a review of quantitative studies looking at the effectiveness of TFA interns in raising achievement, found that TFA teachers are not as effective generally as fully college-trained novice teachers. Although their effectiveness increases over their 2 years of tenure (particularly in mathematics), their high attrition rate guarantees that approximately 80% of them take their learning (as well as the resources invested in their recruitment and training) with them when they have left the classroom after no more than 3 years.

Darling-Hammond (2010), in a recent article, laid out the arguments for why effective teacher preparation is critical to strong classroom teaching and, ultimately, to better learning environments and increased learning for all youth (not simply those students who can afford to attend well-resourced schools). In particular, one aspect of many credential programs that alternative entry programs such as TFA lack is the opportunity for practicum experience; in student teaching, training teachers often observe and work with their mentor teachers prior to getting their feet wet teaching shorter lessons. Ultimately, many transition into full responsibility for the classroom by the end of their practicum placement. Teachers who experienced a teacher-preparation program feel more efficacious in their first teaching position and are able to, oftentimes, hit the ground running. They bring in relevant curricula, work collaboratively with willing colleagues, and are driven in their work to take responsibility for the learning of their students.

Thus, the research tells us that, contrary to the movies and the TFA narratives, the race of the teacher, training and certification, and years of experience matter to student learning. Researchers found that each of these factors contribute to higher performance. In the four movies analyzed here and the TFA narratives, the majority of the teachers are White, inexperienced, and do not have a full credential. Thus, the backgrounds and identities of the White teacher saviors do not align with the backgrounds and identities of teachers shown to successfully increase student achievement. In the next section, I turn to pedagogy to see what the research tells us about pedagogy that is effective with urban youth.

Pedagogy: What the research tells us

Research on the pedagogy of teachers working with urban, Black and Brown, low-income youth suggests that a “pedagogy of poverty” (Haberman, 1991, 2010) is often used in urban classrooms. This pedagogy, reminiscent of Freire’s “banking” pedagogy of the oppressed (1970), contributes greatly to the reproduction of low achievement of urban youth.

Haberman argued that while there exists a variety of teaching methods used in urban classrooms, there is a commonality in “basic urban style” (p. 291). Actions, in and out of class, revolve around administrative activities such as taking attendance. These teachers are also consumed by their efforts to control time, space, student behavior, and student bodies. Typically, this is achieved through cultivating dehumanizing relationships with students (Freire, 1970; Noddings, 2008). By contrast, good teachers of urban youth use a culturally relevant pedagogy and exhibit a critical care for their students.

Culturally relevant pedagogy

Researchers such as Geneva Gay, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Lisa Delpit, Sharroky Hollie, and Sonia Nieto encourage teachers to recognize, honor, and center the cultural backgrounds of Black and Brown youth; doing so can provide a bridge between the cultural milieu of students and an educational culture that privileges the speech patterns, writing, and epistemologies of White, middle-, and upper-income families. Gay (2000) found that the degree to which teachers and the pedagogies they use are congruent with the culture of the youth, the higher the achievement of youth of color will be. According to Gay, culturally responsive teaching takes students’ culture into account in all aspects of teaching from choice of curricula to delivery of the curricula—in the way the teacher interacts with students, the language used, and the body language of teachers, as well as in the choice of instructional methods. It places the student at the center of his or her own learning, respects what the student has to offer classroom knowledge, and empowers the student to liberatory action. Thus, culturally relevant teaching is radical and revolutionary as is the learning of the students.

Milner (2013) listed 11 areas in which teachers in urban schools must be knowledgeable to successfully teach students enrolled in those schools (pp. 348-349). These include knowing, understanding, valuing, using the assets and interests of, and developing meaningful relationships with the community, families, and students. It also includes using culturally relevant discipline, pedagogy, and materials to create academically rigorous classroom spaces.

