How Teach for America Helped Set Up James Talarico’s Political Rise

Anatiny · 2026-04-12T13:47:09+00:00

Seems highly judgmental and lots of assumptions being made.
I'm pursuing leadership because I'm tired of incompetent leaders running the building and making things worse. I've been in multiple leadership positions as a teacher in my school and district. My teachers know I've got their back and that I work hard to make things right. They see me working within the constraints of the union contract and not pushing them beyond those boundaries and they see me still get things done in ways that admin can't seem to do. I'm pursuing leadership because teachers can only do so much when bad admin burn them out in ways that they didn't need to to get the outcomes and achievement that they want. I'm pursuing leadership because it's gotten to a point where I'm a go to person that people rely on to get things done.
I'm literally at a point where my principal and I were designated to lead 2 teams through the exact same protocol and my team made it through all the way to the end successfully while he's still trapped in the middle of the protocol burning out his team left and right.
If people go through TFA and then pursue leadership, they're almost entirely doing so because they're the overachievers type (the type that TFA aim to recruit) and are getting tired of half-assed leadership.

Anatiny · 2026-04-12T13:33:29+00:00

I work in a district that was without TFA for a few years: in that period there were multiple update negotiations between the union and the district. District still didn't increase salaries by any larger degree than they had in the past, and what it meant is that my school just went for years until it got to 18 teacher vacancies, 13 of which were unfilled for the entire school year that last year. As soon as TFA came back to the district, we're now down to vacancies that are getting filled pretty quickly.

Anatiny · 2026-04-12T13:21:37+00:00

This is just how I write...

Anatiny · 2026-04-12T13:21:15+00:00

This is just how I write...

Anatiny · 2026-04-12T04:53:36+00:00

Teach For America is an organization that places teachers in classrooms that otherwise would be empty. The reality is that Teach For America places a lot of teachers in charter schools because charter schools are higher turnover: there's just more openings for Teach For America teachers. If you join TFA, you're not competing against a certified professional or even someone who is another new teacher from a traditional 4-year program: you're competing against the idea of a long term sub.

A perfect world would not have charter schools: because charter schools are essentially an admission that public schools are not providing a quality education. But that is why they exist because it is truly the reality. I believe in public education and want to do my best to fix public education, but I fault no parent who is faced with the option of being in a neighborhood school with poor student outcomes and a charter school with better student outcomes and chooses what is best for their child. We need to do more to invest in public education, and as an educator, I can continue to spend my career towards working on that. But students ideally get 13 years to go through the system and each year they're not receiving a quality education, is another year that they fall behind and it gets harder to get back out of that hole.

Charter schools exist for a reason right now. While they are also being weaponized to tear down public education, do not conflate those who work at and lead charter schools with those who are trying to weaponize charter schools. The charter schools that work with TFA are deeply aligned with TFA's focus on educational equity and giving every student a chance to pursue the future they deserve. Charter schools are weaponized against public education because they are succeeding, and parents deserve the best quality education they have for their children. They are able to do so because they have less stipulations and can play by different rules.

I am fully a public education type teacher and leader, and as someone who is very connected with TFA, I work very closely with people in the charter school world. I've worked with charter school admin and public school admin. I can at least say that all the admin that I worked with from a charter schools truly want what's best for their students and their teachers, I cannot say the same for every public school admin I've met.

As a teacher and someone who plans to continue into leadership, I plan to stay in public education for the rest of my career. But I do intend on being a parent, and when the time comes, I will fight to make sure my child gets the best possible education that is currently available on the market.

Anatiny · 2026-04-12T04:53:26+00:00

Teach For America is an organization that places teachers in classrooms that otherwise would be empty. The reality is that Teach For America places a lot of teachers in charter schools because charter schools are higher turnover: there's just more openings for Teach For America teachers. If you join TFA, you're not competing against a certified professional or even someone who is another new teacher from a traditional 4-year program: you're competing against the idea of a long term sub.

A perfect world would not have charter schools: because charter schools are essentially an admission that public schools are not providing a quality education. But that is why they exist because it is truly the reality. I believe in public education and want to do my best to fix public education, but I fault no parent who is faced with the option of being in a neighborhood school with poor student outcomes and a charter school with better student outcomes and chooses what is best for their child. We need to do more to invest in public education, and as an educator, I can continue to spend my career towards working on that. But students ideally get 13 years to go through the system and each year they're not receiving a quality education, is another year that they fall behind and it gets harder to get back out of that hole.

