Time to Team Up with Teach For America

 

This article mentions a number of NYC Teach for America corps members and alumni including: Kristen Hutchens (TFA '04); Nicole Benvenuto (TFA '05); Elena Romerdahl (TFA 05'); Marya Murray Diaz (TFA 04'); and Joseph Almeida (TFA 05'). Dr. Daniel Porterfield is vice president for public affairs and strategic development and an assistant professor of English at Georgetown University.

Kristen, Hanseul and Emily all worked in Teach For America (TFA), the 16-year-old program through which can-do college graduates teach some of America’s neediest public school students. In the last three years, more than 30 young Georgetown graduates I’ve taught or mentored have taken this path. All have been challenged very deeply in multiple ways. As I hear about their work, the victories and the struggles, the problems they see and the personal limitations they feel, it has become clear to me that now is the right time for higher education and Teach For America to work together in a more formal partnership.

 

 For higher education, a new relationship makes sense for a number of reasons. TFA has an outstanding and altruistic mission. It has achieved demonstrably powerful results while maintaining a commitment to continuous evaluation and improvement. With a growing force of 4,400 idealistic graduates preaching and embodying the power of college in underserved communities across the country, TFA may help higher education address one of great challenges of our future — the shocking reality that only 1 in 17 children from families earning less the $35,000 per year will earn a college degree by age 24.

 

 Teach For America is also important for higher education because of the impact it’s having on many campuses right now. With 19,000 applicants last year, the organization is clearly connecting with our students’ personal and civic values. At Georgetown, 8 to 9 percent of last year’s graduating seniors applied to TFA — more than applied to medical school. As a result, TFA is the No. 1 employer of members of our class of 2006. We need to take this phenomenon seriously and see how we can support our students’ aspirations.

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Time to Team Up with Teach For America

By Daniel R. Porterfield

Inside Higher Ed, Nov. 17, 2006

http://insidehighered.com/views/2006/11/17/porterfield

 

 “I do not know very much about painting, but I know enough to know that the Art teacher did not know much about it either and that, furthermore, she did not know or care anything at all about the way in which you can destroy a human being. Stephen, in many ways already dying, died a second and third and fourth and final death before her anger.”