Ladson-Billings, in her acclaimed book Dreamkeepers (1994), examined the teaching lives of eight extraordinary teachers in an urban district. She found that these teachers hold high expectations of their students, accepting only excellence in their work. Building on the work of Freire (1970), Ladson-Billings suggested that these teachers also see themselves as part of the community in which their students live. Teachers are a part of that community, learn from that community, and contribute to that community as part of their work. Furthermore, consistent with Freire’s problem-posing pedagogy, the relationships and knowledge are nonhierarchical and not power-laden. The goal is not to control students but to work with them to learn and teach. As well, knowledge is created, owned, and critically analyzed by students, not just the teachers. What makes this culturally relevant teaching is its focus and attention on the uniqueness of the Black community of learners with whom these teachers work.

Critical care

A caring pedagogy is one that flows from the interests of students. Nel Noddings (2008) argued that caring theory is concerned with the relationship between the cared for and the carer. It is marked by listening guided by the heart—the concerns of the cared for guide the work of the carer. In true dialogue, the carer acts not only in the best interest of the cared for but also based on what it is the cared for has expressed as a need. Without dialogue, carers act on “inferred needs,” informed oftentimes by assumptions and stereotypes.

Valenzuela (1999) contrasted authentic caring, derived from the work of theorists such as Noddings, with a noncaring pedagogy that is the norm in urban schooling reflective of Haberman’s pedagogy of poverty. From her ethnographic work, Valenzuela found that urban Latino youth, for example, long to have teachers listen intently to their needs and respond with relevant and appropriate material. What they object to is schooling—the over-concern with the impersonal, noninclusive, and culturally irrelevant.

Antrop-González and De Jesús (2006) identified two types of caring that urban teachers exhibit. The first, “soft caring,” describes the practice of teachers who ignore the structural violence poverty and racism impose, pity their students, and lower their expectations of their students. By contrast, educational communities that are successful with urban youth of color embrace a “critical care” and create “culturally additive learning communities underscored by high-quality relationships and high academic expectations that reflect an ethic of critical care and illustrate the practice of hard caring—a form of caring characterized by supportive instrumental relationships and high academic expectations” (emphasis in original, p. 413).

Other researchers have referred to teachers who exhibit hard caring as “warm demanders” (see recent articles by Bondy, Ross, Hambacher, & Acosta, 2012 and Ware, 2006). Drawing from the work of Irvine and Fraser (1998), Kleinfeld (1975), and Vasquez (1989) on culturally relevant teachers as warm demanders, Ware (2006) observed two such exemplary teachers of Black youth and found that they exhibited traits as warm demanders in three areas—as “disciplinarians,” as “caregivers,” and as “pedagogues”—creating classrooms that were communities of caring learners, excelling academically. These two teachers met the academic needs of their students, supported them in caring for and about their communities, listened to their concerns, and provided a disciplinary structure that supported learning. They did so without lowering expectations and, in fact, accepted no excuses from their students.

Thus, the research shows that teachers who are culturally relevant and exhibit critical care are likely to be successful with urban youth. A good teacher of urban youth must respect and center Black and Brown youth, work closely with the students (and the local community), and hold students to high expectations.

Discussion: Comparing the Spectacle With the Research

What Is Good Teaching and Who Are Good Teachers?

Each teacher in the WTSFs analyzed is new and all but Erin Gruwell undercredentialed. Most of the TFA corps members are similarly new with limited initial training. Yet, after a bumpy start, these inexperienced and underqualified teachers are portrayed as capturing the attention of urban youth, raising student performance, and otherwise performing miracles in the classroom. TFA corps members are not shown as struggling. The WTSF and TFA narratives show urban youth of color saved by White teachers who insert themselves voluntarily into urban classrooms to “make a difference.” Despite research that shows Black youth excel in classrooms with Black teachers, in each film, the teacher is White.

The not-so-subtle message here is that urban youth do not need highly qualified and experienced teachers who look like them, but rather, they do better academically when given inexperienced and underqualified, White teachers. Against the educational research, these narratives mark their inexperience and Whiteness as the freshness that brings salvation to impoverished urban youth floundering under more experienced, but burnt-out, and bureaucratized educators. The more difficult question to address is whether the pedagogy of Erin, LouAnne, Shale, and Carl constitutes a pedagogy of poverty or a culturally relevant pedagogy that reflects critical care (we don’t see enough classroom pedagogy in the TFA narratives to discuss here).

