Classroom beckons grads

But she declined the high-paying job in high finance to join Teach For America (TFA) and now teaches social studies and mathematics to seventh and eighth graders in Brooklyn.

“Now that I’ve gotten into education, I’m planning to do it for the rest of my career in some way, shape or form,” said Smith, an East Asian studies concentrator.

Victor Wakefield ’07 said that as a junior majoring in history at Princeton, he was certain he would go to law school after graduation.

But after an internship at an East Harlem middle school in the summer after his junior year piqued his interest in teaching, he applied to TFA.

Wakefield, who is currently teaching language arts to sixth and seventh graders at a middle school in Gary, Ind., said he is now “convinced that I’m going to be in education throughout my career.”

Wakefield added that he knew about a dozen people who deferred their admission to law or medical school or job offers “just to stay in the classroom.”

Smith and Wakefield are just a few of the increasingly large number of Princeton students who initially intend to go straight to law school or Wall Street after graduation and are opting instead to spend at least two years with TFA.

The University has contributed nearly 130 seniors to the TFA corps since 1990, the year in which TFA was founded by Wendy Kopp ’89, TFA Recruitment Communications Director Lorraine Anderson said. The national network consists of more than 6,000 current corps members and more than 14,000 alumni.

‘The hardest job in America’

Working for TFA is “probably the hardest thing I’ve done in my life,” Nate Morrison ’08 said.

Morrison, who teaches algebra to ninth through 12th graders on a Navajo reservation in Shiprock, N.M., explained that it was difficult to reconcile the idea of being used to success with the obstacles that teaching can create.

“It’s very humbling to be a teacher because teaching is one of the first times when you really, truly fail at something,” he said.

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Smith said that for corps members without any background in teaching, “starting [to teach] right off the bat is challenging.”

Brian Johnson ’99, executive director of TFA in Los Angeles, agreed. “I’m still convinced after nine years that being a [TFA] corps member is the hardest job in America.”

He noted that for this reason, TFA is not a good choice for everyone. “People who are looking for something easy to do after college [wouldn’t be a good fit],” he explained.

Smith added that TFA “has a reputation for attracting Type A people, and that’s partially true.”

Meghan Farrell ’07, who teaches math to seventh graders in Philadelphia, said that those who “don’t have patience” shouldn’t work for TFA. “Your patience gets tested so, so much. I think you just need to be able to communicate well with others, with people of all different backgrounds and all different ages.”

The differences in background can be one of the biggest and most obvious shocks to incoming corps members. Morrison recalls being surprised to find out when he stepped into his first class that “some [students] can’t do basic subtraction problems like five minus three.”

He added that “many of us coming from better high schools don’t realize that many people in the United States don’t have the same opportunities [that we have].”

Farrell explained that one of the biggest challenges of a TFA corps member is to “modify the work within the classroom” to address different students’ skill levels.

“A lot of my students are really, really far behind,” she explained, adding that the math skills of students in her class vary tremendously, from students to whom she could assign “work out of ninth-grade textbooks,” to those seventh graders whose math abilities are barely past first-grade levels.

Funding shortfalls can compound the achievement gap problem. Farrell said that her school does not have textbooks, requiring her to “create every single item from scratch,” including lessons, notes sheets and homework for her students.

“There are days when I feel like I could have done better,” Morrison said, but he added that one must look beyond the daily setbacks. “You really have to learn to view failure as a learning opportunity,” he said.

Supporting the corps

Harris said that TFA constantly reevaluates methods and support systems to make sure that “corps members are happy and engaged” with the program.

Still, Johnson acknowledged that the odds are tough. “You’re operating in a system of just low expectations” from students, teachers and administrators, he said, adding that he believes “we can always do better [to ensure] that first-year teachers have the basic skills that we know all first-year teachers need.”

But, he added, “I’ve never been part of an organization that was so focused on continuously improving and that takes feedback so much.”

Farrell agreed that a possible improvement would be to “provide additional support to teachers” beyond the crash-course during the summer.

