leaders - Teach for America

Transcription

TEACH FOR AMERICA 25TH ANNIVERSARY SUMMIT: DETAILS INSIDE PG.29
ALUMNI MAGAZINE / FALL 2015/ EDITION XXIV
LEADERS
REPORTS FROM:
BOSTON, CHICAGO,
D.C., JACKSONVILLE,
MEMPHIS, PHOENIX,
NEW ORLEANS,
APPALACHIA,
CALIFORNIA, TEXAS,
NORTH CAROLINA,
NEPAL, LIBERIA
THEY HAD THE WILL
THEIR SCHOOLS TAUGHT
THEM THE WAY
ONE DAY | FALL 2015 1
My generation is:
privileged
self-involved
individualistic
all in.
LETTER TO THE ALUMNI COMMUNITY
WE’LL SEE YOU
ONLINE
We get our share of story pitches and letters here
at the magazine, but one message dominates the correspondence
we receive from you. It’s this: Where can I find that story online? Is there a
link I can share?
Message heard. As the One Day crew puts the last touches on this
Fall 2015 print issue—writing (and rewriting) headlines, swapping photos
in and out, making final fact-check calls—we’re weeks away from delivering on our long-time promise to you. You are about to get your One Day
magazine online, to consume wherever and however you like on whatever
device you happen to be using. Look for the launch date wherever you get
your Teach For America news—on your social media channels, in your
bi-weekly TFA Briefing, or through emails from friends.
Where will you find us? We’ll be in the Alumni section of the Teach For
America website, alongside resources such as fellowship opportunities and
career support. We’ll be online in Teach For America’s Top Stories stream,
where you can find daily updates on the TFA home page by and from our
community members and the partners we work alongside. And when we
finally hit the live switch, we’ll be at www.onedaymagazine.org.
The print nerds here (I’m one of them) are happy to assure you that
you’ll continue to receive your paper copy of the magazine. But now we
can bring you news, updates, and commentary in between, so send your
tips and ideas to [email protected].
We couldn’t be prouder of the company we’re keeping as we enter
the digital world. In our cover story, you’ll meet two young women who
could not accept the gun violence that was terrorizing their friends and
communities. So they took it on themselves to build a force of young
people united for peace. By our youth we are led.
Happy Fall,
JOIN US
2 ONE DAY | FALL 2015
www.achievementfirst.org
Susan Brenna
Editor in Chief
@TeachForAmerica | @OneDayAllKids
One day is closer than ever.
CONTENTS / FEATURES
183 schools. Nearly 70,000 students. More than 10,000 alumni.
30
38
47
Photograph by Kendra Smyth
38 | CHICAGO HOPE
30 | CAN HIGH EXPECTATIONS BACKFIRE?
When students refused to look away from violence and started marching for
peace, they put themselves and their schools to a long, hard test.
The model minority myth prevents low-income Asian
American students from getting the help they need.
ON THE COVER
JENNIFER HERNANDEZ
KIPP Houston alumna,
Duke University ‘15
join our team.
KIPP.ORG/CAREERS
Razia Hutchins and Janeya Cunningham never again want to hear
their friends speculate about how many students will survive Chicago's
summertime, when violence peaks.
47 | THE TRUTH ABOUT ALUMNI TEACHERS
Teachers leave the classroom for all sorts of
reasons (like Ed Kabay, above, recording meerkat
behavior), but data shows more alumni than we
realized eventually return.
Laureen Wimbley (Houston ’07)
2015 alumni award for excellence in teaching recipient
CONTENTS
10 | BIG
PICTURE
20 | MEDIA In his new book,
Injustices, Ian Millhiser
challenges widely-held
perceptions of the Supreme
Court.
ON THE SITE OF AN OLD MINE,
A SCHOOL GARDEN GROWS IN
KENTUCKY.
24 | LETTER FROM… Liberia,
where alum Kevin Fleming has
surprising advice to share.
12 | TAKE 5 Roshun Austin
sees the fruits of 20 years
of Memphis community
leadership.
82 | EXIT TICKET In Phoenix, middle schoolers build playgrounds
today, homes tomorrow.
13 | BY THE NUMBERS The boy-girl
reading gap is slowly closing.
14 | THE PATH From college to the
corps to a chef’s life, Josh Kulp
shows the way.
18 | ATTORNEY ON THE MOVE That
thing you do in your dreams?
Melanie Gleason did it for real.
15 | FINDINGS Research on
competency-based education,
an alternative to “seat time.”
22 | NEW ORLEANS LOOKS AHEAD
Ten years after the storm, four
NOLA natives point to struggle
and hope for the road ahead.
16 | DISPATCH FROM… Nepal,
where teachers lead earthquake relief alongside families.
27 | STRATEGIC DIRECTION How will
we know when the movement
we’re a part of has succeeded?
19 | WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? One
step closer to giving inmates
access to college education.
28 | TOGETHER WE RISE The largest
event in Teach For America's
history is right around the
corner. Will you be there?
One Day
TEACH FOR AMERICA ALUMNI MAGAZINE
10
12
Where great teachers become extraordinary.
50 | AWARD-WINNING TEACHERS
What’s your signature classroom move? Your fantasy
superpower? Ten excellent
teachers answer.
55 | AWARD-WINNING SOCIAL INNOVATORS The 2015 class invented
ways to communicate with
parents, share free reading materials, and prep kids for highgrowth, high-wage careers.
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Susan Brenna
MULTIMEDIA JOURNALIST
Keesa McKoy
SENIOR EDITOR
Ting Yu
(N.Y. ’03)
WEB PRODUCER
Joel Serin-Christ
(Greater Philadelphia ’10)
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Leah Fabel
(Chicago ’01)
ART DIRECTOR
Maria Burke
EDITORIAL MANAGER
Tim Kennedy
(Delta ’11)
82
56 | BRITTANY PACKNETT AND DERAY
MCKESSON DeRay Mckesson
and Brittany Packnett are
powerful— and powerfully
effective—advocates for justice,
systemic reform, and respect
for black lives.
James Sheridan (Houston ’00)
2015 alumni award for excellence in teaching recipient
2015 fishman prize finalist
59 | ALUMNI NOTES Updates and
photos from our more than
42,000 alumni.
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[email protected]
ONE DAY is published by Teach For America
25 Broadway, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10004
PHOTO EDITOR
Tamara Porras
(N.Y. ’08)
Learn how you can redefine possible at www.yesprep.org/careers.
SINCE 1990...
47,000+ TEACHERS
4 MILLION+ STUDENTS
INBOX
ensure that future tech leaders can
come from anywhere.
Qeyno Labs is a leading provider
of youth hackathons for inclusive
innovation. Qeyno Labs has led
hackathons in Ferguson, Missouri;
Philadelphia; and other communities so that young black men can
create tech solutions for their most
urgent problems. These models can
serve as exemplars. I ask all to support
these types of social innovations.
NOVEL PROGRAMMING
REFER SOMEONE GREAT
TO THE 2016 CORPS TODAY.
WWW.TEACHFORAMERICA.ORG/REFER
Thank you for highlighting the
urgent need for computer science
(CS) education in “Computer
Science Breaks Through” (Spring
2015). Tech jobs are one of the
best levers we have to move students out of poverty and close the
educational achievement gap. Our
future will require all schools to
provide CS education, not 10 percent of American schools.
While policymakers play catchup, our students cannot wait. We
as parents, educators, advocates,
and leaders need to foster support for new models. For example,
Jerelyn Rodriguez, graduate of the
first KIPP NYC school and Columbia University, founded The
Knowledge House, a South Bronx
nonprofit coding organization now
expanding its after-school programming into schools and community
centers across New York City.
New York On Tech (NYOT) is
a Brooklyn-based organization supported by my company, Camelback
Ventures, that works with students
after school in communities where
many don’t have access to technology, much less tech instruction.
NYOT partners with Etsy, General
Assembly, and other companies to
AARON WALKER
(Greater Philadelphia ’03)
New Orleans
PROGRESS BY PARTNERSHIP
As a Houston alum, I was intrigued
to learn about partnerships between
charters and district schools in
Spring Branch, Texas (“Who’s District and Who’s Charter?” Spring
2015). Like many alums, I often
feel ambivalent about Teach For
America’s pro-charter stance and
what it can mean for students “left
behind” in failing and increasingly
underfunded traditional schools.
Coverage of the approach being
taken in Spring Branch is especially
important if we are to see charter
success as part of a solution not just
for the students fortunate enough
to land spots in high-performing
charter schools, but for all children.
ASHLEY HOPE PÉREZ
(Houston ’04)
Columbus, Ohio
CODING POSSIBILITY
As a South Carolina alum, I had
the opportunity to pilot the Google
CS First curriculum mentioned
in “Computer Science Breaks
Through” (Spring 2015) with some
of my own students in an after-
school program. The experience
was incredible and affirmed my belief that computer science access is
a game changer for students.
As a woman of color, I often find
myself thinking about my own experiences in computer science—or
rather, my lack of experiences. I
never really had the opportunity
to explore coding and computer
science in school, and as a result,
throughout my secondary education I believed that computer science simply wasn’t for me. Now, as
a teacher, I know that this cannot
be the narrative for my students.
Whether they all go on to become
programmers or not, my students
will have the choice because they’ve
had the opportunity to think, analyze, solve, troubleshoot, persevere,
create, and celebrate with computer science.
Computer science education
needs to be grounded in access,
opportunity, and possibility. In
Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell notes
that we often look at Bill Gates
as a shining success story, but we
don’t ask why his story needs to
be unique: “Our world only allowed one 13-year-old unlimited
access to a time-sharing terminal
in 1968. If a million teenagers had
been given the same opportunity,
how many more Microsofts would
we have today?”
Imagine the possibilities.
JAISHRI SHANKAR
(South Carolina ’13)
Rockville, Maryland
with members of our staff as part of
a workshop focused on rethinking
our relationships with students.
The students featured in the article reveal a fundamental truth
of our work: Focusing solely on
academic inputs is insufficient to
propel our students to and through
college. The ugly reality is that
higher education is a system designed to keep them out. To overcome, navigate, and triumph in
that system, they need to be armed
with the confidence, social intelligence, and communication skills
that will complement and catapult
strong academics.
We need to recognize that social-emotional development is an
academic intervention. For our
students, knowing—despite all
messages stating otherwise—that
they deserve a place at the table
starts with the confidence to bring
their whole selves to school and to
recognize and honor that in others.
Only then will we allow them to
become their best selves, leverage
their gifts, and change the world
as only they can—and as they are
uniquely positioned to do.
ALLISON OHLE
(N.Y. ’98)
San Diego
We want to hear from
you. Tell us what’s new
or what you think about
what you read here.
Send a note or a digital
photo to onedayletters@
MORE THAN ACADEMICS
As the executive director of KIPP
San Diego, I shared “Preparing for
the College Shock” (Spring 2015)
teachforamerica.org.
Notes may be edited for
length and clarity.
LOCALLY
GROWN
STUDENTS AT LETCHER COUNTY CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL
in Whitesburg, Kentucky, received a lunchtime
surprise last fall: a salad bar, staffed by student
members of Central’s after-school garden club,
offering complimentary greens.
“Some students were a little wary—like, ‘I
don’t eat green stuff!’” says Grace Walworth
(Appalachia ’13, center of middle row), the
science teacher who founded garden club in
2013. “But we won some people over. I think.”
The garden club’s reach extends beyond the school’s
burgeoning gourmands. After a slow start (and a rough winter)
the first year, the club’s 20 or so members produced enough
veggies last year to begin selling their harvest to a local farmers
market, as well as to donate to community members in need.
With bears and herds of elk roaming the nearby Pine
Mountain ridge, Whitesburg’s landscape is stunning but scarred.
The school itself sits on an old mining site, Walworth says, with
soil too acidic for planting. The garden club installed raised
beds and brought in new soil instead.
Walworth, who grew up amid central Illinois cornfields,
incorporates environmental concerns into the school day,
too, whether talking to her biology classes about genetically
modified organisms or putting together Letcher County
Central’s first science fair in June. Projects ranged from an
experiment determining the best flashlight for raccoon hunting
to an analysis of water collected upstream and downstream
of a local mine.
“There are so many toxic pesticides and fertilizers out there;
it’s an important thing to be able to control your food sources,
especially living in isolation out here,” Walworth says. “People
here are very hardy and self sufficient, so garden club is just
tapping into a cultural tradition that was already here.”
BY TIM KENNEDY (DELTA ’11)
Photograph by Stacy Kranitz
TAKE FIVE
MADE IN MEMPHIS
BY THE NUMBERS
1
You’ve been working in the
same field in the same city for
two decades. What’s the most
important thing you’ve learned
about Memphis in that time?
If you give people opportunities, they will use
them. For example, South Parkway has now
been repaved with bike lanes. And you know,
frankly, not a lot of people on South Parkway
ride bikes right now. But if people don’t have
access to bikes, that’s probably why they’re not
riding bikes! So we had a meeting recently to
discuss the creation of a community bike share
plan. I think we often assume that people will
just know about programs like these, but many
of our residents have never been outside of
Memphis. They’ve never seen a bike share program. But once this idea was presented to them,
they thought it was a great idea. They wanted
to do it. They want to change their community.
“I’ve just got to believe that my city can be better and that we can do that a neighborhood at a time,”
says Roshun Austin (center), pictured here at the South Memphis Farmers Market she helped create.
is slow but possible, says
Roshun Austin (S. Louisiana ’93), and she’s in a position to
know. Since 2012, she has led The Works, Inc., a nonprofit
community development corporation that has invested more
than $17 million in South Memphis since its founding in 1998.
That money was used in part to develop more than 100 units
of affordable housing, provide financial counseling to more
than 4,500 families, and establish the South Memphis
Farmers Market in what was previously a food desert.
CHANGE IN MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE,
Austin’s role at The Works is a culmination of the 20 years she’s dedicated to improving
the Blues City’s most blighted neighborhoods, and she knows what change looks like
when it comes. Her favorite example involves Memphis’ three historic parkways. Leafy and
well kept, North and East Parkways traverse some of the city’s most favored neighborhoods—but for more than 40 years, South Parkway languished at the center of Memphis’
poorest quarter. In 2008, residents took action, creating the South Memphis Revitalization
Action Plan. The city approved a $450,000 stimulus grant to repave the corridor.
“In order for Memphis to be better, we’ve got to have opportunities for all its citizens,”
Austin says. “My job is to connect the dots to make businesses understand we’re all a
part of Memphis.” BY TIM KENNEDY (DELTA ’11)
Photograph by Andrea Morales
2
What are the biggest barriers to
creating this kind of change in
Memphis?
A lot of it comes back to policy. Memphis is
big, but not very dense. You see this in a lot of
Southern cities: There’s land all around us, so
our policies encourage sprawl and suburban
development, which leaves behind little islands
in the inner city of people who choose to stay
or lack the resources to get out. This doesn’t fit
the model for banks or grocery stores or retailers—they want density, and they need land with
the infrastructure in place to build. Meanwhile,
there are areas of Memphis’ inner core where
our streets have not been paved in 40 years.
3
Can you give an example of a
policy that inhibits development?
In Tennessee, we don’t have a state income tax,
so we depend almost solely on sales and property taxes. Let’s say a property sits vacant for 20
years, abandoned, and the unpaid property tax
bill gets up to $30,000. Current policy requires
a buyer to pay off that $30,000 debt to buy the
property—even if the property itself is only
worth $2,000. No developer in his right mind is
going to pick up that property, so it sits vacant.
Fortunately, this is a policy that’s on the verge of
being amended, but it has taken a lot of work on
the community’s part to get here.
4
Poverty, policy, blight—these are
large forces to overcome. What
would you say is the key to making a difference?
It’s important to recognize that you can’t do everything yourself. I used to think that a community development corporation could be all
things to all people—that we could actually provide all of the institutions that our communities
need. But we’re not a grocer or a retailer. We
have to create incentives for commercial developers to come in and invest in the community.
It’s not always going to be a huge multimilliondollar deal: We made a $600,000 loan to a
grocery store in early 2015. The store got a 1.5
percent interest rate. We got new jobs in an area
that needed them. In time, those grocery store
workers may move to more skilled positions or
to community college, and then you start to see
them making informed decisions about their
children’s education, then becoming advocates
for better schools. You start to see new movements emerging from within the community
you empowered.
5
Can you describe a moment
when you knew your work was
making a difference?
When I started this work 20 years ago, a lot of
Memphians were arguing that South Memphis
was so blighted it could never get better. But the
other day, I was driving down South Parkway,
which for so long was the abandoned parkway
of Memphis. I saw that the city was putting up
decorative metal signs saying “South Parkway,”
like an art piece. And I just smiled. Twenty years
ago, it wasn’t certain the city would ever invest
in South Memphis again. And now we have art.
Austin is a member of the National Advisory
Board of The Collective, Teach For America’s
national alumni of color association.
GIRLS READ BETTER THAN BOYS— at
least on
literacy tests. And that’s been the case since the
1940s, when researchers began tracking the
“gender literacy gap.” This gap is universal: On the
2012 international PISA test, not one of the nearly 65
nations tested was immune. And it’s stubborn: Encouraging boys to enjoy reading, as many countries
have done, has not produced lasting improvements.
In the United States, however, the gap is shrinking
as boys’ reading gains are outpacing girls’.
GAP BETWEEN READING SCORES FOR 9-YEAR-OLD BOYS AND GIRLS:
13 Points
1971
2012
5 Points
SOURCE: NAEP LONG-TERM TREND ASSESSMENT
24th
The United States’ rank on
the list of largest gender
literacy gaps among 34
developed countries.*
Finland, Slovenia,
Sweden, Iceland, and
Greece are the top five.
(So all that stuff you read
about Finland’s great
schools? They can thank
their girls.)
None
The statistical relationship between improvements
in boys’ reading enjoyment and their reading
scores across the 27 developed countries that
collected data from 2000-2009.
25
The age by which no evidence of a reading
gender gap exists in the United States,
according to tests of adult reading ability.
*ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT (OECD) COUNTRIES
SOURCES: “GIRLS, BOYS, AND READING,” THE 2015 BROWN CENTER REPORT ON AMERICAN EDUCATION, THE BROOKINGS
INSTITUTION; “PISA 2012: FULL SELECTION OF INDICATORS,” EDUCATION GPS, ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND
DEVELOPMENT; NAEP DATA EXPLORER, NATIONAL CENTER FOR EDUCATION STATISTICS
Our scholars come in with many labels:
the
Path
Alumni in all fields find ways to work toward One Day. Associate
Editor Leah Fabel asked one alum, Josh Kulp (N.Y. ’00), to show
us his path from college to the corps to a chef’s life.
2003 Cooks at
Wisconsin governor’s
mansion. Bakes cookies
for school groups.
1998 Co-owns and operates
fair-trade coffee shop with
fellow U of Wisconsin undergrads
2000 Begins teaching fifth grade
in the Bronx. Discovers Jamaican
beef patties: “They were beautiful.”
Considers a career in food.
2012 Starts visiting classrooms to teach
kids about healthy food choices with
Chicago chef network Pilot Light. Butchers
a chicken in class to teach fractions.
FINDINGS
One Day invites alumni to share
important new research in their
area of expertise. Mollie Rudnick
(Greater Philadelphia ’04) studies
education policy and evaluates
educational reforms such as
blended, or technology-assisted,
learning and competency-based education (CBE), an
alternative to awarding academic credits based on
classroom “seat time.” Rudnick is a doctoral fellow at
the Pardee RAND Graduate School.
SCHOOLS CAN RESTRUCTURE TO
INCORPORATE PERSONALIZED AND
BLENDED LEARNING.
2005 Co-founds
Sunday Dinner Club, a
traveling, word-of-mouth,
underground dinner party.
2004 Back to hometown
Chicago. Attends Kendall
College Culinary Institute.
Some 23 technical assistance providers
convened to create a shared understanding of
CBE and its design elements, and to discuss
how to move personalized and blended learning forward. The resulting report provides
school districts with recommendations for
successful integration and implementation.
g Maximizing Competency Education and
Blended Learning: Insights from Experts
(CompetencyWorks Issue Brief, March 2015)
REVIEW IDENTIFIES CBE EQUITY CONCERNS
AND POTENTIAL MITIGATORS
2013 Co-founds restaurant
Honey Butter Fried Chicken,
serving birds from local farmers.
Rave reviews. Lines out the door.
NOW Still hosting
Sunday Dinner Club.
Running restaurant.
Sleeping not a priority.