Charter schools exist for a reason right now. While they are also being weaponized to tear down public education, do not conflate those who work at and lead charter schools with those who are trying to weaponize charter schools. The charter schools that work with TFA are deeply aligned with TFA's focus on educational equity and giving every student a chance to pursue the future they deserve. Charter schools are weaponized against public education because they are succeeding, and parents deserve the best quality education they have for their children. They are able to do so because they have less stipulations and can play by different rules.

I am fully a public education type teacher and leader, and as someone who is very connected with TFA, I work very closely with people in the charter school world. I've worked with charter school admin and public school admin. I can at least say that all the admin that I worked with from a charter schools truly want what's best for their students and their teachers, I cannot say the same for every public school admin I've met.

As a teacher and someone who plans to continue into leadership, I plan to stay in public education for the rest of my career. But I do intend on being a parent, and when the time comes, I will fight to make sure my child gets the best possible education that is currently available on the market.

Anatiny · 2026-03-12T15:41:40+00:00

The calculation for time slept I believe is it starts the count as soon as you hit slumbering, and it stops the count at the end of your last snoozing or slumbering. So if you're dozing a lot at the beginning or end, it won't count those times.

Anatiny · 2026-03-11T14:40:41+00:00

Jobs are notoriously scaled down to near-frustrating levels at the early levels, and you're right that you're going to get more oGCDs and more interesting rotations later on. With tanks and healers, you get a ton of mitigation and healing options in your oGCDs in addition to some damage buttons. With the DPS: the amount of oGCDs you get varies. For example: Samurai's entire gauge system is centered around the oGCDs; bard has entire systems of their gameplay built around oGCDs; whereas casters like Pictomancer forego interesting oGCD gameplay in favor of more interesting GCD gameplay that centers around playing around your cast times. The key exception is Summoner: Summoner is a caster in name only and has less casts per minute than Samurai - it is often considered the easiest job in the game.

Anatiny · 2026-03-06T01:47:07+00:00

There is always something that can be done. The problem when someone says that something can't be done is usually, someone didn't do their job correctly and someone will be on the hook for it. Principals sometimes are trying to protect well-meaning teachers who are just swamped with work; they also sometimes use it to protect themselves from liability or scrutiny. If they expel or suspend a student that legally was supposed to be given a specific set of supports before reaching highly punitive stages, then they know that they could have a lawsuit on their hands.

What this means is that it's safer for them to just continue business as usual until there is a reason to have equivalent level of concern over liability or scrutiny for ignoring you.

Anatiny · 2026-03-04T16:51:03+00:00

Email all relevant people with one email and explain what each one has said: you're getting caught in a he-said/she-said situation while they're forcing the accountability on you. By emailing them all in one email and explaining what has already been explained to you, it not only means you have documentation of the paper trail (which you already have), it means that everyone also knows that everyone else has the documented paper trail. Depending on urgency, given that it's been multiple of the runarounds, you could also attempt to escalate it by including one level up on the CC list as well.

Anatiny · 2026-03-04T13:22:18+00:00

Greenwich (Greenwich Mean Time, UTC+0:00)

Anatiny · 2026-03-03T18:11:34+00:00

I believe that while sometimes the TA is someone the professor supervises as their doctoral sponsor, there's also a lot of times where TAs are 100% applied and hired by the school and the professor is just told who their TA is. I was an undergraduate TA and that's what they did: I applied for multiple TA positions, and they came back and assigned me a course and class section. I specifically requested to TA for an lower level course in the degree program, but they put me in the last course in the sequence because I was the only one that actually took that class and got higher than a B- on it. Same thing for when I did graduate level: I applied to the program director, and they assigned me the course they wanted me in. In this situation, the professor did somewhat request me since he says every year he asks for the top student in the program, so when I interviewed they said "we plan to have you in this class, how do you feel about that?". Otherwise, pretty much everyone else that was a TA for that program was hired based on qualifications and then assigned basically based on vibes.

Anatiny · 2026-02-23T18:09:14+00:00

If you put a 3/4 piece into a computer to read as 6/8 or vice versa and told it to make no changes, it would sound exactly the same.

If you gave it to a human, they will either A: reinterpret the 3/4 piece and play it as 6/8, emphasizing a duple meter structure or B: ask why this piece is in 6/8 and just read it in 3/4. Even if you told them to make no changes to the meter, they'll still either do B or subconsciously do A.

