This is AWESOME!

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Teach for America surges in popularity

Motivation varies for recent grads hoping to teach disadvantaged

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/06/17/teach.america.ap/index.html

(AP) -- It's the strongest job market in years for new college graduates, with salaries and perks rising accordingly. But one of the country's hottest recruiters this spring promised low wages, exhausting labor and only a brief break before the work begins.

Teach for America is surging in popularity. At sites around the country, the 17-year-old nonprofit organization has begun training about 2,400 recent graduates for two-year teaching stints in disadvantaged schools, nearly triple the figure in 2000. Nearly 19,000 college seniors applied -- and more than four in five were turned down. At Notre Dame, Spelman, Dartmouth and Yale, more than 10 percent of seniors applied.

TFA has come a long way since founder Wendy Kopp used fliers to recruit her first corps of 500 teachers, a year after outlining the idea in her 1989 Princeton senior thesis...