Why should you Teach For America?

Understanding how public schools function and how the system affects children growing up in low-income communities has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. For the past four years, I have been volunteer-teaching health and sex education to ninth graders in underfunded NYC public high schools with Columbia’s chapter of Peer Health Exchange. Before that, I taught dance and English as a Second Language at a low-income middle school—where my father is the principal—at home in South Central Los Angeles. My background and current context compelled me to apply for Teach For America to be a 2010 teacher and to provide Columbia University students with four reasons for why I urge you to consider doing the same when you enter your senior year.

Reason one: the ability to affect positive change. TFA corps members provide low-income school districts with a proven-effective work force. A growing corpus of rigorous research shows that TFA teachers have a positive impact on student learning, relative to other new and experienced teachers. One example is a 2004 Mathematica Policy Research study—the most rigorous study to date on TFA. It found that the students of TFA corps members made more progress in a year in both reading and math than would typically be expected. Students of TFA teachers also attained significantly greater gains in math compared to students of other veteran and traditionally certified teachers.

Reason two: the forum to demonstrate and build upon the knowledge and skills you have amassed throughout your educational experience. TFA uses a robust and comprehensive model to select talented individuals for the classroom. The selection model is similar to admissions models at prestigious institutions like Columbia—an applicant’s academic achievements represent only part of the picture. Qualities of strong TFA applicants include remarkable achievements in leadership, academia, and extracurricular activities, in addition to strong critical thinking skills, perseverance in the face of challenges, a passion to end educational inequality, and respect for one’s local community. 

Reason three: the opportunity to apply and develop those skills in a setting that will both challenge you and facilitate your personal and professional growth. TFA works relentlessly to give teachers the training and tools they need to be highly successful. TFA focuses on teacher quality by providing rigorous pre-service training and on-going professional development and support to its teachers. The organization has spent much of the last decade revamping its recruitment, training, and support programs so that the teachers recruited and accepted are well prepared to be as effective as possible. This focus on improving the quality of teachers in American classrooms is the subject of a new book called “Teaching As Leadership,” which shares TFA’s data from studying 25,000 veteran and traditionally certified teachers to determine what distinguishes those teachers who are extraordinarily successful in our nation’s highest-poverty schools.

Reason four: the chance to be part of solving what is arguably today’s most important civil rights issue. Nearly two-thirds of TFA’s 17,000 alumni work full-time in the field of education—long after their two-year commitment—although less than 10 percent had been considering a career in education when they entered the corps. The organization’s alumni network has had a tremendous impact on education reform in the last two decades, from advancements in Washington D.C.’s public school system under TFA alumna Chancellor Michelle Rhee to the creation of novel education models. Nearly 450 alumni serve as school leaders across the country. Alumni have founded dozens of high-performing charter school networks, including YES College Preparatory Schools, IDEA Public Schools, and the Knowledge is Power Program.

From the work of its teachers, to the organization’s dedication to improving our collective understanding of great teaching and to perpetuating that investment in teaching via the impact of its alumni, TFA is helping close our country’s unconscionable achievement gap. It is important to remember that effective teachers do not all come from the same mold, and that organizations like TFA, Barnard’s education program, Peer Health Exchange, as well as other programs and non-profit groups in education are all fighting for the same thing: giving kids in America access to excellent educational opportunities.

There are 14 million children in this country growing up in poverty today. We can only close the achievement gap for them and all other students struggling in the current system if we stay grounded in data, move beyond debates that create schisms between teachers and organizations with the same goals, channel our energy toward productive solutions, and work together to improve and support programs that are actually helping the kids in our public schools.
 
The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in English and psychology. She was an Ad Board member in the Columbia University admissions office and is a current Leadership Council member for Columbia’s Chapter of Peer Health Exchange.