Challenges Ahead For New Teach For America Leader

Miami FL

22 April, 2021

10:29 AM

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By Selena Stanley, Miami Times Staff Writer Apr 21, 2021 Teach For America (TFA) Miami-Dade is getting a new executive director this summer, in a move the organization hopes will be a positive step forward after a tumultuous year. Lakeisha Wells-Palmer, a Sumter, South Carolina, native with more than 20 years of experience in education, will be the organization's new leader in South Florida starting June 1. Currently serving as TFA's executive director for the north and central Florida regions, she'll retain those responsibilities and become the first person to oversee all three of TFA's branches in the state, in a new streamlined leadership approach. Teach For America is a nonprofit that works with 350 urban and rural communities nationwide to expand educational opportunities for underserved children. Founded in 1990, the organization recruits a corps of educators from a variety of backgrounds, including recent college graduates, professionals looking to make a career change and experienced teachers. Corps members make an initial two-year commitment to teach in high-need schools and then join the organization's alumni network. Teach For America Florida has more than 1,700 alumni and active corps members today. "We have three geographic hubs in the state of Florida, and although we have a common mission and vision, the hubs have three very different geographic needs. It is my goal to be able to be super clear on what those needs are for Miami-Dade over the next few months," Wells-Palmer said. "I will also say that it wasn't a huge shift, because myself and the previous executive directors have worked collectively over the past three to four years." As an African American, Wells-Palmer said she's even more invested in her new role. "I have three sons, two that are in school currently, and they're all Black boys. So I want to make sure that I'm doing right by them and their peers as I think about what their educational trajectory can look like," she said. Wells-Palmer's mission is to support Florida's corps members through the homestretch of the pandemic, so they can best support the students who desperately need them. That won't be an easy task. A dwindling educator pool As teachers across the U.S. deal with pandemic-related burnout, TFA educators have perhaps had a harder time because of their work in disenfranchised communities. "COVID-19 has presented our community, nationally and locally, with unprecedented challenges," said Justin Pinn, director of alumni strategic initiatives for TFA Miami-Dade. According to Pinn, the biggest challenge has been the "digital divide," or lack of internet access in many underserved areas. As previously reported in The Miami Times, more than one in five Miami-Dade residents do not have reliable access to the internet, according to Achieve Miami, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing educational equity. Connectivity issues has made staying in school complicated for children during the pandemic; many stopped attending remote classes. Miami-Dade County Public Schools initially estimated about 10,000 students had fallen off the grid. After further investigation, district officials reported that many of those students had left the county to attend other schools. However, about 1,700 students remain unaccounted for, in part because of the digital divide. Additional educational issues that traditionally plague marginalized communities remain. "We know that in our community there are other challenges in education. In terms of inequity, students being able to perform on state-based tests, those have been pre-existing challenges exacerbated by COVID-19," Pinn said. Another issue plaguing TFA – and the teaching profession as a whole – is recruitment. Enrollment in teacher prep programs has declined by more than a third over the past decade, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and at least 40 states reported teacher shortages for the 2020-2021 school year. Florida is among them, according to federal data. "We do anticipate that our 2021 corps will be smaller nationally than our 2020 corps, and this aligns with the challenges we're seeing across the country," a TFA spokesperson said. "This school year has required incredible resilience, creativity, innovation and flexibility from our educators. We continue to see a need for our teachers across the communities we serve in – and we believe it is imperative that our country continues to invest in teachers, to ensure that a consistent pipeline of great leaders are driven to becoming a part of the teaching profession." Emma García, an education economist at the Economic Policy Institute, spoke on the pipeline issue in an interview with EdSurge last month. "If you really look into what the data says about what teachers think about the profession, they say they lack support," García said. "For your young students, it's very hard to say, 'I'll go into teaching,' knowing that there are very weak supports and very few opportunities for professional development. It doesn't make the profession very appealing, frankly speaking." Shrinking support from Tallahassee The pandemic hasn't helped matters. Florida educators have received one discouraging blow after another over the past year, prompting some to retire early and others to leave the profession entirely. "Unlike other noble public service professions, the plan for the future of public education in Florida is to keep a larger part of the community marginalized and uneducated," said Karla Hernandez-Mats, president of United Teachers of Dade (UTD). Last March, educators were required to begin teaching remotely, with limited notice and little to no prior training. Then, Florida teachers were sent back to the classroom in the fall, despite protests by UTD that it was too early. Florida teachers also didn't have initial access to the COVID-19 vaccine, which prompted more protests. Now, many of these educators are being required to teach dual-modality classes (online and in person), despite their complaints. "All signs point toward an effort to further deprive public education and the profession as a whole. Current legislation in Tallahassee seeks to take away a teacher's right to advocate for themselves and their students by attacking teachers' unions, while also bankrupting the retirement incentives that once made teaching a sustainable and viable work path," Hernandez-Mats said, referencing a proposal in the Florida Senate to close the state's pension plan to new enrollees. She said the proposal is yet another attack on educators. Amid this troubling environment, Wells-Palmer says providing support to corps members is her main priority. "We want to make sure that teachers have the appropriate coaching support and ongoing professional development, so that impact can then trickle down on students," she said. "The most important thing is [working] to ensure that our teachers and students have a rich set of resources and support, because no one [had] ever started a school year in a pandemic." Wells-Palmer also intends to work with other local leaders and organizations to help meet educator and student needs. She believes getting Florida's school system back on track after the pandemic will be difficult, but possible. "Teach For America has a niche and very specific areas we serve, but we can't accomplish everything by ourselves," she said. "So making sure that we are in partnership with other organizations that actually want to be able to effectively contribute to the outputs and be able to move the needle, is super important." The Miami Times is the largest Black-owned newspaper in the south serving Miami's Black community since 1923. The award-winning weekly is frequently recognized as the best Black newspaper in the country by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.