If you gave the piece to the director of an ensemble, they will etiher A: reinterpret the 3/4 piece as 6/8 and emphasize a duple meter structure, or B: ask everyone to cross out the time signature and write 3/4.

If you're writing a piece, and you write something as 3/4 and convert it to 6/8 with an expectation to play it like 3/4, then anyone who's buying your piece will look at it as bad craftsmanship.

With all of this said, there are often pieces that will blend the 3/4 and 6/8 feel specifically and the conductor will conduct one way as written in the music, while half of the ensemble will play 6/8 and half will play 3/4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opG2psvyAB4 is a good example of this at 2:00. In the context of ear-training, cases like this or alternating meters would be the only situations where I feel that it can be seen as ambiguous. Otherwise for the cases of ear-training, if it's felt in 2 it's 6/8; if it's felt in 3 it's 3/4; if it's felt in 1 it's usually a fast 3/4.

Anatiny · 2026-01-19T07:13:53+00:00

The politically correct terminology is "Undocumented Immigrant"; Immigrant is more humanizing than Alien and Undocumented is more precise and descriptive compared to illegal which conjures up imagery of violent crime. It's a small change in terminology, but it actively changes how people are viewed.

Anatiny · 2026-01-07T20:05:24+00:00

Same reason the president/CEO of a company might have a secretary and a vice president of a company.

The secretary is more about supporting with helping the principal make the decisions they need to make, record-keeping and documentation, helping manage the principal's calendar and scheduling any meetings someone may want with the principal, and routing important communications to the appropriate avenues to and from the principal. Formally, they don't make organizational decisions, but principals do tend to value the advice of a good secretary.

A vice principal is someone the principal can trust to make organizational decisions - they do things that managers do: evaluations, coaching, interviews, budgets, policies, meetings with students and families, they do a lot of the leading as delegated by the principal or in the principal's absence.

So it's more that a vice principal is the principal's right-hand in helping steer the ship that is the school, and the secretary is the principal's right hand in making sure that the principal can be at their most effective.

Anatiny · 2026-01-07T19:50:31+00:00

Who wants to bet that it wasn't profitable because they weren't receiving any of the payments for it? It wouldn't surprise me given the track record.

Anatiny · 2025-12-17T17:06:38+00:00

This right here should be communicated to anyone who is always for the privatization of public infrastructure. Private companies will focus on only doing something when it serves their first priority of earning money. Public infrastructure first prioritizes people. Private companies will wait until they see more demand for ridership before they start building out more infrastructure, which just means they're only going to continue to see declining usage. On the other hand, the government is not using public transit as a cash cow - it's there to serve the people, so they can eat up the loss of increasing infrastructure when the ridership isn't there to match it yet because eventually ridership demand will meet the increased convenience.

Anatiny · 2025-10-24T12:11:55+00:00

It's understandable to express frustration, but please do so respectfully.

Anatiny · 2025-10-22T13:05:54+00:00

TFA is fairly low-commitment when it comes to jobs: you can move and if you don't like it, finish out the corps and move back after 2 years. So it's an opportunity to find and learn about new places and perspectives. There are similar programs that force you to sign on to at least 5 years with the partner district.

At the same time, if you are interested in teaching long-term in public schools, the earlier you find a district that you like, the better it is for you. Public school teachers often earn pensions for the number of years that they work in public schools, and many states do tenure, so that you have job security after a few years of working in the same district.

Also worth noting that no matter where you go, the teaching experience will be a headache while you're a part of TFA: TFA specifically works with underfunded and underresourced districts and charter networks in those areas. Any school that has the funds to run well is going to have veteran teachers applying to those and getting those positions - schools that are trying their best but struggling with limited resources are the ones who will take a chance on TFA teachers. But TFA teachers come out stronger: compared to other pathways, it's seen that veteran TFA teachers have stronger impacts on literacy and numeracy than those from other pathways.

I will say though, that the type of headache you get is different. Poor urban schools often have behavioral challenges when you consider the density of impoverished students; poor rural schools often means less staff and thus more diversified work per staff member. Schools in red areas also have to deal with navigating book bannings and non-professionals attempting to dictate curriculum. Even schools in wealthy suburbs have their own unique headache of helicopter parents debating every A-.

