When thinking about how to explain my choice, I realized it is easier to explain why didn't choose the other options available to me. The way I saw it, after graduating from college I had four ways I could get into teaching. I could 1) go the traditional post-college route, which involves graduate school classes and student teaching, 2) get an alternative licensure that I pursued on my own, by finding a job that no one could fill, applying for it, then applying for an emergency license, 3) apply to a program like Teach for America or teaching fellows, or 4) apply to a teacher residency. So first, why I decided not to go the traditional route.
First, it is incredibly expensive to do this in an urban area. I found I could get a license in one year of very intense full-time study, and then have the option of pursuing a master's part-time while teaching. The cost of most programs that I looked at, plus living expenses during the first year (since there is no way I could work while I did this), was more than I would make per year as a teacher. And that doesn't include the master's classes later on, or the costs of the license itself. Alternatively, I could go to school part time, and work to pay for it as I went. But if I did that, I wouldn't even see the inside of a classroom for two years. I really wanted to start teaching soon, and I was worried that I would get burnt out before I got far enough in the program to enjoy it. Also, most people who go this route do it part time and have 'lives' outside of it. I was worried about feeling alone and isolated in a new city for a few years while I tried to cope with all this at once.
The alternative licensure route is more difficult than it sounds, and very risky. As I started looking for teaching opportunities, I found that most positions are only listed on school district's internal HR websites. In most cases you need to be an employee of the district, and at the very least have a license, in order to even see those opportunities. The only exceptions were positions in newly-opened charter schools and a few rural school districts. This route is risky because once you manage to get that emergency license, you may or may not actually get hired for the position you applied to, and if you don't, you'd better figure something out quick. If you get hired at a new charter, your job isn't safe and you could be fired at any time, for any reason (including them finding someone with a permanent license willing to teach the class).
I had an additional concern about both of these routes: the systems are different for every single state, and in some cases for every district, in the entire country. It was simply overwhelming to try to figure out which states had which requirements for emergency and permanent licensure, which school districts had which shortages, which rules could be bent, which master's led to which license for what tuition and how many credits. In fact, it is so complex that I couldn't even manage to figure out what prerequisites were required to start a licensure program in more than a few states.
I think if the US is serious about reforming the K-12 education system (which, frankly, they're mostly not), this is one of the first things they need to change. The requirements for being an elementary, ESL, special ed, or secondary math teacher should be the same across the entire US--same prerequisites, graduate school courses, entrance exams, number of credits. If state A's requirements aren't good enough for state B, they shouldn't be good enough for state A either. And teacher licenses should be valid for all states (perhaps requiring that teachers who switch states do a series of two to three classes focused on the idiosyncrasies of the new state and school district, local history, etc). This would encourage more people to become teachers, and make it easier to fill shortages in one state using teachers laid off in another.
So I quickly realized it would be much easier and more efficient to apply to a program that would help walk me through all this bureaucracy. That left me with TFA/teaching fellowship, or a teacher residency.
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