Josh Kulp says that whether teaching kids to savor healthy food or running
a restaurant, the same principles apply: “I really believe that life is about the
moment, and it’s important to try to make each one as full of feeling and life as
possible. We treat our staff well. We’re great at service to our customers, to each other,
to our vendors and farmers. And in turn, hopefully, their days are better and easier.”
Dropout. Teen Parent.
Immigrant. Court Involved.
This report notes that teachers who have
implemented CBE are concerned it could
widen rather than narrow achievement gaps,
with well-prepared students potentially
setting their learning pace faster than
disengaged students. Researchers at the
RAND Corporation reviewed literature
to identify potential equity drawbacks.
In this report, they offer strategies to
overcome them.
g Equity in Competency-Based Education:
Realizing the Potential, Overcoming the
Obstacles (RAND Education and Jobs for the
Future, November 2014)
ONLINE CBE RESOURCE HUB
While a number of schools, districts, and
states are moving toward CBE for K-12
students, systematic research and accumulated knowledge on the practice are
scarce. CompetencyWorks.org is an online
resource that provides information for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners,
and includes frameworks and definitions,
research, and examples of schools and
districts implementing CBE.
They leave with only one:
COLLEGE STUDENT
SCHOLARSHIP
Rigorous college-prep curriculum.
RESILIENCE
Relentless wraparound emotional supports.
POSSIBILITY
100% of graduates accepted to college.
g www.CompetencyWorks.org
Founded on the belief that ALL CHILDREN
can achieve academic success, earn a
high school diploma and graduate college,
the Phoenix Charter Academy Network
is a growing group of Massachusetts high
schools dedicated to closing the gap
between at-risk, underserved youth and
their higher-achieving peers.
#provingitspossible in
Chelsea, Lawrence, Springfield & Beyond
JOIN THE REVOLUTION!
www.phoenixcharteracademy.org
DISPATCH FROM
NEPAL
LAST SPRING, Nepal
was devastated by two major earthquakes and dozens of aftershocks. At the
time of the first quake, Shailaja Kasaju, a 2015 Teach For Nepal fellow, had just finished her first
week teaching English in the rural village of Sangachok, which would soon become one of the
hardest-hit communities in the region.
In the months since the disaster, the scope of Kasaju’s and Teach For Nepal’s work has expanded
from teaching to rebuilding a nation. Kasaju, specifically, has been taking trauma relief classes
to learn how to help her students process the tragedy using strategies like art therapy. She has
also started a letter exchange project between schools. Over a spotty Skype connection from
Kathmandu, Kasaju spoke to One Day about the earthquakes, her students, progress so far, and
how to help. BY TIM KENNEDY (DELTA ’11)
After this spring’s earthquakes, many relief organizations
focused on Nepal’s Sindhupalchowk District, where Shailaja
Kasaju (above, center) teaches. “But without need analysis
and data collection, the people did not get equal
distribution of relief,” Kasaju says.
Q Where were you on April 25 when the first
earthquake hit? A I was on a bus, returning to
my placement village, Sangachok, from my home
in Kathmandu. The bus started shaking. I saw a
nearby biker collapse to the ground, and he
couldn’t stand back up. That’s when I knew it was
an earthquake. You have to realize that even
though the first, main tremor was 30 to 40 seconds long, we had tremors off and on for the rest
of the day. So our bus driver would try to keep
moving in between the tremors. At one point we
saw a whole house collapsing, and we saw a bus
that had turned over because the road had
cracked. We eventually hit a roadblock and
couldn’t go any further, so I ended up stuck in a
camp for days. There was a Red Cross station
there, so on my second day there, I registered as
a volunteer and started doing relief work.
Q Your school village is in the Sindhupalchowk
District of Nepal, near the earthquake’s epicenter. How severe was the physical destruction
in your village? A You can count the number of
buildings still standing—95 percent of the village’s houses were destroyed. Around 10 of my
students are orphans, and 4 of them lost their
lives. Most villagers are living in shelters built by
the army, others are in tents, but some have
started to move back into unsafe buildings because they have no place to live. In June, for example, there was another tremor and two more
people died because they were staying in an
unsafe house.
Photos courtesy of Teach For Nepal
Q Has school started again in your village?
How is it different from before? A School
started again in late May. In the first week, we
taught in the forest, and the week after that,
we started teaching in shelters and tents. In
the shelters, we are teaching under zinc sheets
in a very hot climate, which is very draining on
students and teachers. And every resource—
from drinking water to toilets to classrooms to
books—is limited. But even though the situation has changed, the people are the same.
The people there look at me with hope, and I
just feel I have so much left to do for them.
Q Do you still consider yourself mostly a
teacher, or do you think you are more of an
aid worker now? A I see myself as a social
worker, who does aid or teaching work as
needed. The work is interrelated, because
without a stable state of mind, education is not
possible, and without education, development
is not possible.
What is the most important thing that
people in other countries can do to help
Nepal? A Nepali people need relief, but more
than relief, they need work. So many people
lost their lifetime earnings in the quake and
need new income-generating sources. So I
think people in other countries should identify
and support the people and organizations
working on the ground in Nepal that are building long-term projects in communities. That’s
the most efficient and effective way to address
the need.
Q
TAKE
ACTION
Two of Teach For Nepal’s placement districts—Sindhupalchowk
and Lalitpur—are in the most
devastated regions of the country.
As a result, Teach For Nepal has
become a de facto relief organization, providing emergency supplies
and on-the-ground support to
more than 30,000 people in 100+
communities. To learn more, register as a volunteer, or donate, visit
nepalrelief.teachfornepal.org.
Sastobook, a Kathmandu-based
bookseller, has teamed with
Teach For Nepal to help get books
and stationery in the hands of
students through its Gifting
Happiness campaign. For $5-$12,
donors can purchase one of three
book sets to deliver to students.
Learn more at blog.sastobook.
com/gifting-happiness.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
PELL GRANTS FOR PRISONERS
Melanie Gleason is on the first leg of her journey in Bakersfield, California.
Attorney on
the Move
by KEESA MCKOY
THIS PAST JULY, MELANIE GLEASON
did something many social justice
advocates would only dream of having the
nerve to do. She abandoned the office life to
“follow [her] gut” and travel in search of people who need her help right now.
A lawyer and experienced community organizer, Gleason set up a crowd-funding website.
She raised her initial goal of $10,000 in a week
and left her home in Oakland, California, to
hit the road on a planned six-month journey
to provide pro bono public interest legal services to people in underserved communities.
(L.A. ’05)
Photograph by Michael Fagans
Her first stop was Delano, California, a
rural town known for its history as a hub of
the farmworkers’ movement. Through two
degrees of Teach For America separation, she
got a spare room for free in nearby Bakersfield
from a friend of a fellow alum. Her research
led her to volunteer at the California Rural
Legal Association, a small office in Delano
staffed by two attorneys plagued by too many
cases and too few hands.
Their mostly low-income clients, including
farm workers, bring them a variety of employment and housing problems. This past
summer, Gleason was handling many of the
housing cases the staff attorneys would ordinarily turn away for lack of capacity. Gleason
says her clients are often denied due process,
as many are unfamiliar with tenant-landlord
laws or have language barriers that prevent
them from understanding legal documents
like eviction notices.
Gleason says housing cases move quickly in
Delano. In her first two weeks on the job, she
was able to provide direct, tangible benefits,
such as ensuring landlords fulfilled reasonable accommodation requirements to cool
tenants’ apartments on Delano’s steamy 100plus degree days.
So what caused Gleason to become an itinerant attorney practicing what she calls “peoplepowered lawyering”? After passing the bar exam
in 2014, she says she was propelled to act on an
overwhelming desire to test a “radical” idea and
forgo the conventional route of joining a firm.
She wanted to directly connect with people who
needed her legal services, but also to explore and
blog about the litany of social justice problems
that she believes are under-covered. She hopes
to bring her services to other rural and urban
communities as well as American Indian reservations, immigration detention centers, and
other places often isolated from view.
Gleason is also seeking professional renewal. She says, “There are a lot of ways to bring
more excitement to the law, to make it more
interesting and accessible. And there is room
to creatively experiment with that, especially in
places that do not have many attorneys.” OD
IN THE SPRING 2015 ISSUE, One Day
reported on the challenge and promise
of providing high-quality education to
prisoners, highlighting the work of alum
sisters Amy and Abby Roza (D.C. Region
’99 and L.A. ’99, respectively). One of the
roadblocks to involving more inmates in
prison education programs has been a
lack of funding, in part because prisoners
have been banned from receiving
Pell grants—federal money for higher
education based on financial need and
cost of tuition—since 1994.
In July, the Obama administration
unveiled the Second Chance Pell Pilot
Program, which would make a limited
number of Pell grants available to prisoners who are within five years of release.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
announced the pilot at the Maryland
Correctional Institution - Jessup, where
Amy Roza runs the Goucher College
Prison Education Partnership. GPEP offers
credit-bearing courses taught by Goucher
faculty to about 70 eligible inmates.
Roza was honored by Duncan’s choice
of venue. “It affirms the role of GPEP and
GPEP students in the public conversation
about mass incarceration, poverty, and
educational access,” she says.
The law banning prisoners from
receiving Pell grants remains on the
books. But barring passage of legislation
that would block the pilot, prisoners
could begin receiving the grants to take
courses as soon as 2016.
Remember when
they told you
that you could
be whatever you
wanted?
It’s time.
Find out more at
JoinDelawareSchools.org
Small state. Big impact.
MEDIA
up.
SUPREMELY
FLAWED
2011
Brown v. Board of Education is often
taught this way: Schools were segregated, now they’re not, thanks
to the Supreme Court. Nice story, but not true, says Ian Millhiser
(Mississippi ’00), a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for
American Progress, where he focuses on the Constitution and
the judiciary. “When I was teaching, I saw the very sophisticated
systems still in place to minimize the impact of Brown v. Board,”
says Millhiser. “Those started to come into place immediately after
the decision came down” in 1954.
IN CLASSROOMS NATIONWIDE,
In Injustices: The Supreme Court’s History of
Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the
Afflicted, Millhiser makes the case that the
court’s willingness to uphold segregationist law
lines up with its decision-making from its earliest days to the most recent term. He writes that
with few exceptions, the court has repeatedly
shown preference to the wealthy and powerful at the expense of extending opportunity to
all. “Few institutions,” he says, “have inflicted
greater suffering on more Americans than the
Supreme Court of the United States.”
Q Your thesis feels ripe for revision following recent decisions like Obergefell v. Hodges,
extending marriage rights to same-sex couples. Is it? A What’s interesting is that Obergefell v. Hodges is a very socially conservative opinion. A lot of it rested on Justice Kennedy, who
wrote for the majority. Kennedy is extraordinarily
conservative. He’s very concerned with states’
rights. He’s very concerned with religious rights.
In the opinion, he talks about marriage as the
foundation of our society—as a revered and almost sacred institution that is the glue that holds
much of society together. That’s a very conservative view of the world. He also recognizes that he
shares a common humanity with gay people. His
decision didn’t come from a place of radicalism.
It came from recognizing that these people who
happened to be gay wanted the same very traditional life that he has had himself.
What made you decide to write this book?
In 2012, I was asked to write a brief defending
the Affordable Care Act in one of the first challenges filed [by opponents who were] trying to kill
the law. I believe that the challengers’ legal theory
in that case was a joke, yet we came within a hair
of losing the entire law before the Supreme Court.
Had that happened, there are tens of thousands of
people alive today who could otherwise be dead
because they wouldn’t have had insurance. The experience of seeing the Supreme Court come so
close to doing something so horrific—based on a
rationale that, to me, in no way resembled law—
made me confront the fact that this institution
that I used to think very highly of could do a great
deal of harm, and has consistently done a great
deal of harm throughout American history.
Q
A
Your book raises questions about how
well the Constitution was written. If you
could go back in time, what would you ask
Q
the framers to revise? A The U.S. Constitution uses all of these vague phrases, like “privileges and immunities of citizens.” Do you know
what those are? I don’t. And the Constitution
doesn’t tell you. So—for one—I would draft it
with more precision, because in practice, the framers’ imprecision delegated power to the judiciary.
Andrea graduates
from Stanford & joins
Rocketship as a Teach For
America Corps Member
2014
It’s hard to read your take on many of the
court’s decisions without questioning the
ethics of some justices. Is it fair to question
their ethics, or were they simply reflecting the
values of their time? A Particularly with the
issues of economic justice, there were democratic
agreements at the time of the cases around certain
issues. It was generally believed that workers, if
they wanted to unionize, should have certain protections; that 6-year-old children should not be
made to work in cotton mills for a dollar a day;
that there should be a minimum wage. So we can’t
let the justices off the hook for being of a different
time. The laws they struck down had enough support that they became laws in the first place.
Q
What’s your advice for teachers who want
to explore these court decisions with their
students? A Never teach history divorced from
its impact on people’s lives—and that’s especially
true in teaching the law. I could tell you, for example, that in 1918 the Supreme Court handed
down an opinion saying that manufacturing is
not a part of the activities that can be regulated
by the federal government under the commerce
clause. But what I actually just said was that the
Supreme Court forced 6-year-olds to work in
coal mines and cotton mills. That was the result
of that legal decision. Students won’t understand
the decisions until they understand what was
truly at stake. BY LEAH FABEL (CHICAGO ’01)
Champions parent-led
San Jose Mayoral Forum
2015
Completes 150th
Rocketship family
home visit
Beyond
Transforms her
community
Q
Andrea
Martinez
rsed.org/joinus
Bay Area • Milwaukee • Nashville • DC
Bay Area ‘11
Rocketship Sí Se Puede
Humanities Teacher
@RocketshipEd
A Decade After Katrina,
Looking Ahead
New Orleans
Public Schools
HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION RATE
by TING YU (N.Y. ’03)
2004
54%
73%
2014
COLLEGE ENROLLMENT
2004
37%
59%
2014
SOURCE: EDUCATE NOW!, AUGUST 2015
Hurricane Katrina
devastated New Orleans, its school system has been
rebuilt from the ground up. Academic proficiency
as measured by test scores, high school graduation
rates, and college enrollment numbers have seen
remarkable growth. Despite progress, change has
been complicated, and national debates about New
Orleans’ schools continue. One Day asked four
Teach For America alumni to reflect on the last 10
years of change and what needs to come next for
New Orleans students and families.
IN THE 10 YEA RS SINCE
(G.N.O.–LAD ’12),
Economic Development Fellow, Greater New
Orleans, Inc.
I was born and raised in Greater New Orleans. After college, I came back and taught at
my old high school. The biggest change that I’ve
seen for students has been access to opportunities. Prior to Katrina, I felt New Orleans was a
place you had to get away from to be successful. Now, it’s a place where you can stay and be
successful. As a black man, we didn’t have the
access to opportunities 10 years ago that we do
now. Now it feels like students are treated as a
top priority.
The city has done a great job post-Katrina of
branding itself as being innovative and new. The
silver lining has been that we were able to come
back and attract some diverse opportunities
that weren’t here before. That said, my family
members were concerned about the family-run
BRANDON RAPP
Photograph by Ted Jackson
this post-Katrina movement will be the ones
to shape the future of our city, because what’s
possible has been completely redefined.
stores, local barber shops, and small businesses
that made the community what it was.
There’s still a lack of people from the community in positions of opportunity. And then
there’s a lack of people who have the opportunities going back into the community. There’s a
relationship dynamic that’s missing and needs
to be addressed. We need a whole community
approach to economic development.
KAITLYN GADDIS (G.N.O.–LAD ’12),
Teacher, Phyllis Wheatley Community School
I’ve been working with a committee of teachers at our school to facilitate multicultural discussions around place, race, and history. It has
been hopeful to me, as a black woman and as a
local educator, to see the way that teachers in the
building are starting to examine the world and
our practice with this critical lens. It’s exciting
to hear the narrative change from teachers being intentionally disconnected from the school
system that existed before us to seeing a shift
toward searching for wisdom there, and cultivating relationships with people who were here
before. As the daughter of two public school
educators who taught in New Orleans for years
and years before Katrina, that’s so important to
me, and so critical to educating our children in
the way they deserve.
The ultimate aim is that we are a school that
develops children who feel affirmed in a positive
self-identity and have a critical consciousness of
the world, and that our school is very intentionally counteracting the effects of oppressive rac-
Brandon Rapp is the economic development fellow at Greater New Orleans, Inc., where he works on
aspects of the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, including job creation. He’s pictured here at
the NORA Filmore rain garden, developed to reduce flooding in flood-prone neighborhoods.
ism and classism. We can’t do that successfully
in a way that’s meaningful and transferable to
kids if we’re not doing some serious work on
ourselves as a staff. My short-term goal is that
our staff will be on fire and energized to begin
going there. It’s not something we can say we
want to do and do it tomorrow. What will feel
like success to me is that, as we look back on this
year, a part of what it meant to be a teacher at
our school was to be working toward that goal.
SCARLET FEINBERG (G.N.O.–LAD
’04), Assistant Principal and Alumni Advisor,
KIPP Renaissance High School
I’m going on my 12th year as an educator
here, and the work is never done. But there’s no
way you can deny the progress. The attention
and focus around the quality of preparation of
students for college is a drastic difference from
pre-Katrina to post-Katrina. Before Katrina,
only 37 percent of public school students in
New Orleans were going to college. Now it’s
59 percent, and at my school 93 percent of our
alumni are in college today. Schools have dramatically increased their focus on college and
career readiness.
From where I sit, the next big push needs to
be educating the whole child. Our kids look
incredible on paper, but we need to provide
them with the communication skills, the pro-
fessionalism, the financial literacy, and an understanding of the unwritten rules of the workplace—things that don’t fit in perfectly with
the Common Core and state standards. We
also need more quality jobs in a diverse array
of fields, not just tourism. Our students don’t
understand the difference between a job and a
career. Their exposure to the types of careers
out there is so limited. They need to be able
to build relationships with mentors who look
like them and who have similar backgrounds
as theirs.
My hope for New Orleans is that as our students become adults, they’ll build their families and lives in New Orleans. The students of
MELISSA SAWYER (G.N.O.–LAD’98),
Co-founder and Executive Director, Youth
Empowerment Project
There’s still so much work that needs to be
done. A lot of people are looking to New Orleans for the answers, but we shouldn’t forget
that we’re still at a crisis point where we have
a lot of young people who are disconnected
from school and the economic system. We’ve
had a huge infusion of philanthropic dollars
that was emergency-driven, but we’re already
seeing resources going away. We need to think
about sustainability—not just for young people now, but for those in future generations.
For some people, things are better. For
some, they’re not. Some schools are doing
amazingly well and are so innovative, but we
don’t have enough of those schools. We’re
still looking at issues of hopelessness, anger,
disconnectedness, frustration, and unequal
access to employment opportunities. We’re
seeing houses going up and people being
pushed out of neighborhoods where they’ve
lived for generations. We have to recognize
that revitalization and progress are complicated, and not everyone feels they’re on the
winning side. We need to make sure New
Orleans is being built by and with community—not just people who come here and want
to improve things. OD
Kevin Fleming visits with his down-the-street neighbors in Monrovia.
LETTER
FROM
LIBERIA
DEAR FRIENDS,
This past spring, my alma mater, Xavier University in Cincinnati,
paid me the surprising honor of inviting me to speak at the
undergraduate commencement ceremony about the opportunities
I’ve had to do mission-driven work around the world since I served
with Teach For America in Compton, California, in 1996.
Since then, I have been a Peace Corps Volunteer in South
Africa, where I worked with my village to build a gravity-flow
water system. I co-founded an organization that created a youth
center for kids who lost their families in the Indian Ocean tsunami.
I helped Teach For All launch Teach South Africa and, through
Operation Hope, Inc., set up financial literacy programs in
schools in 11 cities in the U.S., South Africa, and in Haiti after
the earthquake.
Last August, I was sitting on a beach with my
family, celebrating my sister’s 40th birthday,
when Brendan Cullen (Baltimore '94) called to
ask if I could help in Liberia—then at the center
of the Ebola crisis—by managing a nonprofit
organization called Last Mile Health. Because
of Ebola, this tiny nonprofit (which had focused
on rural health care for seven years prior) was
being called on by the Liberian government
and the international community to expand its
model to help educate Liberians about the disease and save lives.
Over four months, we doubled the staff to
250 and tripled the budget to train and send
Liberian health workers into villages to educate
families. While I was serving as the executive
managing director, I learned of my selection as
a Peace Corps country director. And lucky for
me, I was chosen to lead the Liberian program,
where I am today.
Why do I think this story is worth sharing? I
often get tagged as a do-gooder, or I get undeserved accolades thrown my way when thousands of others are doing the same work. The
truth is, there’s a critical message I find hard to
get across. And it’s something I want Teach For
America alumni to consider as they go looking
for mission-driven opportunities.
