Teach For China?! – Part 2
Wei Ji Ma | Posted on February 18th, 2008 in Other Organizations, Programs, Quality Education. 
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We received a report from RCEF volunteer and Teach For America program director Jessica Shyu about her meeting in January with Shum Saitak, a friend of RCEF who funds and leads educational innovation in rural China. Jessica was a Special Education teacher on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico with Teach For America from 2005-2007, and then moved to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas to be a program director. In her current work, she trains and develops first- and second-year Teach For America teachers. She continues to write a blog for Teacher Magazine and was instrumental in training teachers for the Volunteer Program 2007.
Shum Saitak is a director of the Fuxin School in Anhui (one of RCEF’s Teaching Fellows schools), a founding director of the Yi Xin Education Service Center in Shanghai, and a director of the Chen Yet-Sen Family Foundation in Hong Kong. Mr. Shum invests in innovative and pioneering educational models in China and is now planning a feasibility study for a Teach For America-like program in China. He came to the U.S. for a month to meet with Teach For America representatives, and RCEF introduced him to Jessica. This meeting was particularly interesting because in RCEF we are discussing our goals on an ongoing basis, and a comparison with Teach For America can give us very useful insights for that.
Below is the first part of Jessica’s report (second part to follow). All opinions expressed are hers and do not reflect positions of Teach For America. Please let us know what you think about it. What can RCEF learn from TFA?
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Meet, greet, and eat: It was our first time meeting ST Shum and his son, Tom. My boyfriend, Bill, and I picked him up at the McAllen bus station where they had arrived from Austin. We drove them to our apartment in McAllen where ST and Tom were going to stay. After getting settled, we sat down for dinner (my non-fancy, quick, work week meal of kung pao chicken, bean sprouts and rice, which I cooked together while Bill chatted and helped ST and his son to get comfortable.) While we ate, the four of us talked about the education gap in China and the structure and mindsets of Teach For America. We talked until almost midnight.
Takeaway concepts:
- ST had taken me up on my invitation to stay at my apartment, despite it being a small one-bedroom, mostly because he wanted to observe how an educator in an under-resourced community in America lives. He was clearly impressed and surprised when we pulled up to a gated community with a pool and hot tub. Even though I am no longer teaching in the community and now work for Teach For America as a program director, I maintain much the same lifestyle as I was able to afford as a teacher. I explained to him that most of our teachers live relatively comfortable lifestyles in furnished apartments, eating decent food and driving cars. This was one major comparison that we made between the teachers at his school in China versus our TFA teachers in America—even though most of our corps members are taking a major pay cut from what they could be making, everyone makes a full salary with benefits. This allows them to live comfortably and pay off student loans. It also gives them the freedom to do what they want (which is teaching in under-resourced communities) even while addressing real-life needs, such as credit card bills, loans, bills, etc. This issue eventually evolves into one of the major conclusions we draw on how to improve the education program in China.
- One of the major points of discussion we had on the first night was about the structure of Teach For America. I explained to ST how corps members are recruited, how they are trained before they enter the classroom in the fall, what kind of support they receive from TFA during their two year commitment, and what it looks like on a day-to-day basis. (Please let me know if you want me to go into greater detail about this.)
- Another major issue we talked about was what gets corps members to commit to teaching in a low-income community to begin with. I explained to ST that Teach For America has an excellent reputation among college students—we are one of the major recruiters on campuses around the country and we have past corps members’ experiences and achievements to demonstrate our efficacy in the classroom. We attract students who want to make a difference in the world and community, and believe that education is the tool to closing the achievement gap. We want and need all our corps members to have a very strong sense of urgency and belief that all students in the country can achieve, and that it is in their power as teachers to make it happen. We also look at the person’s history of achievement—we are also looking for excellent, high-achieving college graduates who can demonstrate that they have achieved great things as leaders (started effective after-school programs in the community, led their sorority to raising $100,000 more than last year for a fundraiser, or increased the circulation of a school newspaper by 100,000, etc.). This is important because we know that in order for corps members to reach great results in the classroom, they need the skill, perseverance and leadership to make it happen when things get very tough.