The pedagogies of Shale and Carl, hypermasculine and hyperviolent, rely on their own willingness and ability to physically subdue their students. Once students are subdued, Shale and Carl are able to teach. Their curriculum is not culturally relevant and neither values the families, friends, and communities of their students (though they value their own families enough to hunt their assailants). Clearly, their pedagogy strays from that espoused by the educational research. It is less clear with the female teachers.

The initial pedagogy of the women is depicted as ineffective. Ironically, this pedagogy is what they learned from their credential programs and books. We see LouAnne laugh at the suggestion from her textbook to put student names on the board when they do not follow classroom norms. We watch Erin attempt to use the curriculum recommended by the district, one that is woefully unchallenging and culturally irrelevant. They hit their stride when they abandon what they learned in their programs and what the districts recommend and instead blaze a trail into a pedagogy that seems ironically similar to that which the educational literature finds effective.

So what are we to make of this? The movie pedagogy of Erin and LouAnne and the pedagogy from the research seem remarkably consistent. Erin and LouAnne listen closely to their students and create a curriculum that responds to their needs and (mostly) respects the students’ knowledge. So perhaps all we need, indeed, are dedicated White female teachers willing to sacrifice their personal lives to be in the classroom.

I suggest that on closer examination, though, there exists an inconsistency that unravels the authority of these films. Despite the consistencies, the most crucial element is missing—the use of the community as an asset in the classroom. Although they create small communities within their classrooms, encouraging group work often, both Erin and LouAnne disregard sincere efforts to become a part of the larger community and to instill a sense of responsibility to this larger community. The family members of the students are framed as the problem in Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers. Erin and LouAnne try to convince their students that leaving their communities is true success. Students are taught to fear the very communities in which they were raised for their ability to distract them with gang life, violence, drugs, and teen parenthood. These teachers do not find value in the communities from which the youth come. Instead, their pedagogy remains a one-person battle to save the very souls of individual Black and Brown urban youth.

Implications

Why the Spectacle?

While No Child Left Behind makes claims about providing highly qualified teachers to all youth, programs such as TFA continue to proliferate. As in WTSFs, urban youth are underserved with novice White teachers (but with less effective results than in the films). Even if White teacher saviors could bring about change in the educational system, why would White students from top colleges and universities agree to sacrifice 2 years to teach? I argue that politically conservative agendas are fulfilled by the use of cheaper resources (inexperienced teachers cost less to employ) in urban schools, and the case of interest convergence is even stronger at times, like now, when the economy is struggling; White college students entering the work force benefit from programs such as TFA—even more so than the Black and Brown students they teach. As revealed above, the literature from the TFA website markets the program heavily as a resume builder for participants, and, most important, these narratives act as songs that lull us to sleep, content that we need do very little to improve opportunities for urban youth; instead, these stories tell us that we can continue to defund urban schools because it takes only an inexperienced White teacher, less costly and more effective, to change outcomes in urban schools.

The benefit to bottom lines

Ladson-Billings (2011) documented the proliferation of TFA teachers in public schools across the United States finding that in cities such as Chicago, New Haven, and New Orleans, districts rely on TFA to save money on teachers. Because the majority are inexperienced and have yet to earn a clear credential, TFA teachers are often at the bottom of the pay scale, costing school districts significantly less than credentialed, experienced teachers.

Donaldson and Johnson (2010) wrote, “Although TFA annually supplies less than 5% of the nation’s new teachers, each new recruit is assigned to work in a hard-to-staff, low-income school. An increasing number of large, urban districts . . . routinely rely on TFA to supply many of their new teachers” (p. 300). Journalist Barbara Miner, in an article on TFA, found that even in districts that are forced to lay off veteran teachers, TFA teachers are least likely to be laid off and, in fact, continue to be hired into districts that are concurrently laying off experienced teachers (2010).