I’m never the smartest guy in any room. I
am not a great writer. I am horrible at math. I’m
not a creative person when it comes to having
new ideas.
At organizations that want to make a positive
impact on the lives of others, the place where
I’ve found my competitive advantage is in creating systems and processes for getting things
done in the most efficient way possible. I believe
that good, sound business practices can drive
people to do their best to save lives, close the
achievement gap, provide adequate health care
to people living in rural parts of the world, or bring
clean water to remote villages. That’s where my
experience and real skill set lies—using business management to help mission-driven organizations reach as many people as possible—so
people from different cultures and backgrounds
can exchange information and make informed
decisions about their lives, thus leading them to
live the lives they want for themselves.
Heck, I learned about this at TFA. Building
good management and organizational skills
in the classroom (and being pushed by really
smart, driven, creative fellow corps members)
is what’s allowed me to work anywhere in the
world for organizations I believe in. My experience taught me that it doesn’t matter what sector you work in. If you take the time over your
career to learn enough about finance, HR, IT,
policy, staffing, strategic planning, how to use
data to make informed decisions, and how to
recruit, select, and train top talent, you can help
anyone, anywhere with services that meet your
chosen organization’s mission.
Currently, Peace Corps Liberia recruits
only math and science education volunteers
to serve for 27 months and teach in public
schools, and that’s why I wanted to be here. In
Liberia right now, the economy is struggling to
gain traction after Ebola. Every ministry in the
country has to figure out how to rebuild, and
fast. As I became the country director, everyone was saying education was the only way
out of the crisis.
During the Ebola crisis, schools closed down
and students missed an entire year. In many
communities, schools became the places
where people with Ebola were quarantined,
treated, and died. Villagers were afraid to go
back into the schools. There aren’t enough
teachers in Liberia, and the teachers here
weren’t getting paid.
Because of my role with the Peace Corps,
I was able to meet with the Liberian minister
of education as he was getting confirmed and
tell him: I am ready to go. I’ve been able to
serve as a thought partner to his team as they
develop a bold, two-year strategic plan to get
kids back in school, to introduce public health
lessons into the classroom, and to figure out
how the international aid community can help
Liberia move forward.
I’m writing you this letter because one goal
of the Peace Corps is for us to share our experiences with Americans. I also want to break
the stigma that West African nations are facing. Liberia is trying to move on, and wants the
world to know that it is more than Ebola. And
maybe some people reading this will want to
apply to join Peace Corps Liberia.
I am so fortunate to find myself in this job at
this point in history. You don’t have to be the
most creative person in the room to be this
lucky. Learn to lead, and recognize that the
skills you learn in the classroom will help you.
Kevin Fleming
Stop saying
‘Nice Try.’
Telling a youngster who
erred on a math problem
“Good try, but your answer is
incorrect” is helpful, right?
Well, maybe not.
Peabody student Emily Fyfe and
Professor Bethany Rittle-Johnson
found that providing verbal
feedback (positive or negative)
sometimes causes more harm
than good. They evaluated 108
second- and third-graders and
found that response only helps
if the youngster didn’t know
much about the problem.
Otherwise that feedback leads
to lower performance on
subsequent math problems
than no feedback at all. Full
details are in their article in the
Journal of Educational Psychology.
This kind of outside-the-box
thinking is one of the many things
that makes Peabody unique.
where
past & present
create the
future
JOIN OUR TIMELINE.
[email protected]
At the Teach For America 25th Anniversary Summit,
Fleming will serve as the 1996 corps year summit
ambassador. His niece, Lauren Fleming Albers, is a
Baltimore '15 corps member.
peabody.vanderbilt.edu
#VUPeabody
THE FACE OF CHANGE
REVOLUTIONIZING THE EDUCATION OF SCHOOL LEADERS
BREAKTHROUGHS
At 25 years in, Teach For America is pursuing an
evolved strategic direction that is rooted in the belief
that providing all kids with an excellent education
is possible within our lifetime. You can scan the
highlights in this quick guide.
95%
Teach For America and REEP MBA Alumni: Sukhdeep Kaur-Dean of Instruction-Mickey Leland College Preparator y Academy for Young Men, Houston ISD
Rice University Education Entrepreneurship Program (REEP) is the nation’s foremost leadership development program
for highly motivated educators committed to leading public schools. REEP’s innovative curriculum enables educators to
create effective learning environments for students, teachers and staff, and communities.
REEP MBA for School Leaders | Summer Institute | Business Fellowship for School Leaders
OF CHILDREN LIVING IN LOW INCOME COMMUNITIES WILL GRADUATE
FROM HIGH SCHOOL PREPARED FOR SUCCESS IN COLLEGE AND CAREER.
*This milestone will let us know that the movement we’re part of has succeeded.
Why not 100%? For some children growing up with profound learning differences or in
extremely exceptional circumstances, college is not the appropriate proxy for success.
100% of children deserve an excellent education that meets their individual needs.
OUR MISSION
Application Deadlines Approaching.
Apply Now! reep.rice.edu
TO ENLIST, DEVELOP, AND MOBILIZE AS MANY AS POSSIBLE
OF OUR NATION’S MOST PROMISING FUTURE LEADERS TO GROW AND STRENGTHEN
THE MOVEMENT FOR EDUCATIONAL EQUITY AND EXCELLENCE.
To maximize our contribution to the
broad national movement for equity
and excellence, we are pursuing significant progress in three areas.
COMMUNITY Strengthen an inclusive,
thriving, diverse community of
corps members, alumni and staff who
listen to and learn from each other and
know we are in it together.
IMPACT Help our teachers have
path-changing impact with children,
even in their first two years, and
support alums in and out of the
classroom to continuously develop
their leadership contributions.
LEADERS Catalyze leadership
everywhere it’s needed, starting with
recruiting the next generation of
extraordinary people.
PRIORITIES
CHANGE HAPPENS LOCALLY. We are
focused on fueling local movements
by empowering regional teams.
LEADERSHIP GROWS OVER TIME. We
are focused on making the full
experience—from recruitment through
the corps into alumnihood—more
integrated and coherent to make this
a stronger community for all.
MOVEMENTS ARE ABOUT PEOPLE AND
RELATIONSHIPS. We will lead with the
courage of our convictions, grounded
in the understanding that we and our
partners each have critical roles to
play in this work.
DIVERSITY AND INCLUSIVENESS IS AT THE
HEART OF OUR WORK. We are focused
on recruiting a corps, supporting
culturally responsive teaching, and
creating a community where everyone
can bring their best, striving to be the
model of fairness and opportunity
we envision for our nation.
RESERVE YOUR
PLACE IN
TOGETHER WE RISE
Over the past 25 years, Teach For America has brought
more than 50,000 of the nation’s most promising and
diverse leaders into schools and communities to expand
educational opportunities for kids. From February 5-to7, thousands of those leaders are expected to gather in
Washington, D.C., from across the nation and the world
to mark this anniversary together and revitalize one
another for the work ahead.
It will be the largest event in Teach For America's history.
AMBASSADORS
Each corps year will have an
ambassador who will help shape the
Summit experience. One Day spoke
to Rob Garza (R.G.V. ’02), who’s
been teaching at his placement high
school in McAllen, Texas, (which
he also attended as a student) for
14 years, and is the ambassador for
corps year 2002.
Garza (pictured above) volunteered to help bring together the
class of 2002 because, when he was
beginning to feel worn down and
hungry for inspiration, he went
to an event that revived his early
passion. Garza, who teaches high
school media production, went to
the first Alumni Educators Conference in Detroit to accept an Alumni
Award for Excellence in Teaching,
EVENT SNAPSHOT
and there he tapped into a network
WHAT WILL ALUMNI DO AT
THE SUMMIT?
Dig into, discuss, and debate the issues that
are barriers to progress
Celebrate reconnecting with old friends and
others coming from our communities
Learn from people and partners who are
making transformational change in all types of
schools and communities
Meet extraordinary students and young
people making change
Engage in professional development tailored
to our work and personal leadership
Dance, sing, hug, cry, and head home charged
up and energized for the next 25 years
of alumni doing inspiring work.
“It just pumped new blood into
me,” Garza says. “I saw what it did
for me to get plugged back into this
whole network of people and supwhat’s important to me, to help
people in any way or shape or
form stay in this fight.”
SEND US YOUR PICS
One Day is helping to
America’s history in photos.
Did you take pictures with memo-
Summit registration opens September 15. Our goal is
to make the event accessible to all corps members and
alumni who would like to attend, with financial aid tailored
to those living across the country and the world. To learn
about the different financial aid packages offered, visit
the registration website at www.tfa25years.org to find
regional and national Summit points of contact.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5 – SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7
WASHINGTON, D.C.
port that I wasn’t aware of. That’s
document Teach For
RESERVE YOUR PLACE
Teach For America’s
25th Anniversary Summit
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, LIVELY COMMUNITY
DIALOGUE, NETWORKING, CELEBRATIONS & MORE!
rable students, or your mentors? Did
you document your institute or corps
experience? Do you have a picture
of a special community connection
(like Rob Garza, in the picture above
from his student days at the school
where he now teaches)?
Early registration is $100 when you register by October 31.
Don’t miss out on this early bird price—a nearly 50% savings!
Sign up to promote your organization, business, or product at
the Summit Education Marketplace or Opportunities Fair.
We’d love to potentially include
your pics in an upcoming publication, at the Summit or on the event
WWW.TFA25YEARS.ORG
website. If you have any to share,
send a note to onedayletters@
teachforamerica.org.
BY T I N G Y U ( N .Y. ’ 0 3 )
PH OTO G R APHS BY S E AN PRO C TO R
G R E A T
E X P
ECT
AT I
ONS
Hidden by the “model minority” myth,
Asian American students like Khanh
struggle to get the help they need.
When Khanh came to
the United States from
Vietnam at age 9, she spoke
almost no English but
immediately felt pressure
from teachers and peers
to excel: “If you don’t fit
into the Asian stereotype,
people think you’re stupid.”
Khanh’s teacher, Arlene
Sanchez (right), is leading a
push at her school for more
training around culturally
responsive practice. She
wants more educators to
realize that it's not a niceto-have, but a prerequisite
for effective teaching.
“They expect you to be smart. I was
supposed to stand out. But I stood out
in a negative way,” Khanh says.
It was midnight when Khanh Huynh boarded the plane that would take
her to America from Ho Chi Minh City. At age 9, she would make the
20-hour flight to Boston alone, except for the large white teddy bear
she clutched tightly in her arms.
Seven years earlier, her mother, Kathy, had immigrated to America
with her little brother Minh, leaving Khanh in Vietnam in the care of
her paternal grandparents. When Khanh turned 3, her grandparents
moved from their rice paddy in the countryside to Ho Chi Minh City so
she could attend school. Her grandmother rose each morning before
sunrise to cook Khanh’s breakfast and iron her school uniform, then
sat at her bedside every night until she fell asleep.
In those seven years, Khanh saw her mom and brother only four
times, when they came to Vietnam for short visits. She had heard she
had a 3-year-old sister named Kim, who was born in the States.
Now, sitting on the plane, her excitement was
tempered by fear. She was leaving behind Vietnam and the grandmother who had raised her to
become a stranger in her new home.
Over the next five years, Khanh would undergo nothing short of a metamorphosis. She
would learn English and—bit by bit, class by
class—strive to master the curriculum before her,
even as she began to discern gaps in what she
was being taught. She would meet a determined
young teacher, Arlene Sanchez, and they would
push each other to face some hard truths. And
she would be shocked to discover, then grow to
resent—and finally defy—the image of the model Asian American student, even as she felt forced
to live up to it.
TO HER NEW SIBLINGS, KHANH’S SUDDEN APPEARANCE IN THEIR SOUTH BOSTON APARTMENT
was akin to an alien parachuting into their lives.
Khanh’s mother worked seven days a week as
the manager of a nail salon, leaving her children
to sort out their new dynamic. Minh, who had
grown up in America and had few ties to his
Vietnamese roots, couldn’t communicate with
Khanh, who spoke only Vietnamese.
“I had completely forgotten I had another
sister,” Minh says. “My mom didn’t talk about
our family in Vietnam much. One day, I came
home from school, and there she was, lying on
my bed playing with my iPad. I just stared at her
for five minutes.”
“When I came here, boom, I got a brother and
a sister,” Khanh says. “I didn’t know how to treat
them because I had always been by myself.”
Khanh felt just as out of place in fourth grade
in nearby Dorchester, where she was the only
Asian student in a class of black and Latino kids.
In Vietnam, Khanh had occasionally glimpsed
white people but had never actually met someone
of another race. “I didn’t understand the teacher,
and the teacher didn’t understand me,” she says.
“Kids made fun of me because my English sounded weird.” She thought that in America, kids
would see themselves as all the same regardless of
their origins. “But I learned I was different.”
Kha nh struggled largely on her own. With
her demanding work schedule, Khanh’s mother,
Kathy, could never attend parent-teacher conferences, and Kathy’s own tenuous grasp of English prevented her from helping her daughter
with schoolwork.
By sixth grade, Khanh says, she grew aware
of stereotypes about Asian students, and how
she didn’t fit into them. “They expect you to be
smart. I was supposed to stand out. But I stood
out in a negative way,” she says. “I was suffering
in my grades because I didn’t understand English. People gave me looks like, ‘What’s wrong
with you? You’re Asian—you’re supposed to
know this.’ Even teachers ignore you and put
you to the side because they think you’re good
on your own.”
Once, in class, a girl chose Khanh as a partner
because she assumed she would be good at math.
“I let her down because I got all the questions
wrong, and she got angry at me,” Khanh says. “It
was like I had gone against the law of who I was.”
FAST-FORWARD FOUR YEARS TO NOW, WHEN
KHANH, AT AGE 14, HAS COMPLETED EIGHTH
grade. She earned good grades this year, but her
high school entrance exam scores revealed her
continuing weakness in English.
Turning down a spot at a parochial school in
Boston, Khanh won a scholarship to enroll at
Beacon Academy, a unique private school that
provides an additional year of rigorous coursework between eighth and ninth grade to ensure
students are fully prepared for the demands of
competitive independent high schools. She plans
to spend this year becoming fluent in English
and hopes that Beacon, which serves as a feeder
to top area schools, can be a springboard to her
dream of going to Yale and becoming a veterinarian or a surgeon.
If the model minority myth is to be believed—
that Asian Americans are culturally programmed
to excel—then Khanh’s success is preordained.
She won’t have beaten the odds because she is
favored to win.
BUT KHANH IS JUST ONE OF MILLIONS OF ASIAN
AMERICAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER (AAPI) KIDS
who don’t match the popular stereotype of robotic test-takers with pushy parents who engineer
their children’s achievements. Her experience—
and that of the many low-income immigrant
students like her—is hidden by headline data
that show Asian American kids routinely outperforming white students on standardized tests,
with college graduation rates that are 20 percent
higher than the general population’s.
The aggregation of data on Asian Americans effectively masks the reality that many sub-groups
are faring just as poorly as low-income black and
Latino students, and makes it difficult for even
the fiercest advocates of educational equity to see
the barriers to success for whole communities of
students like Khanh. Even elite universities have
come under fire in recent years for admissions
policies that intentionally discriminate against
Asian American applicants.
“The model minority myth perpetuates the
false narrative that AAPI students are universally successful and don’t face challenges,” says
Sarah Ha, who leads Teach For America’s Asian
American and Pacific Islander Initiative. The
real hardships of many students are obscured by
the sweeping categorization of AAPI students as
successful, Ha says. As a consequence, educators
and policymakers sometimes don’t act on the real
needs of students because they aren’t on alert to
look for them.
Ha notes that 16 percent of Native Hawaiians, 30 percent of Cambodians, and 40 percent of Hmong people are living in poverty.
“The myth makes invisible the real economic
and academic struggles of AAPI students and
provides a convenient narrative that is used to
deny racial justice.”
Asian Americans are the fastest growing immigrant group in America, but who exactly are
they? The designation, which the U.S. Census
Bureau used for decades, lumps together close
to 50 ethnic sub-groups that speak more than
300 languages—from Chinese to Indians to
Laotians—most of whom do not identify with
each other any more than the French and the
Greek do.
Many AAPI communities face the same barriers of poverty, violence, crime, and trauma as
other minority groups, but their struggles remain
invisible to the general public. In fact, sub-groups
of Asians have starkly different outcomes when it
comes to educational attainment. According to
a 2015 report by the Center for American Progress, 72 percent of Indian Americans hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, while only 14 percent of
Hmong Americans do. The Hmong have double
the child poverty rate of Indians in America. The
White House’s Initiative on Asian Americans and
Pacific Islanders reports a staggering high school
drop-out rate among Southeast Asian Americans:
40 percent of Hmong, 38 percent of Laotian,
and 35 percent of Cambodian populations do
not complete high school.
Over the summer, as part of the ongoing Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization debate, Congress considered an amendment that would disaggregate AAPI achievement
data—a move supported by Teach For America
As a student in Arlene’s
class, Khanh has developed a
critical consciousness about
learning history through a
more global and inclusive
lens. “I want to learn about
different cultures, like China,
Korea, and other parts of the
world where they see things
differently,” Khanh says.
MO DE L M IN O R I T Y ?
Asian Americans are seen as academic powerhouses and scarcely mentioned in conversations
about the achievement gap. But when it comes
to earning college degrees, all Asian sub-groups
are not equal. Disaggregated data reveals wildly
disparate educational attainment numbers among
different ethnicities.
Educational Attainment
(bachelor’s degree or higher)
Asian American 49%
U.S.
29.6%
Cambodian
14%
Chinese
53%
Filipino
48%
Hmong
14%
Indian
72%
Japanese
48%
Korean
52%
Laotian
13%
Pakistani
54%
Vietnamese
26%
SOURCE:
The Center for American Progress, April 2015
and its AAPI Initiative—but that failed. It is currently up for review again.
“We have a blind spot as educators around
Asian American students,” says Arlene Sanchez (Massachusetts ’13), a second-year corps
member who was Khanh’s eighth grade English teacher this year. Even among educators
fighting for the most disadvantaged students,
she says, “The conversation is primarily about
black and brown kids. Asian kids are the minority within the minority.”
IN SEVENTH GRADE, KHANH HAD MOVED FROM
HER SCHOOL IN DORCHESTER TO UP ACADEMY
BOSTON ,
one of five schools in the Massachusetts-based charter network. (Nearly a fifth of
the UP network’s faculty are Teach For America
corps members and alumni.)
Like Khanh’s elementary school, UP’s student body is predominantly black and Latino
with a handful of Asian students. Khanh’s English improved at UP, and her grades accordingly. She made some friends and enjoyed her
classes and teachers.
Still, there were times she felt the bar was
higher for her than for other kids. At UP, teachers
awarded merit points to students who demonstrated character strengths like perseverance. “If
other kids got a wrong answer, they got points for
trying,” Khanh says. But when she answered incorrectly, she noticed she rarely got points for effort. “I felt like I had to do better because they expected more from me.” Whatever bias there was
felt unfair and caused Khanh anxiety and confusion that she had to deal with on her own. But
she also recognizes that the pressure to achieve at
a higher level benefitted her. “It did hurt me, but
it pushed me to do better.”
WHEN ARLENE SANCHEZ FIRST MET KHANH IN
THE EIGHTH GRADE ENGLISH CLASS SHE TAUGHT,
the two didn’t immediately click. “Because of
who I am, it’s easier to connect with certain people,” says Sanchez, who is Dominican and identifies strongly with the Latino students who make
up more than a third of her classes. “It took a
while for me to connect with Khanh.”
Then Khanh began staying after school to ask
Sanchez for writing help. Some days they revised
draft upon draft, staying late into the evening.
“I was in her office so often, it was like she adopted me,” Khanh jokes. As their bond grew, so
did Khanh’s confidence. Arlene says she began
raising her hand during discussions and sharing
“We have a blind spot as educators
around Asian American students,” says
Sanchez. “Asian kids are the minority
within the minority.”
astute opinions and questions that brought fresh
perspectives to the class.
Like her students, Sanchez had also grown
up attending Boston public schools. She recalls the rude awakening she got during her
undergraduate years at Smith College, where
she felt far less academically prepared than her
wealthier peers.
From that experience, Sanchez became a fierce
advocate for building critical consciousness in her
students. She encouraged her classes to discuss
race and privilege in the context of books they
read, as well as events such as Michael Brown’s
death in Ferguson, Missouri. “I don’t think you
can have a rigorous curriculum if it’s not socialjustice oriented,” she says.