o I said that teacher motivation comes first: Make sure all teachers believe in the students, are willing to work very hard, have a great sense of responsibility and urgency to closing the achievement gap.
o ST said that while most people in China do not have a major sense of responsibility or mindset that all children deserve a great education, the teachers he is working with at the university who want to go to work for these schools share that sense of responsibility.
o He explained that one of his greatest challenges in getting the few teachers who do want to commit to teaching for a couple years in a rural, low-income area is the issue of financial support. The teachers get paid more in urban, high-performing schools, and they also have the burden of repaying school loans and supporting their families.
o I said that one of the strengths of Teach For America’s structure is that we try to minimize the real-life, financial barriers that keep people from committing to teaching. This means teachers earn a full salary with benefits from the school district, we’ve partnered with loan companies on having student loans deferred, we offer a $10,000 Americorps education grant that goes toward repaying past loans or future education bills, and we have many great business and graduate school partnerships for alumni. Teach For America has a strong reputation among businesses and graduate schools, so alumni who apply can be confident that the employers and schools will recognize the hard work, achievements and perseverance that they accomplished during their time as a teacher—all skills that are valued and readily used outside of the classroom as well.
o ST was impressed by the many benefits that come with being a corps member with Teach For America. He said that the benefits would be a major help in getting people who wouldn’t be able to commit, to join his teaching program.
o I agreed that the perks of TFA are very helpful in getting people who wouldn’t necessarily be able to join, to teach for two years or more. However, I was also quick to emphasize that it’s important to find people who are entirely dedicated to the cause of closing the achievement gap, and that the benefits listed above are meant as ways to make that dedication a reality—they are not meant to be bribes.
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Sandy Zhu says:
Added on February 18th, 2008 at %I:%M %pI think it will be very hard to provide any sort of benefits for teachers in China. but then again, if we do have that many benefits in China, some people will come just for the benefits.
Even an urban teacher doesn’t earn that much there. Sometimes they have to tutor their own students in private to get paid enough. It’s hard to get the teachers to help since they usually need the help as well. This is complicated….
Mingming Zhou (blog author) says:
Added on February 27th, 2008 at %I:%M %pI agree, without satisfying the basic needs of teachers, or anyone else, it is hard to have people committed to what they might have been able to be dedicated to. However, the support for teachers can be in various forms, while we cannot change their financial status, we can at least try to make them feel contented and proud of what they are doing. That is how the teacher motivation comes into play. Monetary incentive might work well under some circumstances, yet the success of experimenting a novel teaching strategy or seeing you are impacting the students’ life in a positive way might trigger teachers to stay in that position, making continuous contribution. Am I a bit overoptimistic here?
Wei Ji Ma (blog author) says:
Added on March 7th, 2008 at %I:%M %pI agree with both of you. Monetary incentives may not be the only, or the best, way of motivating teachers. In our experimental sites, we usually have very intrinsically motivated teachers who do want to try out new methods and mean more to their students than the regular system allows.
That being said, do you think RCEF should go into sponsoring teachers who are good and dedicated to educational innovation, but are very poor themselves? We had one case of a teacher from a mountainous area, who could easily be a Teaching Fellow, were it not that he might start working in a coal mine to earn some more money for his family.
Steven Liu (blog author) says:
Added on March 9th, 2008 at %I:%M %pI understand the concerns about the teachers maybe being in it just for the money, but even someone who has never spent a day of their lives in school reacts to incentives (read Freakonomics for insights into the strange ways people react to them). The fact is that we need not just motivated teachers, but good ones too. If the distance between our compensation and what regular schools pay is too great we’re going to lose good teachers. Without good teachers we might as well go home.
Put it this way: I do not think I am intrinsically motivated. I am of course interested in my work and that counts for a lot, but if you paid me 500 yuan a month I wouldn’t be here as ALL I would have is my work, and I wouldn’t have the money to travel, buy books or other commodities that make my life both easier and more enjoyable.
