While other children played ballerina or dreamed of floating in outer space, Kendra Hearn spent her playtime imagining that she had her own classroom.
“I always wanted to be a teacher in Detroit, my hometown,” she says.
Now, as clinical assistant professor of education and associate chair for secondary teacher education at the School of Education, and coordinator of the Teach for America-Detroit Interim Teacher Certification and Master of Arts in Educational Studies — Urban Pedagogy programs, Hearn is living her dream in a way that she never predicted.
After completing an undergraduate degree in English and education at U-M, Hearn’s first teaching position sent her to Detroit’s Redford High School. There she found herself “educating the children of Detroit, my neighbors.” In this way, Hearn found a way to use her passion to uplift her own community: “I saw the power of education to elevate my own life and that of my family from a history of poverty and disadvantage.”
After a few years of teaching in Detroit, Hearn was recruited by a suburban school district, West Bloomfield. In various roles including curriculum director and assistant superintendent, Hearn found satisfaction in “creating involvement with staff, for the students to benefit ultimately. It was teaching on a whole different scale.”
The scale of Hearn’s next position would be even larger. When she came across the job posting for coordinator of U-M’s partnership with Teach for America-Detroit, she says, “It felt like it was written just for me.”
Hearn has built the School of Education’s teacher-education partnership with Teacher for America -Detroit every step of the way; 2014 marks the program’s fourth year. Facilitating the partnership between Ann Arbor and Detroit requires every ounce of Hearn’s creativity and organizational abilities.
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“In the first year, it was literally like building a plane and flying it all at the same time,” she laughs. Four years later, the program sponsors 200 TFA corps members enrolled in U-M interim teacher certification classes, with most pursuing an optional path to more permanent licensure or a master’s degree.
The program offers a multifaceted curriculum, with students working in Detroit-area classrooms of TFA’s partner schools by day, and taking School of Education classes at the Detroit Center by night.
Hearn’s passion for education has taken her across the world. Before Hearn joined U-M, she spent the summer of 2008 as a Fulbright Hays scholar, studying educational systems in South Africa.
Q & A
What moment in the classroom stands out as the most memorable?
I call it “the Starbucks lesson.” In Starbucks, everything is very deliberate, from the café environment to how customers interact with the barista. In the lesson, which is really about student assessment in the English classroom, we go to our local Starbucks and use a rubric that we have created. I treat my students to something delectable, we evaluate the Starbucks experience as a performance assessment, and the light bulbs go on. The students start to see opportunities for ways that they can and should evaluate their own students beyond paper and pencil tests. This lesson generates a lot of “a-ha” moments.
What can’t you live without?
My two sons, Donny and Dylan; my chocolate lab, Zooey; and my hula hoops. I hula hoop every day, at least 20 to 30 minutes, and I have my own business, “Hoopflow,” so I also make hoops and teach now. I have a room for hula hooping in my house — there are scuff marks all over the walls!
What is your favorite spot in Ann Arbor?
The Arb and the labyrinth at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens.
What inspires you?
I’m inspired by other inquisitive people, those who take not so new ideas and turn them over, even if ever so slightly; any person with a new point of view, a reflection of their own curiosity.
What are you currently reading?
For leisure reading, “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. For professional reading, as a school we are reading “Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America’s Schools,” by David Kirp.
Who had the greatest influence on your career path?
Ronnie Philips, my counselor at Cass Technical High School. Mr. Phillips said to me: “You are capable of something more.” As a ninth-grader, he placed me in our school’s most challenging curriculum and, in 12th grade signed me up for an admissions interview with U-M. Had it not been for him, I’d like to think I would have found my way, but I think those moves made the difference.
TFA Corps member
I can’t believe you’re lauding this woman and the program that she heads! As a CM in the course, I can assure you that it has been a massive joke with no focus on actually educating teachers to become better teachers in the classroom. It’s been a waste of time and money and it’s a shame that it is a course that is affiliated with the University of Michigan! And every time a CM is critical of the program and its lack of focus, all we hear back are excuses and we are blamed for our lack of professionalism. Seriously, the School of Education needs to rethink this program and consider how much it is charging for how little it is providing.