Sanchez’s class gave Khanh a new lens
through which to view the world. She began to
question what now seemed like glaring omissions in her history textbooks. “I read a few
paragraphs about the Chinese building the
railroad to the West, but what happened after the railroad? What about the Civil Rights
Movement?” she asks. “Where were the Asians?
What were their lives like during segregation?
Did their skin color impact who they could be?
I have a lot of questions.”
Sanchez says having Khanh in class exposed
the narrowness of her curriculum. She realized
how much the texts and resources she used fo-
cused primarily on the experience of African
Americans to the exclusion of other minority
groups. “For other kids, we try to find intersections and say, ‘This can be applicable to you.’
But it wasn’t a black and white world. There
were Asians in America. There were Muslims.
I’m realizing that I teach a single side of history
because that’s what I know.”
This year, Sanchez took what she calls a first
step by adding Asian American authors and
poets to her classroom library. Last summer,
she proposed to UP administrators that the
school offer professional development to help
teachers shift toward more culturally responsive practice. Though school leaders did add
two sessions this year, Sanchez is disappointed
with the slow pace of change. “Culturally responsive teaching is a very abstract idea. For
many teachers it’s like, ‘How do I do it tomorrow? How do I get it done?’ And not realizing
that it’s actually a process.
“It’s also uncomfortable to think, ‘Oh my
God, maybe I haven’t been teaching our students
right.’ But we have students like Khanh who
don’t see themselves [in our curriculum] or feel
validated by the way we speak to them. We need
to talk about those things.”
For her part, Khanh is no longer waiting for
school to educate her about Asian cultures. She
scours the Internet and YouTube to learn more
about Vietnam and other countries. “I didn’t
know how beautiful and significant my culture
was,” she says. “It opened my mind and helped
me see, ‘Who am I?’”
When she has children of her own, she plans
to bring them back to Vietnam so they can connect with their history and heritage, something
she was unable to share with her siblings. “My
kids will understand who they are and where they
came from,” she says.
NOT LONG AGO ARLENE SANCHEZ TOOK A
GROUP OF STUDENTS ON A COLLEGE VISIT TO
her alma mater, Smith. Khanh listened with interest to a panel of Latina students talk about life
as a minority on an elite, mostly white campus.
Still, she was disappointed not to hear from any
Asian students who had immigrated to the United States like she had. She wondered how their
parents could afford to pay such high tuition.
And, she says, “I just wanted to talk to them and
ask, ‘How did you go through this experience
and not feel like you were different?' ”
As Khanh prepares to attend Beacon Academy
in the fall, she knows people’s stereotypical assumptions about Asian Americans may precede
her. But this time, she feels more ready to face
them down. “People still look at me a certain
way, but it’s not about what they think,” she says.
“It’s about me.” OD
Chicago Hope
PHOTOGR A PHS BY SALLY RYA N
Students confront violence with a call for peace
BY LEAH FA BEL (CHIC AGO ’01)
ON
three categories: self-perception, relationships,
and productivity. They are meant to create a
school-wide culture where adults practice the
principles alongside the students.
In 2011, the network received a $400,000
grant from the U.S. Department of Education
to refine and share the ADL curriculum with
interested schools and organizations. The grant
highlighted the unique role that the course
plays in students’ development: ADL teachers
not only guide discussions of social issues and
current events, but they teach students the skills
and habits to respond to those events as leaders.
In early 2013, after Razia’s ADL class discussed Lawson’s shooting, she went to her principal and declared that something needed to be
done. She suggested an end-of-the-school-year
march that would send students into the summertime as advocates for peace—so they would
return to school alive in the fall. Her principal
quickly assented, and the “I Am For Peace”
project was born. This past June, the march
brought more than 3,000 students, families,
teachers, church groups, community and business leaders, and elected officials into Chicago’s
streets to call for peace.
In the two and a half years since Razia voiced
her idea, I Am For Peace has grown into much
more than a march. Student “peace teams” lead
chapters at every Perspectives school. One of
the high schools offers a Peace and Leadership
elective course, using a curriculum designed
with help from the U.S. Institute of Peace.
What started as one student’s idea has become
a cornerstone for the kind of education the network wants to deliver to all students, says cofounder Diana Shulla-Cose.
“The I Am For Peace movement is happening
because we provide our students a space to have
critical conversations around social issues and
we expect them to reflect and act on their role
in the solution,” Shulla-Cose says. “But it’s also
because we have educators who are expected to
listen and say yes to students’ ideas.”
A WEDNESDAY NIGHT IN JANUARY
2013, 17-year-old Tyrone Lawson was shot twice
in the back after a high school basketball game on
Chicago’s South Side. He died in a parking lot, four
months before he was to graduate. An epidemic of
gun homicides has killed more than 900 Chicagoans since the start of 2013, according
to DNAinfo, which tracks the city’s homicides. Like Lawson, nearly 100 of the victims
had not reached their 18th birthday.
Razia Hutchins was a high school sophomore on the South Side when it happened.
She didn’t know Lawson personally, but his death shook her in a way many others had
not. He was at a high school basketball game, a place where students feel comfortable
letting down their guard. In school the next day, Razia listened to her classmates talk
about his killing. They wondered aloud how many would survive to see the next school
year. “We have to stop thinking like this,” she remembers telling them.
Razia is a native Chicagoan. She grew up with doting parents and two brothers in a
tidy bungalow not far from her school. She projects an optimism that’s as all-American
as her job waitressing at a local deep-dish pizza shop. She’s kind and cheerful. She
speaks often of her Christian faith and desire to help people.
Beneath her smiling exterior, though, lies the steely resolve that led her—together
with her classmate Janeya Cunningham and others—to spend nearly three years building a movement aimed at ending gun violence in the neighborhoods they call home. “I
was very determined to help my classmates have a future,” she says, “to dream farther
than 18 years old.”
The youth-fueled Black Lives Matter movement has brought attention to young
people like Razia and their urgent demands for justice. In doing so, it has raised profound questions: Do the young people most in need of social change have the skills
and support to fight for it effectively? What is a school’s role in preparing students to
lead for a fairer world?
I “A SPACE TO HAVE CRITICAL CONVERSATIONS”
Razia, now 18, is a recent graduate of the Rodney D. Joslin Campus of the Perspectives Charter Schools network. Her school, like a growing number of public schools
nationwide, actively cultivates students to become leaders for justice in their own communities and beyond.
Perspectives operates five campuses on Chicago’s South Side—four high schools and
one middle school. Four of five Perspectives principals are Teach For America alumni,
as are more than 20 teachers. All students take a full-credit, daily course called A Disciplined Life (ADL), where “discipline” is less about following rules than practicing the
habits of positive leadership. The habits—called the 26 principles—are broken into
II “STOP ALL THE KILLING
GOING ON”
June 5, 2015: Crowds
of people, mostly
students, gathered for
Chicago’s third I Am
For Peace march.
I Am For Peace started small. Razia worked with
her principal to plan the march route around
Chicago’s City Hall. She worked with other
students to make signs, distribute T-shirts, and
convince classmates to join the effort. About
300 people showed up. She was buoyed by the
turnout, but it felt like a beginning.
As the 2013-14 school year started, Shulla-Cose encouraged principals across the
Perspectives network to look for students who could help spread I Am For Peace to
their campuses.
It was becoming clear that Razia could use partners—that more student leaders
would be stronger than one. Janeya Cunningham was a junior at Perspectives/IIT
Math and Science Academy. During her sophomore year—as Razia was planning the
first march—Janeya was engaging in peace work of her own. She had proposed to her
English teacher that students build a “peace wall” at their school. So they mounted a
paper tree in the lunchroom and cut out hundreds of leaves on which students wrote
vows: “I am for peace by walking away from a fight.” “I am for peace by looking out for
my younger siblings.” Janeya was a natural fit to join Razia.
The young women became fast friends. Where Razia is energetic, Janeya is reflective
and persistent. In many ways, she’s a typical teen. She has a favorite TV show, House
of Cards. Her cell phone is like an appendage. But adults who know her remark on
her wisdom and maturity, too, shaped in part by deep pain. Janeya has known eight
people killed by gun violence. Her family has lived apart for months at a time to protect
against abusive relationships.
As with Razia, Janeya’s family has supported her in developing her leadership instincts. Her mother, Kecia Pinkney, made sure Janeya and her sister attended good
schools, even when it meant sending them on hour-plus bus rides on public transportation. Pinkney looks back with a tinge of leftover anxiety. “I took a lot of risks as a
parent,” she says. “It wasn’t easy, but it paid off.”
Pinkney recently found an old writing assignment of Janeya’s in which she was asked,
at age 8, what she would do if she could change the world. “Janeya wrote that she’d stop
all the killing going on.”
III “THEY JUST NEED TO LEARN TO FORGIVE”
Razia and Janeya started their junior year with big plans to spread the peace project,
and Perspectives teachers and leaders stepped up their active support. Shayla Butler,
a member of the network’s external affairs team, worked with the student leaders,
the network’s board of directors, Shulla-Cose, and dozens of community leaders to
spread word of the march.
In May 2014, Butler helped the students launch a $35,000 Kickstarter campaign
to fund production of a documentary film about I Am For Peace. The idea was to use
the fundraising campaign as well as the final film to attract supporters. Butler and
Shulla-Cose set up meetings with potential funders. But the students—Razia, Janeya,
and others—delivered the project pitches at those meetings. By June, they met their
funding goal. Excitement was building.
As they hustled to fund the Kickstarter, the students developed influential relationships. Butler recalls that when Razia made her Kickstarter pitch to Rev. James
Meeks, the powerful pastor of Chicago’s Salem Baptist Church, the two hit it off,
connecting over their faith. Meeks arranged for Razia to stand where U.S. Senate
candidate Barack Obama had once stood and invite his congregation to join the
second annual I Am For Peace march.
Razia and Janeya juggled the demands of
junior-year schoolwork with their filmmaking
schedule and march preparations. (Both young
women credit the movement with teaching them
impeccable time management.) Butler managed
the filmmaking logistics and much of the behind-the-scenes march planning, like applying
for permits and rustling up media interest.
In October 2014, I Am For Peace premiered
at a local arts center. The documentary features
opening remarks by Chicago-born actress Jennifer Hudson and an interview with Education
Secretary Arne Duncan. But at its heart are the
personal stories of students like Maurice Young,
Razia’s classmate and an I Am For Peace collaborator. Young describes a latchkey upbringing.
He spent afternoons at a neighborhood liquor
store, where the owners offered him snacks and
space to finish his homework. He describes I
Am For Peace as an alternative to the streets’
bleak justice. Many of his childhood friends are
caught in cycles of violence and retaliation, he
told the filmmakers. “They think the only way
to bring peace is to bring back their dead people. They just need to learn to forgive.” Today,
Maurice is preparing for his freshman year at
the University of Illinois.
I Am For Peace closes with scenes of the second annual march, which grew to more than
2,000 people, up from 300. Following the premiere, Razia called on her newfound connections to share the documentary more widely.
She reached out to Rev. Meeks and asked if she
could screen the film and host a discussion at
Salem Baptist. He immediately said yes.
IV “HOW TO TAKE A STAND,
HOW TO HAVE A VOICE”
As I Am For Peace picked up momentum, Perspectives teachers and network leaders refined their
classroom tactics for developing critically conscious
young leaders. To hear them tell it, supporting
the movement has been a bit like being first-time
parents. They want badly for the students to succeed, but they’re still figuring out the right balance
between encouragement, instruction, and control.
One of the most important things they’ve
done, Butler says, is help students learn how to
build relationships with a host of people, including adults who can help. “As a network, we’ve
been developing those relationships, and the students become a part of them,” Butler says. “We’re
teaching them networking skills they can’t get
anywhere else right now.”
“If we hadn’t spoken up
for peace, none of this
could’ve happened,” says
Janeya Cunningham, here
on the morning of the
2015 march. “Small ideas,
with enough supporters,
can become successful.”
ACTION
CIVICS
STUDENT LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
HAPPENS IN MANY WAYS. At some schools,
it’s a natural outgrowth of culturally responsive teaching—when students study social
issues as they impact their lives, not simply as
historical artifacts.
At other schools, the effort is more explicit.
The New Yorker reported in August on a public
high school in Brooklyn, New York, that piloted
a course called Occupy Summer School in
which students led civic actions and heard
from guest lecturers including union leaders
and grassroots organizers.
Under many guises, action-oriented approaches to learning are “emerging in pockets
all over the U.S.,” says Mariah Kornbluh, a
researcher at the University of Wisconsin
who studies “action civics.” In February, the
University of Colorado’s education school
opened its Center for Community-Based
Learning and Research, where teachers learn
strategies to engage with communities to
solve “complex public challenges.”
The philosopher Paulo Freire laid the
foundation to develop socially minded student
leaders in his seminal Pedagogy of the
Oppressed, published in 1968. Education,
he wrote, needs to be about “the practice of
freedom, the means by which men and women
deal critically and creatively with reality
and discover how to participate in the
transformation of their world.”
Freire’s thinking was born out of South
American movements in the 1960s, but it’s no
surprise that it’s re-emerging today, Kornbluh
says. Especially in low-income communities,
educators are determined to “provide these
opportunities to engage students in more
critical action.” The benefits multiply. Studies show students
who engage civically improve academically and
are more likely to stay involved in college and
beyond. “It’s a cumulative effect,” Kornbluh
says. “High school provides a really important
opportunity to start that engagement.”
Lindsey Schwartz (Chicago ’10) is a history and women’s studies teacher at Perspectives Leadership Academy, and her school’s peace ambassador. She leads the team
of students at her school who decide how they want to implement peaceful actions
on campus.
“We want the students to take on more and more ownership,” Schwartz says.
“Now that the movement has some momentum, now that it’s gotten some press, now
that we’ve gotten word out there, what does that look like?”
Stephanie Spoelstra Kristovic (Chicago ’08) is the principal of Perspectives High
School of Technology, the same school where she taught as a corps member. She describes how her teachers use ADL classes to help students develop the moral compass
essential for strong leadership. “How do we help kids understand their innate sense
of ethics and being?” she says. “Kids are courageous and just and kind to one another.
How do you name that in a systematic way so that they can work on it in the same
way they work on math and reading?”
ADL has a different focus for each year of high school. Ninth graders focus on
identity and developing a sense of self. Tenth graders focus on social justice. Their
final project is to choose a social justice challenge and present a design to solve it. Upperclassmen prepare for college, which includes considering how they will use higher
education to become agents of change.
The goal of supporting activism like the design projects and the peace march is
as much about influencing immediate change as it is about allowing students to see
that with time, effort, and partnership, injustice is not a community’s fate, Spoelstra
Kristovic says. Organizing a march will not stop violence in Chicago, but it “is a way
to explicitly teach kids how to be citizens, how to take a stand, how to have a voice.
The march is less about those who look in at it, and more about those who look out
from it.”
V “I NEEDED TO DO MORE”
In late summer 2014, as Janeya and Razia prepared for the start of their senior year,
Perspectives rising sophomore Shaquise Buckner was shot and killed on a street corner near her home, the victim of a drive-by. Janeya was on the phone with a friend
when the news popped up on social media. “I just remember being scared,” she says.
Several days later, she helped lead an emotional school assembly to honor Buckner.
“I knew I needed to do more so we didn’t lose anyone else,” she says.
Throughout their senior year, Razia and Janeya, along with Perspectives’ student
peace teams, traveled to 29 schools, churches, and businesses to show the documentary, host discussions, and urge people to be leaders for peace in their communities.
Janeya estimates she attended at least 60 I Am For Peace organizing meetings during
her senior year. In all, they reached thousands of people.
At each film screening, students advocated for a peace philosophy that is “more
than 'no shootings,'” as Janeya puts it. “It’s healthy relationships. Loving yourself
unconditionally. Being able to let your kids walk to the store and knowing they’ll
make it back without being jumped, robbed, or killed.”
Butler says the young women’s growth as leaders came through most clearly in the
follow-up to documentary screenings—particularly when audience members scoffed at peace
as a realistic approach in neighborhoods rife
with violence. Janeya and Razia “have come
back to our meetings and said, ‘What neighborhood was he talking about? Do we have
connections there? How can we help them feel
like they can make a difference?’”
As they shared the film, they achieved small
victories. At a middle school where students
hosted a screening, the principal asked if members of the peace teams could return as interns
this year, leading mentorship opportunities for
younger students.
Finally, last June, 3,000 people—community leaders, families, and students by the
busloads—turned out for the biggest I Am For
Peace march yet. Crowds gathered at a park
on the city’s Near South Side. Chicago Mayor
Rahm Emanuel kicked off the event, calling
the organizers and attendees “the strongest
weapon” to fight violence on the city’s streets.
Marchers carried signs that read “#BlackLivesMatter,” “Stand Up Chi-Town,” and “I Want
To Live.” Razia and Janeya led them in chants:
“Chicago is my home, not a war zone!”
VI “THERE’S A LOT TO BE
LEARNED”
Today, Razia is settling in to her first year at
the University of Missouri on a partial scholarship. Janeya is a freshman at DePauw University with a Posse scholarship, providing four
years of full tuition for public school students
who show exceptional promise as leaders. She
is also one of 20 Bonner Scholars—incoming
students selected for their commitment to service during high school.
In Chicago, violence continues. After a slight
dip in 2014, shootings were up 20 percent year
over year by the close of June, according to the
Chicago Police Department. About 225 people
in the city had been killed by gunfire through
July, according to DNAinfo.
But as Razia and Janeya move forward, a
younger group of Perspectives students has
kept I Am For Peace going. In August, teacher
Lindsey Schwartz led the network’s first peace
and leadership training for a delegation of 24
students selected by application from across
the five campuses. Part of the two-week program focused on researching conflict abroad.
“There’s a lot to be learned about how people
organize and promote peace in their specific
RE
SOURCES
SCHOOLS NATIONWIDE ARE TAKING VARIED
APPROACHES TO PREPARING STUDENTS TO
BE THE LEADERS COMMUNITIES NEED.
Two examples: At Baltimore’s Benjamin
Franklin High School, where Simon Birenbaum
(Baltimore ’05) is an assistant principal,
“This is a way to explicitly teach kids
how to be citizens, how to take a stand,
how to have a voice. The march is less
about those who look in at it, and more
about those who look out from it.”
students worked with a local organization to
protest the development of a trash incinerator
near the school. The effort was named Best
Activism of 2014 by the Baltimore City Paper.
At Democracy Prep Public Schools in New York
City, students are expected to participate in
civic life by providing oral testimony before
the City Council and lobbying state legislators
in Albany.
AS INTEREST GROWS, MORE RESOURCES ARE
BECOMING AVAILABLE FOR EDUCATORS.
The Perspectives charter school network offers
STEPHANIE SPOELSTRA KRISTOVIC
its curriculum, A Disciplined Life, to interested
schools and community organizations. The socialemotional curriculum incorporates strategies
for preparing student leaders for social justice
efforts. Contact network president and co-founder
Diana Shulla-Cose at [email protected].
The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) social
studies standards, released in 2013, help
students develop “participatory skills to become
contexts,” Schwartz says. Students will continue the research throughout this school
year, developing relationships with their peers overseas.
Students also received training on peer mediation and conflict resolution to use
on their campuses this fall. They analyzed social media and its impact on movements
like Black Lives Matter. “We’re looking at how social media can be detrimental,
but also the power of it to create social change,” Schwartz says. Each school’s team
drafted a list of suggestions for their principal regarding the upcoming school year.
Their ideas included more frequent community engagement and a “peace week” early
in the school year, so more students become engaged with I Am For Peace in the fall,
instead of waiting for the draw of the springtime march.
Neither Razia nor Janeya intends to give up activism in college—both say it has
become a part of who they are. Black Lives Matter has spurred important evolutions
in their thinking. They credit I Am For Peace with giving them the tools and the
mindsets to lead.
Now the adults who’ve guided and admired them await with hope an answer to
the question that has always marked the exodus from high school to college: How
will they amaze us next? OD
engaged citizens.” They also align with Common
Core State Standards. Download them at http://
www.socialstudies.org/c3.
The Youth Participatory Politics Research
Network, made up of a group of leading
academics, focuses on increasing the potential
of youth in the digital age to impact political
progress. Its website is http://ypp.dmlcentral.net/.
Many schools pair student leadership
development with restorative justice practices.
The International Institute for Restorative
Practices is one of the leading providers of
information and professional development about
restorative justice in school settings. Its website
is www.iirp.org.