What we perhaps could offer them is a better work-life balance than most regular schools might, and this would add a lot to the “package” we can offer. However, at some of our sites it’s the exact opposite at the moment, with teachers expected to work from 6am till 9 at night. I was reading through some promotional materials for a KIPP school the other day and noted that there are also extreme time demands on their teachers (7.30AM-5PM every day; on-call all the time via mobile phone). Results are great, but there’s just one problem: an annual 50% staff turnover rate.
Wei Ji Ma (blog author) says:
Added on March 9th, 2008 at %I:%M %pI certainly wouldn’t want to pay our teachers any less than regular (not daike) teachers, but the question is whether we should pay more, and if so, how much more?
I agree that better work-life balance could be a great incentive too. How come it is currently so skewed? Is it a lack of manpower? Are there plans to do something about this?
Jikky says:
Added on March 13th, 2008 at %I:%M %pI think there is a lack of man power yes, most of the teachers I know told me that they think they have a heavy work load, that they have too many tasks at school and feel pressured. Especially the teachers who teach at a school where the students also board, have a high work load because they need to take care of the students after school time as well.
One teacher in Henan told me that the government hasn’t been hiring new teachers who graduated from Teacher College for quite some years now, I think he said it was since 2001 (in that area). He explained that this was due to financial reasons, that the government doesn’t have the money to hire new, young teachers.
Another aspect is that the government is merging schools because there are less students due to the one child policy. If there are less students, there’s no need to hire new teachers in theory, but in practice you still do see classes of 80-90 students, especially in middle and high school.
I would also think that especially these new young teachers are needed because they went to Teachers College during or after the education reforms. But I don’t know how all this works out in practice, and what all these graduates from Teachers College do if they don’t get hired by the government.
Diane Geng (blog author) says:
Added on March 15th, 2008 at %I:%M %pHigh–as in US $125,000 high–salaries form the core of a new charter school’s strategy in New York City. It’s a bold strategy that reflects its founder’s belief in teaching talent as the key ingredient to a successful school. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/nyregion/07charter.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=charter school&st=nyt&oref=slogin
In rural China, I think financial incentives will definitely play a role in raising educational quality, in combination with things like leisure and status benefits as well as changes in government policy. Specifically:
1. Policy should change to make principal and teacher hiring based at the school level so the principal has a say in building his team;
2. Recruitment should be open to anyone in society and selection criteria should be centered on quality, not precedence or connections;
2. Teacher training should involve significant and intensive apprenticeship in rural schools alongside experienced rural teachers who can mentor them on real problems encountered in teaching.
3. Ensure that rural teacher salaries are competitive with the income that could be made from manual labor migrant work in the cities;
3. Hire more staff in rural schools so teachers daily responsibilities are not so heavy and there is ample time for lesson planning, reflection, pursuing hobbies, and taking care of their families;
4. Provide more professional development opportunities, both in-school as well as out. For example, organize study tours to broaden horizons and expose to how the mission of educating rural youth fits in with China’s societal and economic development.
Principals in rural China have almost no say in what teachers are assigned to their school. This means that even if the principal wanted to reform the school, s/he has a very limited talent pool to work with. A lack of motivated and cooperative colleagues is a huge obstacle to changing rural school cultures. The current profiles of rural teachers on the government payroll are quite homogeneous. Either they entered the profession decades ago before teacher training was a norm, or are young graduates who had the money and connections to secure a rare new spot. (As Jikky pointed out, many provincial governments are not hiring new teachers onto the public payroll anymore.) This has caused both a shortage in the numbers of rural teachers as well as a hiring system that undervalues quality and overvalues connections and bribes. This is maddening when you meet and hear about the scores of dedicated non-credentialed teachers (daike laoshi) who teach in rural schools for half or less of what government-payroll teachers get, but have no job security or upward mobility. There actually isn’t a lack of people in rural China who could become good teachers–it’s that the current system can’t attract and retain them.