Detroit's Teach For America Recruits Stuck In Middle Of Broader Battle
Secret Corbett poll proposing teachers union attack funded by PennCAN |
Philadelphia City Paper
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by Daniel Denvir – A secret report, based on a poll of Pennsylvanians,
proposing that Gov. Tom Corbett mount a high-profile attack on the
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Posted: 11/16/11 10:32 PM ET
When Brenda Belcher, principal of the new Benjamin Carson High School of Science and Medicine, interviewed Mo Torres this past summer for a position teaching Spanish, he seemed like a good fit.
"It was a match," Belcher recalled in a phone interview on a recent busy Friday. "I just felt it."
What Belcher found out only later is that Torres is no ordinary teacher. He's a corps member with Teach for America, a nationwide alternate certification program that has drawn 200 young teachers with mostly no experience and little training to Detroit over the past year and a half as part of the organization's second shot at success in the Motor City.
TFA Detroit members teach both in traditional public schools and in charter schools. They are the