NAATE Teacher Fellows and
the NAATE Team are Proud To Welcome
TE ACH FOR A M E R I CA
2015 Alumni Award for Excellence
in Teaching Recipients
To learn how these award recipients and other top-performing
IN
&
OUT
OF TEACHING
BY SUSAN BRENNA
NEW RESEARCH SUGGESTS ALUMNI ARE SPENDING MORE YEARS
TEACHING THAN WE ONCE THOUGHT—ESPECIALLY TEACHERS WHO
MOVE INTO, OUT OF, AND BACK INTO THE CL ASSROOM.
teachers from across the country are deepening their practice and
better supporting their peers within their schools, visit:
naate.org
leading learning
NAATE is a rigorous program of study that cultivates an elite corps of
extraordinary teacher leaders committed to the classroom and dedicated
to closing the achievement gap in our nation’s high-needs schools
NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATORY POLICY
The NAATE Program admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights,
privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to all students. It does not
discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational
policies,
or other school-administered programs.
46policies,
ONEadmissions
DAY | FALL
2015
HOW LONG DO MOST TEACH FOR AMERICA CORPS
MEMBERS TEACH?
A new analysis of alumni responses on the annual Teach For America Alumni Survey reveals
that the majority do not stop teaching after two
years, and a significant proportion (as many as
half from some corps years) report they have
taught for significantly longer. Of those alumni
who had abundant opportunities to teach for
more than five years—those who entered the
corps before 2002, for example—approximately
half reported they have done so. (Check the
chart on page 48 to see what percentage of your
corps year taught for three or four, five or six, or
seven years and longer.)
TFA researchers Raegen Miller and Rachel
Perera, in completing the new analysis (based on
an annual survey of alumni with a 70 percent response rate), say researchers may have previously
underestimated the length of alums’ teaching careers in part because surveyors previously asked
not how many years in total alums have taught,
but how many they taught consecutively following their time as corps members. (Find the
full report on the Teach For America website.)
“When considering retention, researchers who
look only at whether teachers stuck with the
schools where they started miss the fuller picture of teachers who move to other schools or
districts or return to teaching from time away,”
says Miller, the author of many peer-reviewed
articles and other original research on teacher
workforce policy.
It turns out that Teach For America alumni
teachers have non-linear, job-switching careers
like the rest of America. (The federal Bureau of
Labor Statistics found that the youngest baby
boomers held more than 11 jobs between ages
18 and 48, and millennials are predicted to
change jobs with greater frequency than earlier generations). Many left teaching for other
professions, family responsibilities, or graduate
school, then returned.
Some, like Martin Winchester (R.G.V.
’95), stayed in education but not consistently
in the classroom. He spent 15 of the last 20
years teaching, stepping away to launch new
schools and be Teach For America’s executive
director in the Rio Grande Valley. He says
he’s able to commit to teaching for another
decade (until his three kids pass through his
classes) because in the R.G.V., teaching affords a middle class lifestyle.
Others, like Mary Lou Bruno (New Jersey
‘96), took a long detour. She taught first grade
for three years until 1999, then started up again
two years ago as a first grade teacher after a 13year time-out to lead adult learning, among
other jobs.
LeRoy Wong (E.N.C. ‘93), spent three years
teaching and 16 in education administration
before joining a turnaround Boston elementary
school last year as a technology teacher. At age
45, with a spouse and two children, he felt the
strain of returning to the classroom while spending nights taking courses to get re-certified, even
though he’d trained teachers in his previous job.
It was, he says, “almost like doing my Teach For
America experience all over again.”
One Day spoke to several alums who careerswitched back into teaching and asked them
why, how, and what could make it easier for
teachers to stay or return. Three words recurred:
flexibility, salary, and respect.
This chart shows what percentage of teachers within each corps year taught for 3 or 4 years, 5 or
6 years, or 7 or more years, not always continuously. As an example, from the 1990 corps year, 20
percent said they taught for 3 or 4 years, 9 percent said they taught for 5 or 6 years, and 46% said
they taught for 7 or more years, meaning that more than half (55%) taught for five or more years.
QUINCY HUDSON
3 OR 4 YEARS
5 OR 6 YEARS
(HOUSTON ’00)
7 OR MORE YEARS
80%
46%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
9%
20%
20%
TAUGHT FOR TWO YEARS IN HOUSTON; then became a TFA program director; spent eight years as a
purchasing manager for a medical products importer; returned to teaching last year at Legal Prep
Charter Academy in Chicago.
After 10 years out of the classroom, Quincy Hudson took a $35,000 pay cut last year to become a teacher
and college coach at a start-up Chicago high school. He was recruited by the husband of a 1999 alum
who—back when they were students a year apart at the University of Illinois—had enticed Hudson to join
Teach For America.
When he returned from Houston to Illinois years ago for family reasons, Hudson had intended to keep
teaching, but Illinois did not recognize Texas certification. During his years in business, “I was able to save
up money and pay off my student loans and buy a house.” He stayed close to Chicago-area alumni, helping
the regional team recruit, and eventually felt called back to work with students with few resources. They
reminded him of who he once was.
Hudson says his days are long at the new school where he teaches law, literature, and film, runs the
National Honor Society, coaches step, and works with OneGoal (see page 57) to support college-going
seniors. Because his charter school can have a limited number of noncertified teachers on staff, he says
he’s able to handle all those responsibilities without also doing coursework.
Now that he’s saved money, salary is not a deciding job factor, Hudson says. “In the classroom itself, a
strong support network is always good. Really good professional development is important. Seeing my kids
grow and learn and graduate and go off to college—that would help me stay in the classroom as well.”
JASMINE WIGHTMAN
MARY LOU BRUNO
(PHOENIX ’06)
(NEW JERSEY ’96)
10%
2010
2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002
ED KABAY
(D.C. ’06)
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
TAUGHT NINTH GRADE BIOLOGY IN D.C. FOR TWO YEARS; then two years as a herpetology keeper at Zoo Atlanta; then to
the University of Maryland for a master’s degree in conservation biology and sustainable development; taught
AP environmental science, earth science and chemistry for two years at East Chapel Hill High School in North
Carolina.; left to research meerkat behavior in the Kalahari desert with a Duke University team; resuming his
old job at East Chapel Hill this school year.
“Going into teaching,” Kabay says, “I knew I was going to bounce, at least for a while. The teachers I connected with
growing up were the ones who had real life experience in the sciences. As an educator, it’s really important to me to stay
connected to my field.”
Kabay believes his students benefit when he bounces. After his first year at East Chapel Hill High School, the National
Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Teachers Fellowship got him to Panama for a summer to do amphibian
research with a team of scientists from the University of Maryland, and to teach in a Panamanian grade school. Through
that connection, he was able to set up a biodiversity observation project for students back in North Carolina.
He can’t imagine doing the same job (teaching or another) year after year forever, but he’d like to at least hit what he
considers the lethally effective five-to-ten year teacher mark. “When I find a place to build a long-term career, in science
or education, maintaining a connection with both fields will be a priority for me,”
Stimulating professional development would entice him to keep teaching, but he says, “I know my district doesn’t
have any money for out-of-town travel.” He adds, “I feel strongly that allowing teachers to pursue their interests can go a
long way to maintaining the desire to continually improve their classroom practices.”
TAUGHT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL FOR TWO YEARS IN PHOENIX; earned a law degree at
the University of Texas; had a son and took a break before the bar exam;
worked six months in the Texas Attorney General’s office; left to substitute
teach, then taught wellness and kindergarten for two years at KIPP Austin
Comunidad; left to work part-time as a lawyer for Texas School Boards
Association; expecting a second child.
“When I was young, I was sure I was going to be a teacher,” says Wightman,
“but going to law school was to prove how smart I was. Now that I’m in my 30s,
I think, man, that was an expensive mistake. I still have loans to pay back.”
Wightman says she is sure she wants to work in education for the rest of
her life, but she’s stru ggled to find completely satisfying work either in law
or the classroom. In her first law job, she parsed deadly dull open records law
and worked 12 hours in a cubicle on New Year’s Eve. At night, she’d dream
about teaching. While she switched to teaching at KIPP Austin Comunidad,
she says, “I understood the need for a long school day, but I’m not 23 anymore
where I can put in those hours.”
She also yearns for respect. “When you tell people you teach kindergarten,
they think that’s adorable. When you say you practice law, they think you
must really be on it.”
Wightman is happy now as a school boards lawyer. “If I stay in law, I’m only
going to do school law and nothing else because I’m a mission-driven person,
and that aligned well with KIPP,” she says. “If I don’t do that, I’ll go back to
teaching. But there’s also motherhood, the third wrench.” She is concerned
by the “jumping around” on her resume. But compared to law, she says, the
teaching profession welcomes comebacks warmly.
TAUGHT BILINGUAL FIRST GRADE FOR THREE YEARS; got a master’s degree in
public policy from Georgetown University; worked for education
nonprofits including Sapientis, which focuses on improving schools in
the place her family is from, Puerto Rico; managed adult learning for
consultants at Deloitte; married and took a break to regroup; returned to
teach for two years at a D.C. public elementary; starting this year as an
instructional coach at a reopening D.C. school, Van Ness Elementary.
In her first three years, Mary Lou Bruno says, “I absolutely loved teaching, and what I really loved was being in a school. But as a corps member
I was placed in New Jersey. I grew up in New Jersey, I went to undergrad
in New Jersey, and I thought if I stayed in teaching for my entire career, I
would never leave New Jersey and have other experiences. I didn’t want to
have what I thought would be a one-dimensional life.”
She stayed in education with a nonprofit for a while, but yearned to
earn enough money to achieve a life goal. “My parents never owned the
home I grew up in. I wanted to have that stability.” While at Deloitte, she
bought a D.C. condo. But she never stopped feeling that her place was
in a school.
Returning to the classroom at age 39 “was the best decision I ever
made.” What’s different today, she says, is that “there is a pathway now in
D.C. schools to be a teacher leader” without becoming an administrator. As
an instructional coach, she’ll use the adult education skills she developed
at Deloitte to coach new teachers and help seasoned teachers develop
peer-to-peer learning. “If we want to keep our best, smart, motivated
teachers,” she says, “then we need to give them opportunities to lead.”
Alumni Award for
Excellence in Teaching
Absent on picture day:
JENNIFER
FREEMAN, who
teaches 7th grade
science at KIPP
STRIVE Academy
in Atlanta
JASON CATANESE
teaches 7th and 8th
grade algebra and
geometry at Pueblo
Del Sol Elementary
School in Phoenix.
WHITNEY WARD
BIRENBAUM, who
teaches 6th, 7th,
and 8th grade ELA/
humanities at The
Midtown Academy in
Baltimore.
ELLEN DOBIE
teaches 5th grade
bilingual ELA at
McMeen Elementary
School in Denver.
CLAIRE SHORALL
teaches 11th and
12th grade life
science, calculus,
and computer science
at Castlemont High
School in Oakland, CA.
JAMES KINDLE
teaches 3rd, 4th,
and 5th grade ELL
at Anne Sullivan
Elementary School
in Minneapolis.
JAMES T. SHERIDAN
teaches 11th grade
AP English Literature and 11th-12th
grade film at YES
Prep Southeast High
School in Houston.
LAUREEN WIMBLEY
teaches 6th grade
science at YES
Prep Southwest in
Houston.
MATTHEW
O’CONNOR
teaches kindergarten
at South Shore
Pre-K–8 in Seattle.
JONATHON LEVIN
teaches 6th, 7th, and
8th grade computer
science at Locke
High and Animo
Westside Charter
Middle School in
Los Angeles.
Describe your
classroom in
three words.
SCHOOL IS CANCELED UNEXPECTEDLY (FOR NONTRAGIC REASONS). WHAT DO YOU DO WITH YOUR
DAY OFF?
“I like calling on
students who I know
have the correct answer
but aren’t confident
enough to raise their
hands even though they
give me the ‘I didn’t
raise my hand’ look.”
Energetic, supportive, loving.
Jason (Phoenix ’11)
Joyful, purposeful, conversational.
Ellen (Phoenix ’08)
Warm, interesting, colorful.
Jennifer (Metro Atlanta ’05)
LAUREEN
Work in progress.
James K. (Twin Cities ’09)
Controlled, chaotic productivity.
Jonathon (L.A. ’09)
WHAT’S YOUR SIGNATURE TEACHING MOVE?
Loud, joyful, shared.
Matthew (Houston ’09)
My second home.
James S. (Houston ’00)
Dynamic, student-centered,
rigorous.
Claire (Bay Area ’10)
We’re global citizens.
Whitney (Baltimore ’05)
Vibrant, orderly, active.
Laureen (Houston ’07)
It would be
nice to control
students’
computers with
my mind.
JONATHON
Claire: I regroup students using a random
group generator multiple times a period—my
students are constantly moving and collaborating with every one of their peers.
Jennifer: Loving sarcasm.
Whitney: We have a class question journal
and weekly "questioner," who researches
answers for questions that arise during
class discussions.
Jason: Dancing on desks. We like to move it
in our classroom, and if you’re down with that
you are always welcome to dance with us.
WHAT TEACHING SUPERPOWER DO YOU WISH
YOU HAD AND WHY?
Laureen: ANYTHING that could help me grade
papers quickly.
James S.: I wish that I could remember the
name of every student that I meet. I constantly run into my former students everywhere,
and to be able to recall over 1,500 names
would be an enviable superpower.
James K.: Go into my classroom and try to
contain the typhoon that is my work area.
Whitney: Spend the day with my newborn
baby boy, Milo! Hanging out with him has
quickly become my favorite hobby.
Jason: I would get our teacher soccer team—
Los Maestros—together and play in the park.
We’ve dominated our leagues for years because if there’s one thing we have as teachers,
it’s the ability to never give up.
MONEY IS NO OBJECT. WHERE WOULD YOU TAKE
YOUR STUDENTS ON A FIELD TRIP?
Whitney: We’d recreate the Lewis and Clark
expedition: mapping the American West,
chasing prairie dogs, documenting all sorts
of plants and animals, and finally reaching
the Pacific.
Claire: The Galapagos Islands, so that my
students would be able to make the same
observations that led Darwin to his theory of
natural selection.
Ellen: Rwanda, to experience the country’s
beautiful culture of service, see the inspiring wildlife and landscape on safari, and
also make connections between Rwanda’s
genocide and our own studies of the history of
oppression and power systems here in the U.S.
Laureen: A Civil Rights tour of the South:
Birmingham, Montgomery, Atlanta, Memphis.
We used to take this trip but can no longer
afford it.
Disneyland
JONATHON
what’s truly taxing is the emotional exhaustion: when you feel like you’re not reaching a
kid, or are unable to provide the resources or
services a family needs, or feel hamstrung by
bureaucracy and red tape.
Ellen: Most underestimate the deep level of
humanity and connection that is required
of teachers every day. In order to truly make
transformational connections with students,
we must push ourselves to connect with humanity on a profound level even on days when
we aren’t feeling superhuman.
Claire: The most effective classrooms tend to
have the least teacher presence, and getting
students to the point where you are essentially
an observer is no small feat. I’m thrilled that
in most of my classes I speak for five minutes
or less.
WHO’S YOUR DREAM SUBSTITUTE TEACHER,
LIVING OR DEAD?
Jennifer: Oprah—but I want to be a student
in class on that day.
Matthew: Tammy Taylor from Friday
Night Lights.
Laureen: To stay on track: Miss Frizzle from
The Magic School Bus. To learn about something other than science: President Obama.
James S.: Our greatest living actor, Daniel
Day-Lewis. I stare at a poster of him from
There Will Be Blood (the class motto of
AP English Literature) all day, every day in
my classroom.
WHAT’S SOMETHING CHALLENGING ABOUT BEING
A TEACHER THAT THE AVERAGE PERSON MIGHT
NOT REALIZE?
James K.: People talk about how physically
exhausting teaching is, and it can be, but
“Done dust”—a spray
bottle of water, spiced up
with glitter and essential oils
(typically cinnamon) that I spray
on the class during transitions.
M AT T H E W ’S
SIGNAT U R E MOV E
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE SPOT (OR ACTIVITY) IN
THE COMMUNITY WHERE YOU TEACH? WHY?
Ellen: A really incredible international food
market that has every possible ingredient you
can imagine from any country. It’s extra special to run into your students while your arms
are brimming with spices and a leg of lamb.
James S.: Crenshaw Park, a beautiful park
that serves as our home cross country
course. It holds a lot of forever moments
for my running teams.
Jennifer: Right outside our school on the
Atlanta BeltLine. It’s covered with local art,
beautiful trees, and a walking path. I take
students there before tests for a morning
brain walk.
WHAT’S YOUR PROUDEST TEACHING ACCOMPLISHMENT? WHY?
Whitney: While studying immigration in the
early 1900s, my students wanted to learn
more about immigration today. Their curiosity led them to interview 16 immigrants in
our community, and the students ultimately
published a book of narratives called Coming to America: Immigration Stories from the
Midtown Community.
Matthew: Watching a student receive a pen
from the mayor of Seattle that he had used to
sign the Seattle Preschool Program onto the
ballot for voter approval. After working so hard
to advocate for the program, she and her family will always have this artifact as a reminder
that her voice matters.
Laureen: Last year, the first sixth graders I
taught graduated and went off to college. I
love when they visit to tell me all about their
“adult” lives.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO YOUR
YOUNGER SELF ON YOUR FIRST DAY IN THE
CLASSROOM?
James K: Give yourself a break. No teacher
has ever known exactly what to do from the
moment he started teaching.
Jason: Take the time to know your students
first. It’s important to understand first, not be
understood.
Whitney: Plan beyond the first day! I remember getting in my car feeling exhausted at
the end of that first day—and realizing I had
nothing planned for the rest of the week. It
still gives me nightmares.
James S.: Learn those kids’ names as fast as
you can, and admit failure, seek out mentors,
and ask for help!
WHAT KEEPS YOU GOING ON YOUR WORST DAYS?
Jonathon: Tomorrow is a new day and a
chance to have a better day. That, and happy
hour with my friends and colleagues.
James S.: Hugs from my son and wife, and
knowing that in teaching—to quote my favorite band, R.E.M.—"every day is yours to win."
Ellen: I have a collection of student letters,
those ones that give you goose bumps when
you read them. Remembering that students
and relationships are the heart of it all is
always enough to get me through.
James K.: Knowing that my worst days pale
in comparison to the worst days of a lot of my
kids, so we need to be strong for each other
and soldier on together.
Consider this your
Oscar acceptance
speech (for teaching):
Who do you thank
first?
God, my family, and
my students.
Corbin Busby—my
fiancé and best friend.
Jason
Matthew
My parents.
My mom and dad.
Ellen
James S.
God, my wife, and
my parents.
The staff and students
of the East Oakland
School of the Arts.
Jennifer
My parents.
James K.
My mom and my first
principal, Dr. G.
Jonathon
BY TIM KENNEDY (DELTA '11)
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
KEN KINZIE AND APRIL RIEHM
2015 Alumni Social
Innovation Award
Michelle Brown
Founder: CommonLit
Claire
In 1973, author Kurt Vonnegut wrote a letter to an Iowa school
board that had banned his novel Slaughterhouse-Five. He
encouraged the board “to expose [its] children to all sorts of
opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped
to make decisions and to survive.” The letter is perfect student
discussion material, but it’s been largely inaccessible to all but the
most search-savvy teachers. Michelle Brown’s CommonLit solves
for that. The website is a robust collection of news articles, short
stories, historical documents, scientific articles, and poems, free
of charge and organized around discussion questions. CommonLit exists thanks to partnerships with organizations like National
Public Radio, Project Gutenberg, and the Veterans History Project.
The goal, says Brown (Mississippi ’09), is to provide teachers with
the quality texts she couldn’t easily access as a corps member,
and to provide students with the reading materials they deserve.
“All students are capable of thinking high-level ideas,” Brown says.
“Our job is to find texts that have these big, important ideas in
them, across all reading levels.”
My husband, Simon.
Whitney
God.
Laureen
The memory of a student, who was just
transitioning from pre-reading to formal
reading, asking me, “Mr. O’Connor, why does
your mug say ‘One Day’?” MATTHEW
Miriam Altman
& Alex Meis
Founders: Kinvolved
Kinvolved began with student absenteeism. As a corps member,
Miriam Altman (N.Y. ’08) saw how detrimental absenteeism was to
student achievement—and how much engaging students’ families
could improve attendance. Later, while getting her master’s in
public administration at New York University, Altman met Alex Meis,
a 2012 Education Pioneers fellow with a background in ed tech.
Together they created Kinvolved, an app that makes it easy for
teachers to track and analyze student attendance. More importantly, Altman says, Kinvolved’s features promote communication
between teachers and parents, fostering collaboration and respect.