Recently, researchers have begun to question whether there is a savings to the bottom line. Research by Vasquez Heilig and Jez (2010) and Vasquez Heilig, Cole, and Springel (2011) estimate that each TFA recruit costs roughly $70,000 in recruitment, training, and replacement costs. These costs are incurred by TFA, local school districts that are charged per TFA intern by TFA, the federal government who awards AmeriCorps funding to TFA interns, corporations who defer employment, and graduates schools that often waive application fees and/or match the AmeriCorps funding. The costs to the private and public sectors are substantial.

As well, there is some doubt that TFA is needed to address teacher shortages presently (Cersonsky, 2013; Kumashiro, 2010; Vasquez Heilig & Jez, 2010):

. . . TFA has begun placing teachers not in positions lacking qualified candidates, but in slots previously held by veteran teachers—that is, in districts using layoffs to ease budget problems. The practice of laying off experienced teachers and replacing them with inexperienced TFA teachers—or of laying off people to accommodate Teach For America—has been reported in Boston, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Chicago, Dallas, and Washington, D.C., among other cities. (Vasquez Heilig & Jez, 2010, p. 4)

There is increasing evidence that TFA interns do not simply fill vacancies that would have otherwise been filled by emergency-credentialed teachers and substitutes.

The benefit to corps members

In the recent economic downturn, the founder of TFA acknowledged that TFA employs college graduates who otherwise face a tough job market (Friedman, 2009). Miner (2010) agreed, “In recession-plagued 2009, when teaching became a safe harbor for graduates unsure about the best career path, more than 35,000 people applied to TFA, including 11 percent of Ivy League graduates” (n.p.).

Under a section labeled “Compensation” (July, 2013, http://www.teachforamerica.org/why-teach-for-america/compensation-and-benefits/graduate-school-and-employer-partnerships#quickset-partnerships_chart_0), TFA outlines the financial benefits that accrue to corps membership. First, TFA interns draw a full salary, as well as health and retirement benefits, as any fully employed public-school teacher would draw. During years that TFA receives AmeriCorps support, corps members are also eligible for an education award for each year of service (up to $11,000) to be used toward past or future eligible-educational expenses. Other 1st-year teachers, those who have taken the time to become certified, are not eligible for the AmeriCorp stipend regardless of being more qualified for their position and having taken the time to learn how to teach. In addition, as AmeriCorps volunteers through TFA, corps members are eligible to have the interest that accrues while their loans are in forbearance paid in full by AmeriCorps. Corps members are also able to apply for interest-free loans (up to $6,000) for transitional costs of moving to a new region of the country to teach. The majority of corps members who apply for this funding receive it.

On completing their service with TFA, an extensive network is available to alumni. More than 200 graduate schools work with TFA and offer benefits to TFA alumni including waivers for the application fees and financial awards. TFA advertises to its corps members that corps members not only grow as teachers but also learn skills that are transferable and beneficial to corps members in pursuit of their long-term career goals outside the classroom. These skills are desired by employers and graduate schools that, TFA claims, look favorably on TFA alumni who apply to their firms and schools.

Although the TFA website and the CEO herself refer to the service of their corps members as confronting the civil rights issue of this generation, it is clear that corps members themselves also benefit greatly. Torre Veltri (2010), in her study of TFA corps members and alumni, found that 95% of her study participants were looking for an easy/quick entry into the teaching field without the investment of time and money to become a teacher. Seventy five percent of her participants said that the reason they joined TFA is because it provided them with employment after college; many were influenced by the considerable financial advantages to entering teaching through TFA; others were interested in the cohort, peer support, and/or the sense that they would have something to do while waiting to apply to a graduate program. These two reasons comprised the majority of respondents’ reasons for joining TFA. Torre Veltri wrote,

They felt that teaching poor children was “a good thing to do in the meantime.” In fact, many TFAers were not thinking about teaching as much as they were thinking about earning a living, procuring money for graduate school, and relocating to another part of the country for a brief time. (p. 25)

In an article that compares the relative advantages of corps members entering the classroom via the TFA route rather than the teacher education (TE) route, Labaree (2010) claimed that TFA manages to sell itself as an organization that pushes educational equity in schools and provides a low commitment way for recent college graduates from prestigious schools to help achieve this mission while gaining significant advantages for themselves. Those advantages, ones that cannot be offered to graduates of teacher-education programs who go into the very same teaching positions, include a status symbol to put on their resumes, very real economic benefits, and access to an extensive network that can help them garner high-status jobs at the end of their 2-year TFA stint.

