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I have over 10 friends who are either currently in TFA or have gone through the program (they recruit heavily at my undergrad and take lots of people every year). In general, I would say about half of them have enjoyed their experience. One quit before X-mas of her 1st year because of the lack of support she was receiving and because her kids were so out of control (to no fault of her own) she feared going in there everyday knowing the Principal wasn't helping. Two friends quit after a year. One friend in it now really wants to do the 2 years because she thinks if she signed a contract she should stick with it but is very unhappy. And another friend did her 2 years, realized that TFA made her hate the public school system in America, and now she's in law school.
Most of the people who didn't like it got very little support from their schools. The ones with support tend to do better--but there's no way to know how your school will be. Since TFA works with school districts, but it's the districts that actually hire the teachers (TFA tells the districts how many people they've hired--who are guaranteed placement *somewhere*--and the district tells TFA where they're putting them) sometimes the districts are slow and complicate things. In St. Louis, many of the TFA people this year didn't know where exactly they were working until the day before classes started andthen some of them found out that they weren't teaching what they were originally told they would be teaching! One friend of mine did TFA in Baltimore and TFA told her she'd be teaching 2nd grade, but when she got placed in her school they told her she'd be teaching 6th grade. BIG DIFFERENCE!
TFA seems to be a crapshoot--some love their time; some despise it. And there's never a way to know. All of my friends have gone into it with good intentions and real desire, and some of them have turned into cynics.
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