“The research we’ve done with parents over the past few years
has shown that by and large the communications they’re receiving
from schools have been negative—‘Your kid didn’t show up.’ ‘Your
kid didn’t turn in homework.’” Altman says. With Kinvolved, teachers can easily send parents a text with a friendlier tone. “A lot of
times just asking where a student has been or if everything is okay
is enough to show empathy and build a positive relationship.”
Jonathan
Johnson
Founder: Rooted School
In 2014, Jonathan Johnson
(G.N.O.–LAD ’10) was a finalist
for the prestigious Fishman
Prize for Superlative Classroom Practice, yet he wasn’t
convinced his teaching was
actually changing students’ life
outcomes. He saw too many
students facing financial pressures that often led them to
crime or violence, and that all
but precluded college. Rooted
School, opening this fall in
New Orleans after a successful
pilot last spring, is Johnson’s
solution: a charter high school
(and eventually a network) that
prepares students before college for high-growth, high-wage
industries like creative digital
media, through project-based
learning co-designed with
industry partners. The idea is not
to undermine the importance of
higher education, Johnson says,
but to put students on the path
to financial stability as soon as
possible. “As opposed to putting
kids $40,000 or $50,000 in debt
for 30 years, we can put them
$40,000 or $50,000 ahead by
the time they’re done with high
school,” Johnson says.
Peter Jennings Award
for Civic Leadership
The Peter Jennings Award is for Civic Leadership, and is
presented annually to an alum or alumni whose work has
led to broad change in the past year. 2015 Winners
Brittany Packnett and DeRay Mckesson share with
finalists Sydney Morris, Evan Stone,
and Jeff Nelson a furious pursuit
of progress and justice.
Brittany Packnett and
DeRay Mckesson
In the last year, the highly publicized police killings
of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and other African
Americans have given rise to a new generation of young activists—
among them Brittany Packnett (D.C. Region ’07) and DeRay Mckesson
(Baltimore ’07)—who are demanding justice, systemic reform, and respect for black lives.
Packnett, a native of St. Louis, lives 15 minutes from Ferguson and grew up acutely aware of racial
injustices in her hometown. After teaching and working as a congressional staffer in Washington, D.C.,
she returned home in 2012 as the executive director of Teach For America St. Louis “to serve kids and
communities that I’ve known my whole life,” she says.
Packnett has become a powerful advocate for racial equity at the state and national levels. In November, she was appointed by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon to the Ferguson Commission and serves as cochair of a working group on community and police relations. She was also named by President Obama
to the Presidential Task Force on 21st Century Policing—the only educator on the 11-member panel.
“The lives of black people, the lives of black children have inherent value,” Packnett says. “And
not only do we expect, but we demand that all of our civic structures uphold that value, respect that
dignity, and don’t negotiate people’s humanity. I don’t think that goal is lofty. It is fundamental to
American citizenry and democracy.”
Where Packnett is influencing policy from within the system, DeRay Mckesson is pioneering a new
brand of grassroots activism fueled by social media. In March, he left his role as senior director of
human capital for Minneapolis Public Schools to become a full-time protestor. Since Brown’s death,
he has amassed more than 180,000* Twitter followers, and his feed has become a living pulse for the
Black Lives Matter movement.
“These protestors, this
community-these are
people who don’t need
an organization to
realize that they have
power.” DERAY MCKESSON
McKesson has rapidly become a go-to source for national
media outlets as a champion of
the integrity and humanity and
untold narrative of protestors
around the country. In May, he
was the subject of a New York
Times Magazine cover story (“Our
Demand is Simple: Stop Killing
Us,” May 2015).
This year Mckesson launched
two websites: MappingPoliceViolence.org, a comprehensive
database of police violence,
including deaths of unarmed
citizens, and wetheprotestors.
org, a website that provides tools
for citizens focused on social
justice issues.
“These protestors, this community—these are people who
don’t need an organization to
realize that they have power,”
Mckesson says. “They can go out
and confront a system and say
you have to stop killing. That is
fundamentally disruptive. People
never thought it would have
lasted this long without a Martin,
without a Malcolm, without the
NAACP—and it has because of
the power of people coming together. If that is not democracy,
then I don’t know what is.”
Sydney Morris and Evan Stone
Morris and Stone (both N.Y. ’07) are the co-founders and co-CEOs of
Educators 4 Excellence (E4E), an organization of nearly 16,000 teacher-members
working to advance student achievement and elevate the teaching profession by ensuring that
teachers influence the policies that affect their careers and classrooms. Stone and Morris were
teaching in the Bronx when they first observed that teachers were consistently left out of decisions
in their schools and districts regarding meaningful professional development and compensation,
student learning standards, and many others. E4E, which they launched in 2010, now organizes and
trains educators to advocate for teacher-led education policies in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago,
Minneapolis, and Connecticut (with additional growth on the horizon).
This year brought major wins for E4E’s teachers, who have published more than 20 policy papers;
been elected to leadership positions in their states and districts on committees, advisory boards, and
in their unions; and influenced policies on teacher evaluation, career opportunities for master teachers, and other critical issues. As an example, E4E teachers played key roles in securing the passage
of recent Minnesota legislation that will improve teacher preparation programs, provide additional
compensation for effective teachers to teach in high-needs schools, and increase pathways to enter
the classroom in order to diversify the workforce.
“We work diligently to create a safe, inviting space where teachers can build real trust and have
deep conversations,” Stone says. “The education conversation can be so polarizing. We find that
E4E members are most excited to be part of a real professional network and a community of likeminded people.”
“Educational change is full of nuance,” Morris says. “It will take time and commitment from many,
but when change to our public school system is teacher-led, it will truly be lasting, sustainable, and
transformative for our students and our profession.”
“We work diligently to create a safe, inviting space
where teachers can build real trust and have
deep conversations.” EVAN STONE
Jeff Nelson
During his first year in the classroom, Jeff Nelson (Chicago ’04) read an
article showing that 8 percent of Chicago’s ninth graders would go on to
complete college degrees. He knew his sixth graders deserved far better outcomes
and could achieve them with the right supports.
In 2007, Nelson became the first chief executive officer of OneGoal, a college persistence program
that targets underperforming high school students and prepares them to succeed in higher education. Students begin as 11th graders and continue with OneGoal through their first year in college,
practicing a curriculum heavy on non-cognitive skills like the ability to adjust course and maintain
optimism in the face of a challenge. The program also identifies and supports top-performing teachers to lead the program
at their schools.
Today, OneGoal’s teacher-led
model serves more than 4,000
students in Chicago, Houston,
and New York City—up from 30
students at the start of Nelson’s
tenure. By 2017, the organization aims to work with 10,000
students in five cities.
Results are astounding.
Nearly 90 percent of 12th graders enroll in two- or four-year
colleges. Eighty-three percent
of alumni are on track to graduate from college or have already
crossed the stage. An evaluation published through the University of Chicago showed that
OneGoal increases college enrollment and persistence rates
by 10 to 20 percentage points—
an unprecedented finding for a
large program. Additionally, it
showed that OneGoal students
improve their GPAs, ACT scores,
and attendance rates while
in high school. The work has
been recognized at the highest
levels: President Obama cited
OneGoal’s achievements at a
White House summit in December 2014.
“Almost all of us who have
been working to improve education in low-income communities have operated for 20-some
years with the idea that if we
reformed pre-K through 12 and
got kids ready for college, we’d
be done,” Nelson says, noting
that college enrollment and
persistence data has discredited that mindset. “I believe that
if we’re ever going to deliver
on the promise of One Day, it’ll
be made or broken by college
completion rates.”
ALUMNI NOTES
Aran Nulty (Milwaukee '09) spent two years bicycling through Latin America, including the salt flats of Bolivia pictured here. She now teaches in Denver.
1990
Mariedel Barroga-Schlegel (N.Y.) I am
working at a public health clinic that
provides care to low-income patients in
East Salinas, CA. I am married and have
three beautiful children, one of whom is
in college.
Law Office in 2006. On the side, I’m in a
bluegrass band, The Moss Piglets, and
volunteer for Cub Scouts.
Brent Lyles (E.N.C.) I lead Austin Youth
River Watch—environmental education and dropout prevention for at-risk
teens.
Jeff Christie (Georgia) I’m helping lead
a makeover of educational opportunities for thousands of county commissioners and county government officials
in Georgia.
Margaret Power (L.A.) I’m enjoying my
service on the Hillsborough City School
Board just south of San Francisco, and
I am also on the San Mateo County
School Boards Association.
Jill Gaulding (N.Y.) My nonprofit, Gender
Justice, is thriving. On the personal side,
my kids are 19 and 17—almost empty nest!
Jan Trasen (L.A.) I’m working as a
public defender for adults and juveniles
in Seattle. I’m also on the Board of Lawyers Helping Hungry Children, a nonprofit that raised more than $20,000 to
fight childhood hunger last year.
John Goolsby (E.N.C.) I am a consumer
rights attorney and I founded Goolsby
1991
Gabriel Brodbar (Houston) I am
expanding the NYU Reynolds Program
in social entrepreneurship to Abu Dhabi
and Shanghai.
Larisa Diephuis (G.N.O.–LAD) I am
working part time at TNTP, and am also
informally helping other “young adults”
like myself who have survived brain
hemorrhage and brain surgery.
C. Allison Jack (L.A.) I am the mother
of four rambunctious and heartbreaking boys.
Mark Levine (N.Y.) I am a New
York City Council member,
representing neighborhoods in
Northern Manhattan.
Laurie Wingate (Bay Area) I am leading
D.C.’s cradle-to-career collective impact
work around education: Raise DC.
1992
Douglas Fireside (G.N.O.–LAD) I am
now an education consultant working
with states and districts to ensure
teacher quality.
Kristen Guzman (L.A.) Survived cancer!
Mitzi Johnson (N.Y.) I graduated with
an M.Div. from Duke Divinity School and
am now serving as pastor of spiritual
formation in Chapel Hill, NC
Patricia Halagao (Bay Area) I was
appointed to a three-year term on the
Hawai'i State Board of Education.
MATCH.CORPS
The “Institute” of Marriage
NOA H DRORI (MASSACHUSETTS ’11) AND SANDRA HINDERLITER (MIA MI–DA DE ’09) met for the first time in 2011 during
Philadelphia Institute. Noah was an incoming corps member just beginning her summer teacher training, and Sandra was a first-year manager of
teacher leadership development (MTLD) on the institute staff.
In the emotionally intense atmosphere and close quarters of institute,
it’s not uncommon for couples to connect. It’s perhaps less common for a
relationship that heats into marriage to start with a cool encounter.
Noah had been in a hard conversation during a training session and
emerged feeling rattled. Noah caught Sandra’s eye, but Noah didn’t feel
like talking.
Then—on the final day of institute, at a party—Noah remembered
their awkward encounter and offered to share a drink with Sandra. As
Noah describes what happened next, “We then sat down at a small table
with about 500 sweaty educators dancing all around us and proceeded to
talk about life, dreams, hopes, and romance.”
Sandra headed back to Miami. Noah had a week before she had to start
teaching in Boston, so she flew south to spend it with Sandra.
They then spent the next two years traveling between Miami and
Boston on visits. Sandra gave Noah teaching tips, while “Noah gave me
the corps member experience” and informed her MTLD work, Sandra
says. They eventually moved to be together in Washington, D.C., where
Noah is now a manager at the Hebrew Charter School Center and
Sandra does anti-poverty work at AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps.
In August they were married, but not before their guests volunteered
for a day at Harriet Tubman Elementary School, where the couple runs a
Saturday reading volunteer program. BY KEESA MCKOY
Susan Katz
(Bay Area ’93),
published her third children’s
book, ABC School’s For Me!
(Scholastic Press). Look for it in
stores and at Scholastic Book
Fairs this fall. Katz is a National Board Certified bilingual
teacher and the founder of
ConnectingAuthors, a national
non-profit that brings authors
into schools as role models of
literacy and the arts.
working to make our business corridor
more vibrant and inviting for residents,
businesses, and the Seton Hall University community.
1994
Jocelyn Dubin (N.Y.) Victor Dubin
and I own and operate NOURISH, Inc.,
in Santa Cruz, CA, and we have one
daughter.
Dennis Guikema (Bay Area) I am a
school leader at Urban Promise Academy, and have joined the board
of Running for a Better Oakland:
www.rbOakland.org.
Melinda Manning (Mississippi) I
recently completed a master's in social
work and appeared in The Hunting
Ground, a documentary about sexual
assault on college campuses.
Elizabeth Svedlund (R.G.V.) I am enjoying being back in a classroom at the
Darien Nature Center, where I work with
young children.
1995
Florence Adu (D.C. Region) I’m adjusting to a bicontinental lifestyle as CEO/
co-founder of LEAP Transmedia in
Ghana. LEAP develops content target-
In January 2015,
Jane Bahk (L.A.
’95) published her first book,
Juna’s Jar (Lee and Low), about
a young girl whose best friend
has moved away. To deal with
the loss, Juna collects whimsical items in an empty kimchi jar
that become part of magical and
adventurous dreams.
ing children and families. Our local
language version of Sesame Street
debuts in 2016.
Johanna Hartwig (N.Y.) I help students
launch careers at one of the country’s
most diverse law schools, University of
San Francisco.
Nicole Schmidt (Mississippi) I am CEO
of The Baby Alex Foundation, which
provides grants for pediatric brain injury
research, and author of The Value Tree
Series, a value-based language arts curriculum: www.currierbooks.com.
Sabrina Wesley-Nero (Bay Area) I am
now assistant professor of education,
inquiry, and justice at Georgetown.
1996
Douglas Anderson (G.N.O.–LAD) I am a
full-time student in the Hazelden Graduate School of Addiction Studies, working
toward an M.A. and counseling licenses.
Sarah Ashton (G.N.O.–LAD) I supervise technology for SFUSD. My current
initiative is an innovative technology
center for students, families, and
educators.
Bruce Chang (Bay Area) I’m currently
prosecuting child abuse cases in Sacramento, CA.
Eleanor Close (E.N.C.) I am faculty in
the physics department at Texas State
University, working to increase the
Join
educators
making a
DIFFERENCE!
Jeff Hilger (L.A.) Running a high school
for inmates in the L.A. County jails.
Angela Munoz (L.A.) I work at
my alma mater, Fresno State, preparing
future teachers for the classroom.
Desiree Pointer Mace (Bay Area) I
received a Fulbright teaching specialist
award to support work with educators
in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
V. Andres Sasson (Houston) I am now
an emergency room doctor, entrepreneur, and father of two.
1993
Rob Reich (Houston
’92), was named
to The Nonprofit Times 2015
Power and Influence Top 50
list. Reich is co-director of the
Stanford University Center on
Philanthropy and Civil Society.
He is also the co-editor of Education, Justice, and Democracy
(The University of Chicago
Press), published in 2013.
Elizabeth Black (G.N.O.–LAD) I live in
Little Rock, AR, and work for the Center
for the Support of Families to improve
outcomes for children and families
involved in child welfare systems.
Bryant Howard (Bay Area) I have
expanded my endurance sports coaching business and launched a training
center in the Portland, OR, area: www.
o2endurance.com.
Cosby Hunt (Georgia) I’m coaching
teachers and teaching an after-school
honors history class for students in
D.C. through my work with Center for
Inspired Teaching.
Diane Robinson (Houston) I took a role
as the founding CEO of Public Square
Partnership in 2014. Public Square
works with education organizations
to increase the number of world-class
schools in low-income communities in
Connecticut.
Douglas Zacker (Houston) I was
named chairman of a town committee
17 years
15,000 students
38 schools across California and
Memphis, TN
100% of seniors accepted to four
year universi es since 2009
How will you catalyze change? www.aspirepublicschools.org/join
number of high-quality K-12 physics/
physical science teachers.
Bryan Herb (Houston) I own an LGBT
luxury vacation company.
Moseka Medlock (Houston) My nonprofit, A Full Cup Inc., helps educators
make tax-deductible donations to meet
the needs of their students with regard
to uniforms, transportation, food, and college scholarships: www.afullcupinc.org.
1997
Michael Beiersdorf (L.A.) I was selected as one of LAUSD’s 2013 Teachers of
the Year and am supporting secondary
science teachers at the district level in
my role as secondary science specialist.
Angela Brown (Houston) I completed
my educational leadership and administration endorsement in 2014 from The
George Washington University.
Brandy Nelson (N.Y.) I am the principal of Rocky River High School in
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. I am
also working on my doctorate in school
leadership and public policy.
Margaret Runyan-Shefa (Mississippi)
I am co-CEO of New Schools for New
Orleans.
LaNiesha Cobb (Metro Atlanta '03) married Brannan Sanders on October 5 in Atlanta. Cobb is a vice president for institutes
at Teach For America. A small army of colleagues and alumni came to celebrate, including: (back row, left to right) Alison
Knowlton (Metro Atlanta '02), Lily Laux (Memphis '06), Anais Shelton (TFA staff), Jeffrey Fingerman (G.N.O.–LAD '03), Danielle
Hammond (former TFA staff), Erin Laidlaw (Chicago '04), Meghan Thompson Gieg (Charlotte '08), Amisha Harding (former
TFA staff), Katie Coburn (D.C. Region '02), Libby Bain (St. Louis '04, seated), Michelle Gieg (S. Louisiana '06), and Marcie
Leemore (former TFA staff, seated).
1998
Thomas Duggar (G.N.O.–LAD) I was
selected to the prestigious Florida
Chapter of the American Academy of
Matrimonial Lawyers.
Kelly Gordon (S. Louisiana) I am the
clinical coordinator of pediatric speech
pathology at Duke University Health
System.
Michael Higgins (Mississippi) I relocated to my hometown of Houston and
have opened an office for Schulman,
Lopez & Hoffer, a law firm representing
schools throughout Texas and Louisiana.
Allison Ohle (N.Y.) I am thrilled to be
the founding executive director for KIPP
San Diego.
Seema Pothini (Houston) I co-authored
a book titled Case Studies for Diversity
and Social Justice, which provides
brief classroom situations pertaining
to inequity and offers expert insight on
addressing the issue.
Ryan Wise (Mississippi ’98) was
appointed director of the Iowa
Department of Education in
June, after serving two years as
the agency’s deputy director.
Wise was the executive director
of Teach For America South
Dakota from 2003-2008, a
managing director at Teach For
All from 2008-2010, and earned
a doctorate of education leadership from Harvard University
in 2013.
husband to a terrible car crash. Ten
years later I am remarried and raising
five children.
1999
Erica Staine Shoulders-Royster
(E.N.C.) In June 2005, I lost my first
Jessica Baldwin (D.C. Region) I am
the executive director of intervention
services for the Cleveland Metropolitan
School District.
and why young children should ask
questions for academic, cognitive, and
motivational benefits.
Sharon Collins (N.Y.) I accepted a
position in the community where I live:
Washington Heights. I am teaching five
different mathematics classes at New
Heights Academy Charter School.
Aubrilyn Reeder (L.A.) I left India
after working for two years for XSEED,
an Indian company that creates
curriculum and training for schools
throughout the country. I am now
working in Dubai.
Gerrie Hall (S. Louisiana) I’ve worked
in the field of museum education for the
past 10 years.
Christine McLeary (D.C. Region) I
am teaching language arts and social
studies in a two-way Spanish immersion
program in Alexandria, VA.
Molly Ness (Bay Area) I am currently
an associate professor of education
at Fordham University. In fall 2015,
my book The Question Is the Answer:
Supporting Student-Generated Queries
in Elementary Classrooms is being
published by Rowman & Littlefield. The
book is unique in its exploration of how
Matthew Schmitt (G.N.O.–LAD)
Working to connect Los Angeles
churches to increasing opportunities for
kids in low-income areas of Hollywood:
www.facebook.com/doorhollywood.
2000
Jacob Burt (E.N.C.) I live and teach in
New Haven, CT.
Amy Cloud (S. Louisiana) I’m now living in Mexico City, working for the U.S.
government and excited to be a board
member at one of the city’s international
schools.
The Brooke Charter Schools Network is founded on one core belief:
In Memoriam
GREAT TEACHING CLOSES THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP
Everything we do
is centered on making
good teachers great.
COURTNEY MCCORD (ALA-
Annie Savarese (Baltimore '04) married Mike DePasquale on October 11, and she brought her Teach For America
crew with her: (left to right) Katharine Bothner, Lauren Bartelme, Michael Mury (all Baltimore '04), the groom and bride,
Melissa Freedman (Baltimore '04), and Brock Riggs (R.G.V. '05).
BAMA '14) passed away unexpectedly
on July 4, 2015. She was a well-loved
math teacher at Bessemer City High
School, outside of Birmingham,
AL, and a valued member of Teach
For America Alabama's 2014 corps.