The benefit to the dominant power structure

Costly, generally ineffective in the classroom according to research, and with small-scale impact, there is relatively small punch behind this educational “reform.” While TFA interns leverage this experience to gain high-status and high-paying jobs or go to graduate schools to pursue high-status (and often high-paying) careers, school districts can only leverage their time in the classroom to momentarily help them balance their budgets. Meanwhile, as research shows, Black and Brown youth in urban schools are served with a revolving set of underprepared, majority White, middle-class teachers who rarely come from nor know much about the community in which their schools are situated.

Bulman (2002) argued that in urban school movies such as Dangerous Minds, the sacrifices of a few White, middle-class teachers are presented as reasonable and honorable as compared with alternatives that require governments and districts to provide increased funding to urban schools through reforms such as reduced class sizes and more experienced teachers.

Throwing inexpensive, new, inexperienced teachers at the problem appears to be “doing something”; it allows us to pretend that we, as a society, are collectively trying to make an untenable situation “right.” These teachers act as “a valve to releas[e] the unbearable pressures that build in a system built on pillage. We can participate in the economic destruction of (an urban community and its institutions) over long years” and “it feels good to send” a White teacher to “rescue” Black and Brown youth (Cole, 2012, n.p.).

Labaree (2010) argued vehemently, “. . . TFA’s approach to teaching reinforces an old and dangerous vision of teaching as a form of slumming, a missionary effort by the White middle class to elevate minorities and the lower classes through the medium of education” (p. 52). WTSF and TFA narratives construct urban youth as deeply affected by their environment; poor, undereducated, violent, and lacking the cultural and social capital to escape their worlds, they are trapped in a cycle that relegates them to predictable dropout status. These narratives tell us that no amount of money will create alternative outcomes for Black and Brown, low-income youth. Instead, these narratives explore the influence of one individual, commonly a new, inexperienced White teacher. Paid less than all other faculty on staff, these teachers manage to increase academic achievement, and control and discipline a forgotten and lost group of youth, thereby presenting a simple solution to a complex problem.

Hope on the Horizon?

There is a recent albeit small backlash against TFA. As this article goes to press, some of the most vehement and vibrant arguments against TFA are making their way into the political arena. In Minnesota, Governor Mark Dayton recently vetoed funding TFA with the requested $1.5 million stating that TFA neither competed for consideration of the funding (questioning how TFA even became eligible for such funding) and rejecting claims that this well-funded organization required public funding. Cersonsky (2013) cites other legislation in Minnesota, “deny[ing] TFA a group-based licensing variance, [adding] an extra hurdle for corps members to be allowed to teach” (n.p.). In California, similar actions by the state to increase the licensing requirements to teach English Language Learners will make it more difficult for TFA to place teachers in the classrooms of English Language Learners. This legislation was heralded by TFA alumni ironically. At the recent Free Minds, Free People conference, a biannual conference started in 2007 that brings together school, family, and community activists organizing for more socially just schools, a group of TFA alumni and educational activists organized a summit called “Organizing resistance to Teach For America and its role in privatization” (July, 2013, http://www.fmfp.org/program/assemblies/organizing-resistance-to-teach-for-america-and-its-role-in-privatization). Perhaps we are finally at the point to dismantle the White savior industrial complex.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Colette N. Cann is an assistant professor in education and Africana studies at Vassar College. Her research interests include teacher tracking, college–community relationships, race and racism in higher education, and the study of racial injustice in education using a critical race theory framework.

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