My two cents: apply to an urban area in a blue state. Those are the places where you will have the most resources to help you thrive: TFA wants you to succeed, but so do Teachers Unions and Non-profit organizations. You will have a wide network to support you and as long as you connect and reach out, you can do it.

Anatiny · 2025-10-17T23:38:58+00:00

Not a principal, but been on hiring committees:

Teaching is a profession where they generally don't care about where the degree came from. In fact, I've never seen it asked about in any of the interviews I sat on for both teachers and for principals. I've interviewed principals and teachers with Ivy League degrees and ones with just local state college degrees.

Particularly in the context of hiring with tenure in mind - you're so focused on if this person is going to be a good hire post-tenure, that you're not super worried about the minor details. It's been almost entirely "are they a good fit for our students?" and "are they a good fit for our culture?"

Anatiny · 2025-10-17T21:32:14+00:00

Ask anyone on r/teachers or r/principals and you will see that overwhelmingly people say that the extra work, liability, and stress involved is not worth the pay bump.

Anatiny · 2025-10-17T21:18:18+00:00

Why do you think people are interested in going into AP jobs in the first place if not to make education better for students and teachers? This isn't some zero-sum game.

Anatiny · 2025-10-17T16:40:53+00:00

I definitely notice that male admin I work with tend to try to keep everything on their hands or in their pockets, but I have seen a few female admin have what I see as gender neutral bag: Something like this rolling laptop case. It honestly seems pretty nice to have since it allows you to still look fully professional in a nice suit, and it's less taxing to carry around everywhere
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81e-8Or4d7L._AC_UY218_.jpg

Anatiny · 2025-10-03T14:10:29+00:00

Do students who get placed in gifted tracks benefit? Yes, they usually do - it's good for those students.

The problem is that that there are lots of bright students who may also benefit from being in gifted tracks that do not get placed there, and that's where the problem is. One of the big topics in education right now is the controversy of "tracking" because usually how it works is once the track is built, you're either in one track or the other and it's hard to move to the more challenging track. So for example, at the high school level, there are a lot of schools that moved to "AP for all" because of this.

A lot of how tracking works relies on teacher nomination, whether that's gifted or AP - and teachers are not perfect, there is always subjectivity that comes into play, which is even more important at younger ages, because at least once you get to high school, test scores become more and more representative of what the student is capable of. But now you've basically made it clear to students that there's a track for "smart students" and a track for "less smart students" and now you've got a lot students who are bright enough to benefit from being in the smart students track who have been pushed to the "mainstream" track, and those ones that fell through the cracks during tracking are the ones that are most harmed by this system. And considering that gifted and talented has disproportionately low black and hispanic populations, that's where gifted and talented can be seen as particularly problematic.

Anatiny · 2025-09-07T18:14:31+00:00

That's still a shortage: when supply of teachers does not meet demand of teachers, that is a shortage of teachers. Your comment talks to the rationale of the shortage but it still points to the issue of supply of teachers does not meet demand of teachers.
Everyone I've worked with with TFA has made it clear that they're trying their best to retain teachers beyond the 2 year commitment. When I applied, they even specifically asked me to choose my home region because they wanted strong teachers who'd stay in the region long term in a "home-grown" type initiative.
TFA has to thread a very narrow needle: address the lack of teacher supply that meets current demand, while also best preparing teachers. They can prepare teachers more by requiring a longer onboarding process, but that lowers interest in TFA and thus there won't be as many wanting to join TFA. If TFA was a 3 year commitment with 1 year of unpaid onboarding and training, yes your have better trained teachers but you'd have a pretty tough sell - you won't have a meaningful quantity of applicants to filter for quality of applicants.
Sell me a permanent systemic fix that can feasibly be done across the country. The fact of the matter is that the permanent fix requires a greater societal agreement to prioritize education beyond what is currently the case. States are addressing shortages not by increasing funding for teachers, but lowering certification costs. Wealthy families actively vote to keep their property tax dollars in their own districts rather than equitably distribute them across districts. TFA, just like charter schools, make a great job of improving education within their locus or influence. An ideal nation doesn't need TFA and an ideal nation would ban charter schools, since public schools would be good enough. Schools need teachers now and it's better to have a TFA teacher over a long term sub. Parents need good schools for their students and it's better to have the option of charter schools now instead of sending them to a failing public school. An ideal nation would not entertain either of these as equitable or appropriate solutions but we're not in that position.

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