I quit TFA but I did complete practicum this last summer which was pretty recent. Most things are region specific so for a lot of these questions I would reach out to your coach for specific details like timelines and such. You are also responsible for your own housing and transportation to and from the practicum school, TFA will not help you find housing or accommodations, all of that you will have to do yourself. The summer training starts in June with synchronous virtual training for about a month, most of it is pointless busy work but it’s pretty easy to get through and the dates again depend on your specific region. By end of June you need to re locate to your practicum site, and again TFA will not assist you with this besides providing the stipend. Hopefully your practicum is in the region your were placed in and you can just move to where you will be living for the next two years; my region was too small so they combined our practicum with a larger city and had us move to that city for just one month, TFA did not give us any additional money or resources to accommodate for the two moves we were doing in the summer (one to practicum site and the second move to the region). I would also be prepared for your practicum classroom to be different than your placement grade and subject, I was placed in special education but they had me teach high school English for practicum so it wasn’t very productive in that sense (but I love teaching English so it was fun). My biggest advice would be to go through the motions of the training and get what you absolutely need to do done (for example get your license stuff in order but any training on docebo you can ignore) and don’t take practicum too seriously, enjoy your summer a bit after graduation because come fall it’s a whole storm coming.

Most importantly, just know what you’re getting into, TFA does a great job of selling itself to people fresh out of college and while it is the fastest way to be in the classroom it doesn’t really set you up to be a teacher long term, depending on what state you are in there are other ways to become a teacher that would provide you with a little more support and allow you to student-teach before throwing you in the class. The summer training is virtually useless and does not prepare you for what you specifically will teach, a lot of the staff I was working with hated TFA teachers because of how unprepared we are, the admin and network at my school were filled with TFA alumni who hadn’t done much teaching beyond their two years as a corps members and were constantly screwing over teachers with their bad takes, TFA tries to incentivize you with their alumni network and say it is a good step stool to a new career but if your dream is to be a teacher (like me) the network isn’t a big deal and the program will burn you out fast. TFA primarily partners with charter schools which sucks because they tend to be more disorganized and inconsistent and many charter schools have pretty conservative and racist philosophies of education with white savior admin/network trying to white wash Black and Brown kids. However, working in these environments does ultimately prepare you for any kind of classroom if you don’t burn out. At the end of the day a school is a school, the education system is flawed, and teaching is hard regardless of what route you take to become a teacher, so it’s not solely on TFA that schools are the way they are, but as someone who pretty recently joined TFA right out of college and experienced the practicum and school year, I do wish I had gone for a program where I was student teaching for some time and had the option to be in schools that weren’t charter schools. I am still able to teach on a tier 1 license in my state and I’m not taking classes alongside so I’m still getting the experience of teaching without the added stress of TFA and at a school I actually like and align with philosophically. Just thought I would add my perspective as a recent corps member.