Superheroes and Transformers: Rethinking Teach for America's Leadership Models

Abstract

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Many young children enjoy playing superheroes and Transformers. Often they can be found acting out fantasies in which they assume the identities of these all-powerful characters. The drama usually unfolds the same way: Villains use their power to abuse others until a bold, relentless protagonist uses novel talent and transformative strength to crush the evil forces. The hero/ine, motivated by a fierce sense of urgency, bravely resolves the victims' plights--often by blowing up things and leaving a path of destruction in his/her wake as he/she metes out justice and order. This pretend play carries several benefits during early childhood. Children can try different forms of power in both good and bad roles. They can develop social, emotional, cognitive, and physical skills. But these simplified tropes don't necessarily serve us well as adults seeking to solve complex social dilemmas. Without deliberation and cooperation, a focus on superhero solutions can minimize our attention to more nuanced human concerns. Worries over competition, valuing fierce individualism and dramatic results, and charismatic heroes can edge out considerations about empathy for others, civic awareness, collaboration, creativity, equity, and social justice. Nevertheless, our yearning for heroic leaders persists throughout society. Education is no exception. In fact, in our study of Teach For America (TFA), we found these themes of heroism and individualism repeating themselves among many TFA alumni and current corps members when they reflected on the educational leadership they deemed most desirable for redressing educational inequities. For our respondents, most of whom were on a professional fast track to become leaders themselves, the archetype of the valiant leader in a relentless pursuit of excellence and justice was by far the most frequently cited model of leadership. They were enchanted with the image of a morally virtuous, epic hero. Studying Teach For America In 1990, TFA began as an alternative teacher preparation and placement organization. Today its mission has shifted to building a movement to eliminate educational inequity by selecting and preparing our nation's most promising leaders. TFA has successfully seeded its leaders across a wide range of charter management organizations, school districts, corporate-funded education reform agencies, and government offices. Yet many of TFA's highest-profile leaders seem to stir up strong reactions from observers of all political persuasions. For three years, we've been researching TFA alumni and current members' notions about the leadership they believe could best increase educational equity. We've also talked with them about their diagnoses of educational inequality and ideas for policies that can effectively redress them. In this article, we report on what we found from one subset of our data, our interviews. In total, we interviewed a representative sample of 117 alumni and 47 current corps members, all of whom participated in the program between 1991 and 2013 and who worked in 25 different TFA placement regions across the country. The knowledge base on TFA Most literature on TFA falls into four general categories. The first, the conceptual debates, considers the most promising ways to prepare teachers to serve in hard-to-staff, under-resourced schools, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of relying on TFA teachers, most of whom are white and from elite backgrounds, to serve primarily children of color in low-income communities. Other literature investigates TFA's test-based effectiveness. This research tends to show that students of TFA teachers have mixed results, and the effects of these results are usually small. The third category contains journalistic and biographical narratives that detail corps members' conflicts and joys as novices working in communities in which they are usually professional and cultural outsiders. …