“A little extra support would always be helpful,” she noted.

Both Morrison and Smith emphasized planning as the key to overcoming many of the obstacles they faced. They also stressed the importance of faith in the students, despite what Morrison characterized as “investment bank hours for teacher salaries.”

“It also requires a lot of belief in your students,” Morrison said. “If you show [students] that you believe in them [and you believe they can do it], then they will.”

To succeed, TFA corps members “need to believe that they have the power to make things work” and be “very creative in terms of learning as much as you can as fast as you can and really keeping an optimistic view,” Wakefield said.

For the students with below-average math skills, Farrell said the program brought rewarding experiences in small bits, “like [when students are] able to solve their first multiplication problems.”

“The kids thank you because they get so excited when they are able to get the problems,” she said.

Though the requirement for TFA “is only two years,” Farrell noted, “you can make a huge impact in that time.”

Getting ready

Forty-five members of Princeton’s Class of 2006 applied to TFA. Since then, the number of applications from University seniors has risen to 85 in 2007 and 103 in 2008, TFA recruitment director at Princeton and former corps member Caroline Van Zile said in an e-mail.

Van Zile added that of the 103 applicants from the Class of 2008, 32 were accepted and 22 matriculated.

This 31 percent acceptance rate for Princeton is higher than the national average of about 20 percent, but Princeton’s matriculation rate of almost 69 percent is lower than the national yield of about 75 percent.

“The selection process really ensures that the candidate is passionate about [the achievement gap] crisis” between students in low-income and high-income brackets, Wakefield said.

Corps members, the majority of whom are recent college graduates, “come from all academic majors and career interests,” Anderson said.

Among Princeton seniors interested in TFA, the program “tend[s] to get a lot of Woodrow Wilson majors,” Van Zile noted. Farrell explained that this may be because “a lot of people are interested in public policy and want to have an educational background when they go into public policy.”

Wakefield explained that applicants indicate their regional preferences for working, and accepted applicants “are then guided to interviews [for teaching positions] through that region.”

The subject a corps member ends up teaching depends on his qualifications, interests and what positions are available.

The summer before they begin their two years of teaching, corps members are required to attend summer institute, where they take what Wakefield described as a “five-week crash course in teaching.”

There, corps members teach summer school students in groups of two to five and attend lesson planning clinics, TFA Program Management Director Shannon Donnelly Simmons ’03 said in an e-mail.

Wakefield said the summer institute was comparable to “finals week in a teaching environment: You pretty much eat, sleep and breathe as a teacher.” In Morrison’s words, it is a “teacher boot camp.”

Those who join TFA also typically enroll in state-approved courses to get their teaching certificates, licenses or permits that allow school districts to hire them. More specific requirements vary according to where the corps member is teaching. Corps members also attend periodic TFA training events throughout the school year.

Anderson said TFA sees “a relatively even division of the number of corps members who teach in elementary, middle and high school.” The program also includes “a growing number of corps members who are teaching in Pre-K,” she added.

After teaching for America

Though Morrison came to Princeton planning to enter the field of education, he acknowledged that not all corps members are sure they want to try teaching.

He said that his advice for those who are unsure would be to “go to those classrooms and spend a day or so” there before making a decision.

For other students, their TFA years only confirm their commitment to staying in the field of education. Two-thirds of TFA alumni are currently working or studying full-time in the field of education, with nearly half of them working as teachers, Anderson said.

Hundreds of alumni have been honored as teachers of the years at the national, state, district and school level, including Jason Kamras ’95, who was named the 2005 National Teacher of the Year.

Anderson added that more than 360 alumni are now working in education administration.

Not all TFA alumni enter the field of education, though. More than 500 alumni pursue careers in politics or advocacy, while others enter fields like law, business and medicine, Anderson said. Fifteen alumni are currently serving as elected officials.

“To end educational inequity within our generation, it’s going to take top leaders working together in all sectors,” Van Zile said.

Morrison agreed that the point of TFA isn’t just to create teachers. “What it really wants to do is create advocates for students,” he said.