"When she was in her classroom, you
could tell she was in her element," says
Bryan Billy, her MTLD. "And she never turned down an opportunity to help
someone out." To express condolences,
please visit levettfuneralhome.com/
obituaries/Courtney-Mccord/.
We invest all our resources in
developing great teaching through:
Teacher-designed curriculum
Daily co-planning
Regular interim data meetings
20 administrative observations a year
15 peer observations a year
3 hours every week of targeted professional development
Christopher Donald (S. Louisiana) I am
chaplain at Millsaps College in Jackson,
MS, where I work on student engagement with the adjacent under-resourced
neighborhood to build authentic, mutual
relationships.
Anna Mae Grams-Pullappally (Chicago) I am now the academic support
coordinator at CICS Bucktown.
Sarah Osmundson (Chicago) I finished
my fellowship in maternal-fetal medicine
and started as a clinical assistant professor at Stanford University.
Drew Sprague (S. Louisiana) I have
opened my own law firm in Raleigh, NC:
Sprague Law, PLLC.
Adrienne Favors (Houston) I am a
part-time ELL teacher and part-time
instructional support in math.
Erin Grogan (S. Louisiana) I now volunteer to teach therapeutic horseback
lessons to children with disabilities at
Miracles in Motion in Keene, NH. (www.
mimnh.org). I am also partner, assessment and evaluation, at TNTP.
Marguerite Hogan (Mississippi) I am a
technology lawyer living in San Francisco
with my husband and three children.
Jenny Lau (L.A.) I’m back at my original
placement school, Chester W. Nimitz
Middle School, teaching seventh and
eighth grade academic literacy and
eighth grade English.
2001
Diego Avila (Houston) I am enjoying
life as an immigration attorney and
husband in Michigan.
Elizabeth Brill (Mississippi) I’m working as director of operations for two
faith-based health clinics serving the
uninsured in Durham County, NC.
Kathrin Petzold (Phoenix) I am
currently working as a nurse supervisor with Doctors Without Borders in
South Sudan, in a camp for internally
displaced people.
2002
Heather Abbott (St. Louis) I work as a
mental health counselor at a nonprofit
clinic, where I serve children and families when I am not busy with Miller and
his big brother Benjamin.
Elizabeth Barlow (E.N.C.) I am executive minister of Christian Associates of
Southwest Pennsylvania.
Alison Brown (Metro Atlanta) I am
enjoying teaching at the Kindezi School.
Ajarae Coleman (L.A.) I’m working as
an actress and have made appearances
on several TV shows. My favorite weekly activity is reading in the classroom for
the Screen Actors Guild BookPALS.
Jacqueline Gause (Metro Atlanta) I am
a curriculum and instructional specialist
in the United Arab Emirates.
Caroline Isaacs Latterman (S. Louisiana) I received my Ph.D. in linguistics and am growing my business,
Linguistic Consulting, in New York City
and internationally. I have the happiest
2-year-old, Parker.
We are hiring across the Brooke Network for:
Classroom Teachers
PATRICK WANNINKHOF (N.Y.
died on July 30, 2015, after he
was struck by a vehicle while leading
a Bike & Build cross-country cycling
trip to raise money for affordable
housing. Patrick was a physics teacher
at Fordham High School for the Arts
in the Bronx, his Teach For America
placement school. The Wanninkhof
family is setting up a foundation in
his honor to teach underprivileged
youth and adults how to ride bikes.
Donations can be made at www.
patrickrideson.org.
’12)
To share news of the death of an alum,
please send a note to OneDayLetters@
teachforamerica.org. If you are not a
member of the family, please include
family contact info. You may include
information on memorial gifts.
Lower/Upper Elementary
Middle School
Art, Physical Education, Music, Spanish
ESL & Student Support Coordinators
Associate Teachers
Take the next step in your teaching
career by joining the largest charter
school network in Boston.
Visit our website at ebrooke.org.
Jake Klipsch (Chicago) I completed my
It’s not too late to become a doctor
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Program at Bryn Mawr College
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• Earlyacceptanceprogramsatselectmedical
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• Supportive,individualacademicandpremedical
advising
• Idealsize—smallenoughforpersonalattention,
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BRYN MAWR COLLEGE
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• No
Excuses/TLAC™ environment
• Targeted
professional development
and coaching for all instructors
• Small
class sizes
• Relocation
packages available
for applicants from high
performing, urban schools
Join the EVOlUTION!
Apply Today!
www.galapagoscharter.org
Jed Leaf (S. Louisiana) I’m enjoying
playing with my 2-year-old daughter
when not practicing emergency medicine in Dallas.
2003
Greta Bergquist (Baltimore) I am building democracy at the public library in
Silverdale, WA.
Thomas DeRosa (R.G.V.) I have
launched my own business, Ridge Road
Media LLC, here in the R.G.V., supporting local businesses through social
media marketing and management.
Christa Hasenkopf (Baltimore) I’m
working in the State Department in the
role of chief advisor on air pollution to
the medical director.
Michelle Hodara (New Mexico) I
moved to Portland, OR, where I am a
senior researcher at Education Northwest and lead the Oregon College and
Career Readiness Research Alliance.
You always thought
there was a better
way. Turns out you
were right.
We’re building a classroom
where students get the individual
attention they deserve.
Daniel Prostak (Bay Area) I graduated
from UC Berkeley’s master of landscape
architecture program and am working to
design safe, healthy, and engaging campuses and educational environments.
Mary Satchwell (Greater Philadelphia)
I am a school psychologist for an early
childhood diagnostic assessment team
in Park Ridge, Ill. I am a member of the
governing board for the Illinois School
Psychologists Association and have
been appointed to the Illinois Children’s
Mental Health Partnership.
Sarah Sosbe (N.Y.) I am working as a
talent coach for the NYCDOE Office
of Teacher Effectiveness. In my role, I
coach principals/APs around the new
teacher evaluation process and support
their work developing teachers.
Jessica Sucherman (New Jersey) I am
a supervising attorney for lawyers representing children in abuse and neglect
cases in the GAL project at Children’s
Law Center in D.C.
ChiCago & RoCkfoRd, iL
Osh Ghanimah (N.Y. '06) (center, black hat) brought his 2015 Broadway For All Summer Conservatory students, staff, and
faculty to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch in July. Ghanimah is the founder and CEO of Broadway For All, which trains young
artists from all backgrounds for stage and screen roles, in order to create art that better reflects the diversity of America.
Julio Mendez (N.Y.) I am teaching math
for the School of One program in NYC. I
am also coaching the chess club, teaching science, and serving as the UFT
chapter leader.
His road to college starts with Y O U!
Why work at GalapaGOs?
Ph.D. in educational administration from
the University of Iowa. I’m now the principal of Mid City High School in Iowa.
Learn about Teach to One
at newclassrooms.org
Ben Tierney (Bay Area) I am lucky
to be married to my best friend, Meg
Weber. Together we keep busy with a
curious toddler and one more cherub
born in July. I’m working as a middle
school principal in the Twin Cities, and
completed a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction at the University of Minnesota
a few years ago.
2004
Brett Barley (Bay Area) My wife continues to teach and I’ve been honored
to work in different state capitols across
the country on education legislation.
Christina Chapa (R.G.V.) Our family
relocated to San Antonio to train at the
Leadership Academy for Outcry in the
Barrio, a Christian outreach organization.
Annie DePasquale (Baltimore) I married Mike DePasquale on October 11,
with TFA friends Katharine Bothner,
Lauren Bartelme, Michael Mury, Melissa
Freedman (all Baltimore), and Brock
Riggs (R.G.V.) in attendance.
Rachel Forisha (Houston) I taught in
the UK with Teach First, and I still live
and work in London.
William Jenkins (Metro Atlanta) I work
in the White House on economic development and public-private partnerships
with the business community.
Matthew Lenard (Metro Atlanta) After
completing my strategic data project
fellowship, I was named director of data
strategy and analytics for the Wake
County Public School System.
David B. Owens (L.A.) I’m a civil rights
attorney in Chicago, advocating for
victims of police misconduct and trying
to free the wrongfully convicted.
James Pollock (N.Y.) I am a licensed
clinical psychologist living and working
in Manhattan.
Danielle Roth (N.Y.) I am mom to
Hazel (4) and Xavier (2). I consult with
hospitals nationally in my role at Huron
Healthcare.
Laura Swartz (Mississippi) I am working as an attorney and mediator in
Portland, OR.
Juliana Worrell (New Jersey) I am
leading Uncommon Schools’ first turnaround school in Newark, NJ, my TFA
placement city.
2005
Elizabeth Cole (D.C. Region) I have
been selected to serve on the advisory
board for the NGSS adoption for the
state of Connecticut and am loving my
job as a K-12 STEM curriculum supervisor.
Leniece Flowers (N.Y.) I launched
Compass Talent Group, a human capital
organization dedicated to transforming
the education sector through talent.
Katherine Ha (N.Y.) I started a business
called Tutorial to Table, teaching people
how to make cooking a routine by
creating habits around meal planning,
grocery shopping, and teaching basic
techniques: www.tutorialtotable.com.
Brandon Kimble (Houston) I love my
job as a principal in Chicago. I have
transformed my school from low-performing to high-performing and attained
founder and CEO of Broadway For All,
a New York City nonprofit that seeks to
make the American stage and screen
reflect the America in which we live:
broadwayforall.org.
Erica Harrison (Metro Atlanta) I am
an attorney practicing in Atlanta. Since
law school, I have served as a volunteer
attorney with the Truancy Intervention Project and am now a co-chair of
KIPP Atlanta Collegiate High School’s
Advisory Board.
Ashley Heard (D.C. Region) I am the
director of strategy and innovation
for New Schools for Baton Rouge. We
hosted our second Education Ecosystem Summit, bringing together more
than 150 educators and business and
community leaders to discuss what it
will take to create citywide change in
Baton Rouge.
Dustin Hixenbaugh (R.G.V.) My partner
Sean Malley and I have adopted a son,
Jayden Andrew.
Kristi Jobson (N.Y.) I am clerking for
Judge Norman Stahl on the U.S. Court of
Appeals, First Circuit. My husband and I
live in Cambridge with our son Declan.
Dusty Hixenbaugh (R.G.V. '06) adopted a son, Jayden Andrew, with his partner, Sean Malley (not pictured). Hixenbaugh is a Ph.D. candidate in comparative literature at the University of Texas.
some of the top student-achievement
results in the city.
Susanna Preziosi (N.Y.) I am now a fully
licensed clinical psychologist. I help run
the Mental Health Court in the Bronx
and have a private psychotherapy
practice as well.
Thomas Ryberg (Las Vegas) My wife
Andria Ryberg (Las Vegas) is the
founding director of Garden of Dreams
Community Preschool and Child Care.
It is located within First Congregational
Church of Battle Creek, MI, where I am
a pastor.
Meghan Terwillegar (N.Y.) I am a
part-time Interventionist at GrassLake
Elementary School in Kent, WA. My husband and I are thrilled with the arrival of
our first child.
Tamera Whyte (E.N.C.) I am currently
serving as president of Young Educa-
tion Professionals-DC, a volunteer-run
501(c)(3) with close to 10,000 members
nationwide.
2006
Lisa Bistline (Baltimore) I’m a founding second grade teacher in Mariana
Bracetti Academy Charter School’s new
Elementary Academy.
Taylor Butler (Charlotte) I am happy
to be working as a labor/delivery and
newborn nurse.
Tia Corniel (Phoenix) I accepted my
first school leader position as the principal of Brighter Choice Charter School
for Girls in my hometown of Albany, NY.
Wesley Farrow (L.A.) As executive
director of Coro Southern California, I
love my work.
Ashruf Ghanimah (N.Y.) I am the
Amber Mack (Metro Atlanta) I am
currently teaching kindergarten in
Abu Dhabi.
Melissa Moritz (N.Y.) After leading
Teach For America’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Initiative, I
recently joined the U.S. Department of
Education as the deputy director of the
office of STEM.
Mariah Ray (Chicago) Having a
child inspired me to pursue a passion
project—a vegan skin care line for
babies called Blissby—while keeping
my day job.
Priti Sanghani (N.Y.) I am working at
the S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, recommending investments that will support
better teacher preparation in California.
Raman Shah (Chicago) I finished my
Ph.D. and am now working as a software engineer at Civis Analytics.
Jacqueline Sulton (L.A.) My husband
and I founded AviationEd, Inc., a STEM
program in the D.C. region that uses the
field of aviation to engage and inspire
children.
Suzanne Wasik (N.Y.) I am thrilled
to serve as the founding principal of
Jamaica Children’s School, P.S. 312, in
South Jamaica, Queens.
2007
Celeste Barretto (Houston) I am a
school leader at KIPP Dream Prep, and
have begun running and doing personal
training since graduating from Rice with
my REEP M.B.A. I enjoy time with my
son, Camilo, now a pre-K3 KIPPster.
Dwayne Bensing (Greater Philadelphia) The Department of Justice, Civil
Rights Division, Educational Opportunities Section, hired me as a trial attorney
to work on open desegregation cases.
Christopher and I celebrated our nineyear anniversary by buying a home in
Washington, D.C.
Charles Braman (N.Y.) I am currently
the director of extended learning and
athletics at Rise Academy in Newark, NJ.
Success starts with
formulating the right approach.
Our exceptional teachers are redefining what’s possible in K-12
public education and achieving unsurpassed results. Join our team.
Apply today.
SuccessCareers.org
Kyle Brillante (N.Y.) Anna Waters (N.Y.
'07) and I opened a new district school
in the Bronx called The Highbridge
Green School.
Ben Chida (N.Y.) I graduated from
Harvard Law School, and in between
two judicial clerkships, I’m an adviser
to California Attorney General Kamala
Harris on various issues, including
education.
Shara Conroy (Houston) I’m currently
serving as the dean of instruction at
Spark Academy, a turnaround school in
Lawrence, MA.
Elliot Epstein (N.Y.) I lead recruitment
for Success Academy Charter Schools
in New York, where I work with Cristina
Ciprian-Matthews (Metro Atlanta) and
many other talented corps members
and alumni.
Brolin Evans (Metro Atlanta) My wife
and I have moved from Tennessee to
Pennsylvania as I pursue my dream of
becoming a veterinary oncologist.
Elizabeth Greenman (Hawai‘i) After
six-plus years in my placement classroom, I have happily resettled in Waikiki
where I am working at La Pietra—
Hawai'i School for Girls as a secondary
Spanish teacher.
Emily Huggins (Chicago) I have
opened Uplift’s newest primary campus,
Uplift Grand, serving 180 K-2 scholars in
Grand Prairie, TX.
Exceptional public education.
Sarah Hunko Baker (N.Y.) I am co-
© 2015 Success Academy. EOE.
founder and principal of Foundations
College Prep, a new charter school in
Chicago.
Preschool through 8th Grade | www.dcprep.org
Join us and apply your passion.
Nate Mallove (N.Y. ’11)
2013–Present | 3rd Grade Literacy Teacher,
DC Prep Edgewood Elementary Campus
Alex Kim (New Jersey) I started a new
role as a school counselor at Veritas
Prep Charter School in Springfield, MA.
It is a vibrant school with passionate
staff, hardworking students, and committed families.
Alison Myers (Greater Philadelphia)
We bought a house and now have two
ridiculous rescue dogs.
Andrew Navratil (Miami–Dade) In
July, my wife, Anna (Duchon) Navratil
(Charlotte), and I moved to Atlanta to
start graduate school. She started an
MBA program and I started law school.
After several years in Miami-Dade, and
two years in New Haven, Conn., we
were both excited to move to be near
her family and to start the next phase
of our lives.
Kristin Nordeen (D.C. Region) I am an
English language and culture assistant
working in the rural community of
Huelva, Spain, while I study Spanish.
Desiree Raught (D.C. Region) I was
recently awarded the Next Generation
Leadership Award for my inclusion of
LGBT issues in my classroom while closing the achievement gap.
Tracie Sanlin (L.A.) I accepted a
principalship with Chicago Public
Schools, serving students in the Austin
neighborhood.
Lindsey Sheehan (G.N.O.–LAD) I am
currently living in San Diego and working as a hydrologist to restore coastal
wetlands. I’ve been volunteering with
Teach For America in San Diego and
tutoring in my spare time.
THE BEST TEACHERS
DC Prep is a collaborative, reflective, and supportive
environment where Good Minds and Good Hearts thrive.
THE BEST OUTCOMES
From the earliest grade levels, learning has no limits at
DC Prep — the #1 network of public charter schools in
the nation’s capital for three years running.
THE BEST PLACE TO WORK
DC Prep teachers are inspiring students to reach their
highest potential on a daily basis.
Brian Smith (New Mexico) I am back
in New Mexico, teaching math at Santa
Fe High School. I am also working on a
math choose-your-own-adventure story
to help students practice their algebra
skills: www.zombiemathadventure.com.
Adam Stich (Memphis) I received my
contract to be a principal on the same
day my daughter—Olivia Annemarie
Stich—was born.
2008
Andrew Bernier (Phoenix) I’m the
science and innovation senior field
correspondent for KJZZ, the Phoenix
NPR affiliate.
Carina Box (Phoenix) I am currently
working for Code.org, a nonprofit trying
to bring computer science education to
K-12 schools across the United States.
Alexandra Caldwell (G.N.O.–LAD)
After finishing my M.P.H. at Columbia, I
started work at the Global Fund to Fight
AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, based
in Geneva, Switzerland.
Wendy Chan (N.Y.) I am currently a
Ph.D. student in statistics at Northwestern
University. I also recently got married.
David Coddens (Chicago) I’m still
teaching high school math in Chicago.
Marissa [Cohen] Comart (N.Y.) I graduated law school from NYU in 2013. I
now work as a law clerk to a federal
judge, and stay connected to education issues through involvement with
the NYC Bar Education and the Law
Committee and by volunteering as a
mentor through Tagai Mentor Program
with students at the Bronx International
Community High School. I got married
on May 25, 2015, in Beacon, NY, to Jesse Comart, who serves as a Director of
Learning Leaders, an organization that
trains volunteers in NYC public schools.
Fellow corps members at our wedding
included my new brother-in-law Ari
Comart (D.C. Region), Erica Paley,
Neema Desai, and Molly Greer (N.Y.),
and Lauren Brophy (G.N.O.–LAD).
Jeremy Corbett (L.A.) I bought a house
in Fishtown, PA, and am currently renovating from top to bottom.
Carrie Craven (G.N.O.–LAD) Stefin
Pasternak (G.N.O.–LAD) and I bought
a house in New Orleans (our placement
region), and are grateful to continue to
live in the community.
Kate Esposito (G.N.O.–LAD) Still in the
classroom practicing my comedy skills
on 9th and 10th graders in Chicago.
Sarah Tierney (N.Y.) Rebekah Nelson
(N.Y.) and I ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon in Brooklyn, NY.
Amanda Fegley (Greater Philadelphia)
I recently returned to my undergraduate
institution, Bryn Mawr College, to work
for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship as
a missionary.
Asia Watson (Memphis) I am currently an
assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, NY.
Ben Feinberg (L.A.) My wife, Emily
Feinberg (L.A.), and I both still teach
Apply Now
for Fall 2016
“I’m supporting students
for college success.”
Yaniel Sargeant, MSW ’13
Honors Advisor, American Honors
Individualized Concentration: Youth Empowerment
through College Access, Success and Career Readiness
The Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis
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BROWN UNIVERSITY
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Hands-on field and internship experience
Small, diverse cohort models
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Brown University waives application fees for Teach For America corps members
and alumni, and offers these candidates competitive scholarships.
For more information about the MAT and UEP programs, please contact
[email protected] or [email protected]
in Los Angeles. Emily gave birth to our
daughter, Chloe Nicole Davila Feinberg.
Giving individual
student attention is
easy. Just give me 27
other teachers.
Differentiated education might
be a reality before you know it.
Daniel Foreman (D.C. Region) I am the
instructional technology coordinator for
Alexandria City Public Schools.
Derrick Green (St. Louis) I’m serving
kids from 40-plus zip codes in the Chicago Loop as dean of instruction, and I
couldn’t be more fortunate.
Billy Harrelson (Phoenix) I recently
relocated to the U.S. Consulate General
in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to serve as
vice consul. I previously served as
cultural attaché at the U.S. Embassy in
Kathmandu, Nepal.
Tamara Hiler (L.A.) I work as the visiting policy advisor for education at Third
Way, a center-left think tank in D.C.
Stephen Horvath (E.N.C.) I not only
teach Spanish, I now hold a master’s
degree from the University of Salamanca, Spain!
