Wendy Kopp '89 speaks about Teach for America

Wendy Kopp '89 believes in the power of the big idea.

The founder and president of Teach for America, Kopp spoke in Dodds Auditorium yesterday about how she turned her senior thesis — a plan to send recent college graduates to teach at schools in low-income neighborhoods — into a non-profit organization that has sent more than 6,000 recent college graduates to teach in 15 low-income areas since its inception.

"The idea wasn't to create this little non-profit organization," Kopp said. "This was about creating a movement . . . of some of our most talented leaders."

Kopp is passionate about the need for the United States to address issues of educational inequity, she told the audience of over 100 people, including several University seniors who were curious about how to get involved with Teach for America.

Nine-year-olds in low-income areas read at three to four grade levels below that of their peers in high-income areas, she said. "We need real systemic change to get to where we need to be," she added.

Kopp, who was the first woman and the youngest person to receive the University's Woodrow Wilson award, first became interested in the U.S. socioeconomic educational gap as a student at Princeton.

Observing how well prepared some of her friends who had gone to elite prep schools were compared to some who had attended schools in disadvantaged areas made her realize the major inequities in the educational system.

"I became obsessed with this idea [of creating a national teacher corps] from the moment I began thinking about it," she said. Kopp's senior thesis for the Wilson School set out a plan for creating such a program, including a $2.5 million budget, to place 500 teachers in six communities in its first year. "I think the biggest thing I had going for me was my level of naivete," she said.

Kopp began looking for ways to implement her teacher corps idea soon after graduation, she said. After a letter offering her services to former President Bush in the arena of educational reform netted a job rejection letter, Kopp pitched her idea to CEOs of major corporations and eventually received a seed grant enough to put 500 new teachers into the field.

The grant and the enthusiasm from college students and school districts that Teach for America engendered was "a testament to the fact that this was an idea whose time had come," Kopp said. But the idea wasn't enough — Teach for America needed organizational management and effective leadership if it was to grow, Kopp said.

Through creating a clear organizational mission and focusing on the value of "good people," the group has managed to do just that. It now funds more than 10 times the number of teachers that it did in 1989.

Teach for America has entered its second phase, Kopp said, and she plans to re-energize the organization with a new set of objectives. She plans to continue to encourage leadership and excellence throughout the organization to foster collaboration between the Teach for America program and other groups working for social change and to increase the scope and effectiveness of Teach for America's operations.

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Teach for America's primary purpose is to address educational inequities in America by putting qualified, motivated teachers where they are needed, Kopp said, adding that it also aims to effect change by showing "the future leaders of the country" the value of education and instilling a strong civil commitment in them.

Sixty percent of Teach for America alumni still work in the educational field, Kopp said, and of the other 40 percent, a large majority are involved in efforts to create educational or social change.

Kopp spoke of ways that Teach for America members worked to help their students succeed. "Some of them have raised the bar for us by showing us what it is possible to achieve in a single year," she said.

But Kopp also said potential program participants do not need to be a teaching star to be effective. "I think that there's a myth in this country about what it takes to be an excellent teacher," she said.

"I call it the Jaime Escalante myth," she said, referring to the Academy Award-nominated movie "Stand and Deliver" about a calculus teacher in a largely Hispanic inner city school. "It's not about a personality type," she added.

"These teachers have figured out what it takes to be successful in the environment they're in. They're on a mission to get from where their kids are to where they want their kids to be," Kopp added.

Though some first-year Teach for America teachers have complained that they felt unprepared in some respects to handle their first year as the leader of a classroom, Kopp spoke positively about the program's five-week summer training course. "We try to build a culture of excellence," she said, noting that new corps members are taught a variety of specific strategies for effective education and classroom management.

Kopp also answered questions from audience members. One student asked why prospective teachers should choose a job with Teach for America over other career options such as consulting or law school. "I so passionately feel that those are good things to do," Kopp replied, "but first you should do Teach for America."