Hey Justin,
I don’t think we’ve ever met, so let me introduce myself. My
name is Adam Waxman. I work on the Eastern North Carolina regional team of
Teach For America, where I am the Manager, Individual Giving. I was never in
the corps and I’ve never been a teacher; my path to Teach For America was
through social justice advocacy organizations and journalism. I’ve been on
staff about nine months. Like most of us, I’m regularly exposed to a broad
range of critiques of our work, or what people think is our work. For me
personally, it’s been hard to square the harsh critiques leveled at Teach For
America, our staff, our alumni, with the work I see us doing within
marginalized communities in North Carolina. So I was happy at first to read
your open letter to the folks who gathered in Chicago. It was good for some of
our staff to be there and listen.
However, as I read your open letter, I became concerned. You
made many good points, I thought, namely that Teach For America is on the same
side as many of its critics. That is to say, surely we have the same goals. The
work of Teach For America is about educational equity, and more fundamentally
than that, about economic justice. I’ve always seen our true vision as being
for the communities we serve to be empowered to make choices, and have those
choices matter. I also thought that you made a good point about Teach For
America’s capacity to evolve and change. I'm comparatively new to Teach For America, but I’ve never seen an organization so dedicated to self-reflection and continual
learning.
What troubles me, I suppose, is what you chose to be the
central message of your letter. You bolded it, and it was the only thing you
bolded, so I am guessing it was the main takeaway point you wanted to convey.
This is what you wrote:
Teach For America isn’t going away anytime soon, so work with us to make the organization better.
A few paragraphs later, you expand on that idea:
… Teach For America isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s not. For me personally, I can’t wait for the day that TFA closes its doors and is no longer relevant. That is a day when our education system finally works for everyone, not just for those with privilege and power. The ultimate victory for the organization is to become obsolete, to become no longer necessary. Until then, though, there will still be droves of corps members entering the classroom each year, and thousands of alumni working inside and outside the education field towards the realization of TFA’s mission. Whether you like it or not, the organization is well supported and its staff is full of many hard-working, sharp individuals who are fired up about what they do.I know some of you are thinking, “No, no, no! I just want TFA to go away!” Seeing that happen anytime soon is just not realistic. Teach For America has financial and political support because many people understand the value that it brings in creating a force for change of an education system that’s not working. It’s not spin…
So, yes. This is what bothered me. We could talk a lot, I
think, about the idea that we and other educational equity organizations will one
day declare victory and close up shop. I think the only thing that would happen
is we’d have to suit up in a week or a month to rejoin the fight. But I want to
focus on something else. It’s pretty easy to look at our momentum, the money we
raise, our growing number of corps members, and the bipartisan list of champions
we have – right up to President Barack Obama - and assume that “we’re not going
anywhere.” But, I would caution you, history is littered with organizations
that were at the vanguard of their movements and then, quickly as they rose,
either became a shadow of their former selves or disappeared altogether. An
example of this can be seen in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. This is
a union born on America’s railways in the 1920s, built by the African-American
staffers who manned the cars of the Pullman Company. BSCP’s leader was A.
Phillip Randolph, a fiery labor leader who went toe-to-toe with FDR to
desegregate the defense industries in the ‘40s and led the March on Washington
in 1963. Despite these successes, the BSCP merged into another union in 1978
and ceased to exist as an independent organization. I would argue that Teach
For America’s prominence is a relatively new thing; as Dr. Ray Spain,
Superintendent of Warren County, NC said in a piece he wrote for The
Washington Post, we’re just hitting our stride. We could stumble. We could
fall. The simple fact that we’re big and well-staffed is not a strong argument
against taking us on.
What I think you are getting at is perhaps something else –
it’s about power. At this moment, both historical and political, Teach For
America does have a lot of power. Or at least, we have access to power.
Speaking about our local situation in eastern North Carolina, we enjoy the
support of over a dozen superintendents and numerous principals who are excited
to have corps members in their classrooms. The parents of the children our
corps members serve are thrilled to have these teachers. The local businesses
in the towns we place in are excited to have corps members in their
communities. We have bipartisan support in the legislature. This is at a
time when other anti-poverty advocates in North Carolina can’t get a meeting
with government officials.
With all of that, the question that I have been wrestling
with is how do we make the best use of our power? While we’ve got the ear of
the powerful, how do we maximize our leverage for justice? Around educational
equity certainly, but also how do we articulate a broad progressive vision and
understand where we fit as an actor in a cohesive movement? How can we
use our power to move the ball forward on immigration, health care, workers’
rights, LBGTQA inclusion, reproductive justice, and myriad of other issues
facing the communities we serve? If we as an organization believe, as I do,
that we’re all in this together, than we’ve got to get a sense of where we fit
into a broader progressive coalition. Because all of the issues I just
named have an education lens to them.
If we see ourselves as a progressive organization (and I am
not sure we do), how do we fit with other pieces of the movement? How do work
with them? What happens when we disagree with an ally on some things but not
others? Can we still find common ground? This isn’t an easy conversation or a
discussion with any easy answers. As you said before, however, Teach For
America is fully capable of having the discussion. However, declaring our
inevitability isn’t going to win us any allies. In this fight, we need all the
allies we can get.
Respectfully,
Adam Waxman
Adam Waxman is the Manager, Individual Giving in the
Eastern North Carolina region of Teach For America. This letter reflects his
own personal opinion. There are often typos in the emails he sends to donors,
so any mistakes are his too.