TFA Detroit ALUM
I find it insulting that a fellow TFA Detroit corps member would insult Kendra and the work she is doing. As a former student of Kendra’s in the TFA-Detroit masters program as well as a former undergraduate SOE student at UM, this program is doing its best to educate Detroit corps members about teaching as well as helping them maintain balanced personal-professional life by not overloading the work. While challenging, I truly enjoyed my masters course work and found it applicable to my current and future endeavors in education. Kendra and the program instructors and coordinators are doing a remarkable job at building a program that will create successful teachers in Detroit classrooms. Nothing can be perfect right off the bat and this program is continually building and improving upon each year in order to better support TFA-Detroit corps members. I hope current and future Detroit corps members who attend the UM certification or masters program appreciate the value of the education they receive as they work to make a difference in Detroit.
TFA Detroit Corps Member
This program is an insane waste of money. Costs almost 10,000 dollars in taxable income via the Americorps grant.
It’s a shame Oakland University doesn’t have a less expensive alternative. If anyone from OU is reading this, I assure you that you have an opportunity here to put this program out of business.
Kendra Hearn
While the article features me, and I have proudly led the School of Education’s partnership with TFA-Detroit, the certification and master’s program are the collective effort of many dedicated School of Education administrators, faculty, and staff. Additionally, we are joined by numerous graduate students and retired educators, many of them with numerous years of service in Detroit schools, who now care to devote their time as field or seminar instructors in the certification program. On behalf of all of these committed individuals, I sincerely appreciate all feedback, both critical and complimentary. We habitually and regularly collect feedback from corps members regarding their experience in the certification program which, according to our most recent investigation of program costs, is one of the least expensive of all of TFA’s university partners across all of the regions where it places corps members. These data show steady improvement in the program over its four years of existence. In fact, since 2012-2013 the majority of corps members who responded to separate surveys administered by, both, TFA Detroit and the SOE gave the program positive/satisfactory ratings. TFA remains strong partners in this endeavor with us largely for this reason.
We steadfastly believe and strongly attribute this steady improvement to our thorough and serious examination of the feedback data we collect from corps members in actionable forums that permit us to contemplate their heft and integrate changes as we are able into our immediate and long term program plans.
Our program is the first of two approved by the Michigan Department of Education as an alternate path to teacher certification. In other words, alternate route programs are rather new in Michigan. Our program also ventures new methods of teacher preparation that are quite different than our traditional programs at the School of Education. For instance, this program is a completely competency based continuing education program. There are no grades to indicate completion or that standards have been met.
As the program enters its fifth year, we now have innovations to offer to the field of teacher education and other alternate route/professional continuing education programs. These include fully operational administrative systems and processes; as well as curricula, instructional methods, and competency-based assessments using field observation rubrics and electronic portfolios.
While we certainly wish and aim for 100% satisfaction from corps members with their experience in the program, as with most anything, that does not always occur. More importantly, our commitment is to provide exemplary instruction that educates them and prepares them to effectively teach. In doing so, we are engaged in and devoted to a cycle of ongoing programmatic review and improvement.
As I wrote in a recent email reply to a message from a corps member of quite similar tenor and voice as that of the initial comment to this article, “I believe at least one element of the Michigan difference is taking constructive critique to heart and leveraging it to cultivate more excellence where it doesn’t yet exist.”
In that spirit, we invite corps members with additional constructive feedback to forward it via email at: [email protected]
or via U.S. mail via:
610 E. University Ste. 3112
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
For more about the TFA Interim Certification or the Master of Arts in Educational Studies programs, visit the School of Education website at:
http://www.soe.umich.edu/academics/teacher_certification_options/tfa/
or the program webpage at:
tfa.soe.umich.edu