Teach for America Application Process

This post in the first of what will become a long series of a journal/log of my experiences (and expenses) becoming a Teach for America teacher. There are praises and horror stories ALL over the internet about Teach for America. It is my hope that by explaining my own journey through Teach for America, I can give my own experiences without any biased conclusions.

1) The Teach for America Hiring Process

The Teach for America interview process is not for the weak at heart. Ranked by Forbes as #13 in the 25 most companies with the most difficult job interviews, many consider the TFA application experience extremely intense. It is my hope that through this post I can dispel some rumors about the interview/hiring process and share some truth. Keep in mind, these are just my experiences! Everyone's experience will be different and my post isn't endorsed by TFA.

I applied for Teach for America through their early application deadline, meaning that I applied my junior year of my undergraduate experience as opposed to my senior year. There were SO many advantages for me. HOWEVER, there are also many disadvantages that you should be aware of. If you apply early admissions and are accepted, then you will need to make a decision about whether you want to take the job in October of your senior year. That means that if you are seriously pursuing other job offers or waiting to hear back from graduate schools that signing your life away to TFA might not be the best idea...

Some pros that I found to applying through the early application deadline:

• familiarity with the interview process if you apply and are not accepted. You would then have the opportunity to apply again through a later application deadline.
• Choice of Region! Since you are the first wave of corps members for the upcoming year, you really get a say in where you want to teach. The Phoenix region was my first choice and that's where I'm headed.
• Knowing that you have the possibility of a full-time job the summer of your junior year of college. Most fresh college graduates don't have that kind of surety now a days.

The application process:

First step is to fill out an online application, which requires a variety of essays. My advice: read over TFA's philosophies and mission statement and gear your essays towards though. TFA looks to hire a particular type of people, so if what you have to say matches what they have to say, you're good as gold. 

If you move on in the application process, you will either have a phone interview or an in-person interview. I've read a lot of different things about phone interviews vs. in-person interviews. I honestly don't know if a phone interview is worse than an in person interview. I would encourage you to look up or ask around if Teach for America sends a recruiter to your area or somewhere close in your area. If you are in a region that is difficult to travel, then a phone interview makes total sense. However, for me at BYU, Teach for America does extensive recruiting and so they are able to interview everyone in person.

Before your interview, you are required to complete an online assessment that asks about your educational philosophy and pedagogical practices through a variety of hypothetical situations and logic questions. This takes several hours and requires you to answer a series of multiple choice as well as short-essays. They will reference these in your actual interview, so make sure to do a good job. I was expecting to fly through them, but they definitely took the full two hours.

The in-person interview is rather extensive. The interview consists of practice teaching in front of a group. You can choose any grade level, any subject that you would like. Remember, this lesson is only 5 minutes so make it count. I had something elaborate planned until the night before my interview, when I realized that I wanted to do something totally different. If you watch any of the videos on Youtube, anyone that knows anything about education will notice that a lot of them utilize the Audio-lingual method of teaching aka teacher talks, students repeat. I ended up choosing to follow this prescribed pattern for my interview, knowing that I would never do that in teaching. Many of the applicants will have materials. I would say don't go overboard creating materials just to wow the recruiters. Just be real. You are probably going to use materials in your classroom, so use materials in your interview. The other applicants will act as students.

Then, there is a group activity that asks you to work through a hypothetical situation as a team. After that, you have a 30-40 minute interview with a recruiter. They reviewed very specific experiences that I had referenced on my resume and referred back to my essays.

One important thing to remember about the interview is that you really aren't in competition with the other applicants.

After about a month, you will hear back from Teach for America and be asked for additional information, which I will explain in the next post.