Learn about Teach to One
at newclassrooms.org
TEACH AT LIGHTHOUSE
* Work in an innovative K-12
learning community
* Change student lives
* Invest in your growth
* Teach where you are valued
From 20th century walls
to 21st century bridges.
From geopolitics to global business.
From security to humanitarian aid.
From investment to sustainable development.
From walled gardens to open source.
The world you inherit will require you to be
agile across borders of many kinds—between
countries, between academic fields, between
knowledge and practice, between top-down
policies and bottom-up ventures.
The Fletcher School’s multidisciplinary approach
to complex problem solving transcends the
classroom and prepares graduates for leadership
positions that span traditional boundaries.
J O I N T HE
LIGHTHOUSE
COMMUNITY
Educators
committed
to equity for all
www.lighthousecharter.org
Katherine Howe (G.N.O.–LAD) As a
New Orleans Albert Schweitzer Fellow,
I directed a nutrition program in local
schools called SMART CAFE, which
aims to reduce risk factors for diabetes
and cardiovascular disease.
Brittany Jackson (Memphis) I have
moved out of the classroom and into
early childhood education as a technical assistance specialist.
Jessica Jolly (Metro Atlanta) I graduated with my M.H.A. and M.P.H. from
The Ohio State University. At Ochsner
Health System in New Orleans I’m working to achieve health equity and access
to care for all.
Kevyn Klein (N.Y.) I am currently the director of customer success at Edmodo:
blog.edmodo.com.
Rachel Kohn (G.N.O.–LAD) After 10
years in New Orleans, I am working back
in K-12 education directly as the associate director of talent and development
with Brooke Charter Schools in Boston.
Alicia Laura (G.N.O.–LAD) I beat Stage
IIIB cervical cancer, and am finally back
to my placement school!
Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) • Master of International Business (MIB)
Global Master of Arts Program (GMAP) • Master of Laws in International Law (LLM)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) • Master of Arts (MA) • Executive Education
In 2014, Eric Messinger (N.Y. '12, right) and his two college friends Brian Doochin and Alex Portera completed the
Mongol Rally, a travel challenge that requires participants to drive from London to Mongolia in a “farcically small
vehicle.” (It’s in the rules.) This picture was taken en route in Tajikistan. The friends raised more than $7,600 for
charity through the trip, and are now at it again: They’re currently driving from New York City to the southern tip of
Argentina. You can follow the trio’s adventures at globalgoulets.com.
Forrest Lindsay-McGinn (Mississippi)
Julia Melle and I have multiplied by 1.5!
Say hello to Nola Margaret McGinn.
Melanie Lister (G.N.O.–LAD) I serve as
a trial attorney for children and families
involved in abuse and neglect proceedings in Boston.
Katie Martens (R.G.V.) I love my job
teaching math to high schoolers in
Columbus, Ind.
Corrine Mitchell (St. Louis) I am the
founding principal of a K-8 school in
Milwaukee that opened in 2012. My husband, Matt, and I got married in 2012.
Elizabeth Oviedo (Phoenix) I am
working on my M.B.A. at the W.P. Carey
School of Business at Arizona State
while working on a software startup.
Shade’ Shakur (E.N.C.) In 2012, I
served in a fellowship, graduated with
my master’s degree in liberal studies,
and delivered my son, Samir. I’ve been
working as a program manager for a
substance abuse prevention nonprofit
in North Carolina.
Preston Spratt (Charlotte) I am a
happy father and serving as an assistant
principal in Denver.
Ryan Tauriainen (Hawai‘i) I was named
the Most Outstanding Principal of 2015
by the D.C. Association of Chartered
Public Schools. For the past three years,
I have been principal for AppleTree
Early Learning Public Charter School.
Megan Thomas (Las Vegas) I recently left the classroom to pursue an
M.P.A./J.D.
Elisabeth Unruh (Memphis) After a
long wait, we are finally parents. We
adopted our little man Harrison after a
very last-minute placement.
Laura Walaszek (Indianapolis) I graduated from The Ohio State University
with my doctorate in human development. I relocated to Nashville, Tenn.,
where I am a research associate in
the Office of the Dean of Students at
Vanderbilt University.
Jacqueline Weckel (Colorado) I’ve
relocated after six years at my placement school in Denver to a low-income
school in Chattanooga, Tenn.
2009
Alexandra Aronson (Kansas City) My
husband, Mark Aronson (Kansas City),
and I had our first child, Dean Markus
Aronson.
Christina Barbara (Mississippi) I
finished my master’s degree in school
counseling and am working as an 11th
grade counselor in a local Michigan
district. My husband and I are enjoying
fixing up our first home.
Georgina Blackett (Bay Area) I am currently living with my family in Manila and
working as a leadership development
officer at Teach for the Philippines.
Ralph Bouquet (Greater Philadelphia)
I’m working in Boston as the outreach
coordinator for NOVA Labs, a digital
learning platform developed at WGBH.
Kendra Butters (Mississippi) I currently
serve as the communications specialist
for the Lynch School of Education at
Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Mass.
Visit fletcher.tufts.edu or email [email protected]
School and am beginning a fellowship
at Public Counsel Law Center in Los
Angeles. I help undocumented youth
in the juvenile justice system apply for
immigration relief.
Aran Nulty (Milwaukee) After traveling
by bicycle through Latin America for
two years, I relocated to Denver and
am teaching fourth grade to a bilingual
population.
Katie O’Shaughnessey (Greater Philadelphia) I teach mathematics at Hopkins School in New Haven, Conn. Mac
began kindergarten this year, Maisy is
turning 4, and Finn is almost 9.
Emily Parsley (Greater Nashville) I just
bought a house and am putting down
some roots in Nashville, Tenn. I am loving teaching departmentalized math to
my first graders.
Brandi Pearman (Chicago) My
husband and I welcomed son David
Pearman in July 2013.
Hazel Vazquez (L.A. '13) married David Magana in Ranchos Palos Verdes, California, on June 15. Their “One Day”
picture of 2013 corps members includes Hazel’s sister, Carla (L.A. '13, next to the bride), who writes that they took the
shot “because we truly believe that one day children everywhere will have equal access to education.”
Montevideo, Uruguay, where I work at
the Uruguayan American School as a
second grade teacher.
Jonathan Ufer (Houston) I live in Houston and work at my placement school,
KIPP Sharpstown College Prep.
Rachel Walker (South Dakota) I
recently got married to a trumpet player
in the U.S. Army band and relocated
to San Antonio, where I am providing
tutoring services to low-income, homeschooled, and military families.
Andrew Westover (Phoenix) I recently
moved to Los Angeles to support teachers and digital projects through the
J. Paul Getty Museum’s education
department. I am also completing an
M.A. in religion at Claremont School of
Theology.
Rashid Williams (Charlotte) I am
currently the dean of students at Valor
Academy of Leadership, a public charter school in Jacksonville, Fla.
2010
Ashley Abrahams (Baltimore) I work
as a new teacher mentor and participate in Growing Great Leaders.
Natasha Alford (D.C. Region) In 2014
I graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and
I’m now a TV news reporter for a local
CBS affiliate in Rochester, N.Y.
Kourtney Bauswell (Milwaukee) I’m
excited to be part of the first Woodrow
Wilson M.B.A. Fellowship in Education Leadership program through the
Milwaukee School of Engineering.
Mairead Beane (Twin Cities) I am
teaching at Minneapolis College Preparatory School with many fellow alumni
and corps members.
Jacqueline Boylhart (Houston) I
started my own clothing and accessories line, Jacquelyn Hope, that sponsors
education for girls around the world.
Mary Catherine Burnette (E.N.C.) I
currently live in Raleigh, N.C., and work
at Charles R. Bugg Creative Arts and
Science Magnet School.
Andres Chong-Qui Torres (Miami–Dade)
I transitioned from the classroom into
public policy, and it is an honor to serve in
President Obama’s administration.
Alanna Dick (Phoenix) I live in Wellington and work for Education New
Zealand, a government agency promoting New Zealand as a study destination
for prospective international students.
John-Michael Early (G.N.O.–LAD) Flow
Tribe released our new EP, Alligator
White, and we continue to travel the
country to promote the record and
spread the funk.
ed UClass, a K-12-specific Dropbox that
delivers intelligent curriculum recommendations and has partnered with
numerous school districts and charter
networks nationally. I live and work in
San Francisco.
Adrian Hernandez (R.G.V.) After earning a master’s degree from Stanford
GSE, I have returned to the R.G.V. as
a manager of alumni affairs for IDEA
Public Schools.
Lindsey Hoeppner-Fitzjarrell (Connecticut) My school, Bronx Lighthouse
College Prep Academy, graduated its
first class of seniors in June 2014, with
98 percent of seniors accepted into a
four-year college or university.
Monique Gill (Houston) I moved to Los
Angeles to pursue a Ph.D. in community
health sciences at UCLA.
Gary James (D.C. Region) I’m involved
with a black activist organization called
the Black Youth Project. We advocate
and organize against the criminalization
of black bodies.
Varun Gulati (G.N.O.–LAD) I co-found-
Benjamin Jewell (Chicago) After
Tom Ponce (New Mexico) Starting a
school in the South Valley of Albuquerque has been an amazing adventure.
Kathleen Quinlen (Mississippi) I’m
the director of programs at the Phillips
County Chamber of Commerce.
Pedro Carreño (N.Y.) I’m continuing to
work in Red Hook, Brooklyn, N.Y., with my
scholars and families as the dean of students at PAVE Academy Charter School.
Joe Cudzilo (Kansas City) I’m now
managing marketing and communications for Genesys Works - Twin Cities,
a nonprofit that provides internship
opportunities and college help to lowincome high school seniors.
Whitney Curtis (Dallas–Fort Worth) I
taught for three years at my placement
school, then moved to Los Angeles
and worked on the development team.
Now I’m back in the classroom and
have completed my administrative
credential.
Sara Delaney (G.N.O.–LAD) I am working as a school psychologist in charter
schools in Lawrence, Mass.
Alex Elias (Bay Area) I am pursuing a
career in surgery.
Margaret Fossum (Phoenix) Another
alum and I officially launched PedagoTree, LLC., which is all about making
the best resources for teachers. We
have several apps on iTunes.
Beth Glazer (Metro Atlanta) In my
position, I help 600 college students
find footing in transferable skills and
future careers.
Zachary Hall (Dallas–Fort Worth) I am
honored to serve 850 students and 100
staff as principal of Stephen C. Foster
Elementary in Dallas ISD.
Jem Heinzel-Nelson (Las Vegas) I am
working on starting up countrywide
early childhood development programs
in Angola and Mozambique.
David Jessup (Miami–Dade) I started
an ed tech nonprofit, Digi-Bridge.
Miriam Keil (Mississippi) I have run my
fastest half marathon and am training for
a full marathon. I also read and select
children’s books as part of First Book’s
efforts to champion diverse books.
Heather Kinkade (Houston) I’m teaching seventh grade math and playing
roller derby just south of Orlando, Fla.
Ema Land (New Jersey) I work for a
start-up in Nairobi called Spire, which
works to address the education-toemployment gap.
Bill Lundin (Twin Cities) After graduating from Boston College Law School,
I now work for an immigration firm in
Kochi, India, that represents foreign nationals in India’s IT sector who will work in
high-tech positions in the United States.
Amytza Maskati (L.A.) Since TFA: high
school Spanish, School Site Council
chairperson, Latin dance/Zumba fitness
workshops, KIPP talent recruitment,
Arabic language study in Oman, and
dance coaching in Spain.
Tianna McCullough (Milwaukee) I am
currently working as a school leader in
a turnaround school.
Eve Meyer (Bay Area) I moved to
Kenya to help run a renewable energy
company bringing solar power to offgrid communities throughout East Africa.
Jesus Mosqueda (L.A.) I recently
graduated from UC Berkeley Law
Liz Riggs (Greater Nashville) I got married to a writer named Tyler Huckabee.
Change lives!
Join Uplift!
Amelia Rivera-Speight (E.N.C.) After
losing my triplets, Addison, Aiden, and
Alijah in August 2014, I am back in the
classroom.
Brittney Rupert (L.A.) After being in
the classroom for five years, I have
transitioned into a role as a science curriculum specialist for Green Dot Public
Schools.
Bradley Smith (Colorado) I currently
serve as the adviser of the Student
Government Association at Auburn University. Additionally, I advise Auburn’s
chapter of Students for Education
Reform while actively recruiting Auburn
students to apply to TFA.
Ami Tain (Mississippi) I am currently
working at Boise State University in
the international learning opportunities
office.
16 campuses, 34 schools, over 12,000 lives changed by our teachers and leaders!
Elizabeth Toussaint (Oklahoma) After
TFA, I took a job with an international
school in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. I
currently live with my new husband in
We are reforming education in order to ensure that all scholars from the
Dallas/Fort Worth region are college-ready, global citizens.
www.uplifteducation.org
Ready to join a movement that works?
Contact Rhonda Nelson at [email protected]
Principal · Assistant Principal · Teacher Leader · Operations Manager
founding principal of Indianapolis Lighthouse Charter School - East.
Christina Perry (Metro Atlanta) I work
for a consulting firm that helps business
and civic leaders plan and implement
community revitalization initiatives. My
boyfriend, Primos Cobb, joined TFA as a
2014 Metro Atlanta corps member.
Gabriel Rholl (Oklahoma) I’m now a
Salesforce.com certified developer and
employed in a new role in D.C. to create
customized cloud database solutions
for nonprofits.
Caroline Schwartz (Houston) I am
currently teaching ninth grade environmental science at Pritzker College Prep
in Chicago, as well as coaching our
football team.
Aaron Sohaski (Baltimore) I have been
elected as chair of the American Bar Association’s Law Student Division.
Joseph Ten Brook (Detroit) After
spending some time in New Orleans, I
stepped into my first leadership role as a
social studies content lead at an up-andcoming charter school in Austin, Texas.
Mary Alexander Street (Mississippi '12) married Peyton Thigpen (Mississippi '13)
on July 11 in Jackson, Mississippi. They taught in neighboring counties as
corps members.
spending a few years conducting
cancer genetics research, I am now
pursuing a law degree at The Ohio
State University.
excited that two ensembles I worked
with performed their original, autobiographical plays with first-year Teach For
America teachers this year.
Allyse Knox (Twin Cities) I moved to
Long Island to begin a Ph.D. in women’s
and gender studies at Stony Brook
University.
Eryn Mounticure (Jacksonville) I was
the Military Spouse of the Year for Fort
Benning!
Carolyn Layfield (Bay Area) I am a
student at Georgetown Law studying
public interest law. I work as a differentiation specialist at the D.C. Street
Law Clinic, which trains law students to
teach practical law to low-income high
school students.
Carl Mahlmann (Mississippi) I am currently teaching high school geometry. I
have also earned my master’s degree
in curriculum and education, with an
emphasis in mathematics.
Fareed Mostoufi (D.C. Region) So
Jamie Neuwirth (Mississippi) I am
working on the Google for Education
team, helping K-12 districts.
Thomas O’Connell (Houston) I am now
the program director for C/I, a nonprofit
that inspires the next generation of tech
leaders from underserved communities
by teaching students professional coding skills: www.weare.ci.
Harsh Patel (Chicago) I started a
school where we teach programming to
adults all day every day — MakerSquare.
Steven Pelych (Indianapolis) I am the
Kathryn Bailey Thomson (Bay Area)
I am currently leading SPARK Schools,
Africa’s first blended learning school
network, in Johannesburg, South Africa,
as director of schools.
Four alumni were
named recipients
of 2015 Echoing Green Fellowships, which provide seedstage funding and support to
emerging leaders for positive
social change.
Jonathan Johnson (G.N.O.LAD ’10) founded Rooted
School, using project-based
learning to improve college
and career readiness in New
Orleans. (Johnson is also a
winner of Teach For America’s
Social Innovation Award. See
page 55.)
Amy Vreeland (G.N.O.-LAD
’10) founded TrueSchool
Studio, a research and design
group partnering with educators to redesign school systems
from the classroom up.
Mario Jovan Shaw and
Jason Terrell (both Charlotte
’12) founded Profound Gentlemen, a program recruiting
and developing black men to
become teachers.
Anne Warshaw (Chicago) I launched
Smarty Pants Yoga with 37 schools in
fall 2014 and was named one of OY!
Chicago’s Jewish 36 under 36.
with graph dysfunction research. I still
stay involved mentoring first-year teachers from my region.
Edwin Wilhelme (Phoenix) I’m helping
to support my wife in her new role as a
teacher in my placement school.
Raafi Bell (New Jersey) I am teaching
seventh grade science at Democracy
Prep Harlem Middle School.
Kristopher Wright (Dallas–Fort Worth)
I am the coordinator and debate coach
at the Law Magnet in Dallas. I also help
run the Texas Debate Collective—a
nonprofit I co-founded in 2009.
Lisle Bull (Houston) I love working as a
program manager with EMERGE.
Jaime Allison Cook (Alabama) I’m
working as a program manager for
City Year.
2011
Ann Achtien (South Carolina) I gave
workshops on classroom management
to over 4,000 teachers across Latin
America based on my experience as a
corps member.
Khaliff Davis (Metro Atlanta) I currently
serve on the board of the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership.
Tasha Askew (Memphis) I am teaching
in the border city of El Paso, Texas.
Jacqueline Draper (Jacksonville) I
am currently the college-prep program
manager for Jacksonville Beaches
Habitat for Humanity and I’m redesigning their K-12 prep program.
Benjamin Beduhn (South Carolina)
I am flying around the east coast with
Penn’s lung transplant team and helping
Ryan Erickson-Kulas (E.N.C.) I am now
program supervisor of the Best Buddies
Jobs Program, helping adults with intel-
lectual and developmental disabilities get
integrated and competitive employment.
Katherine Ficken (Alabama) I am serving as a Fulbright Fellow in the Slovak
Republic, teaching English as a second
language and serving as a cultural
ambassador for the U.S. government to
Eastern Slovakia.
Montine Garcia (South Carolina) I am
working with a private special education
group to provide a classroom on the
Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Associate Managing Director
Uncommon New York City
Sarah Halberstadt (Chicago) I am in
the Urban Education Policy program
at Brown University and working as a
research assistant at The Annenberg
Institute for School Reform, supporting their community organizing and
engagement initiatives.
Nicholas Hall (Miami–Dade) I’m studying inequality/inclusion at Columbia University and London School of Economics
in the hope of convincing policymakers
to implement a Teach For All in Brazil.
Benjamin Harper (Mississippi) I was
commissioned as a Second Lieutenant
in the United States Army in February
2014 and am currently serving as a
platoon leader and XO with HHC, 705th
Military Police Battalion at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Katherine Hoovler (San Antonio) I
moved to Nashville, Tenn., after three
years in San Antonio to help create Safe
Routes to School and focus on healthy
living for students.
Nathan Jones (Las Vegas) I am piloting
a blended-learning program in our school
as one of the leaders of implementation.
James Kim (Rhode Island) I joined
the admissions office at Yale and look
forward to improving outreach among
low-income students and underrepresented minorities.
Perie Koyama (D.C. Region) I am a staff
editor for Georgetown Law’s Poverty
Law & Policy Journal and interning with
the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Monika Bandyopadhyay (Mississippi '06, right) married Logan Kincheloe on June 21, 2014. She is pictured here at the
ceremony with Emily Williams (left) and Kendra Banchy (both Mississippi '06). Monika will return the favor this fall
(with Kendra) as a bridesmaid in Emily’s wedding.
clusion teacher at my placement school,
Cesar Chavez Parkside High School.
job as the community network coordinator with The Dallas Morning News.
thrilled to be teaching on the Rosebud
Reservation in South Dakota.
Christina Marzan (Greater Philadelphia) I am the STEM department head
at my placement school in Camden, N.J.
Janelle Ramsel (Hawai‘i) I mentor 11
amazing scholars through the Posse
Foundation at UW-Madison.
Brooke Weinstein (New Jersey) I am
currently working for a tech startup in
Manhattan.
Alysha Mendez (Hawai‘i) My novel The
Waiting Room was published.
Mary Elizabeth Robbins (Alabama) I
am serving as youth programs director
at Horseshoe Farm in Greensboro, Ala.
Alisa Wolf (Colorado) I am a bilingual
drama teacher at Everett Middle School,
helping students who recently arrived
to San Francisco from Latin America
learn English and build confidence.
Amanda Miller (Mississippi) I am
loving my role as a college adviser at
Mooresville High School through the
Davidson College Advising Corps.
Shirley Murry (Baltimore) I am teaching fifth grade at my placement school,
Furman L. Templeton #125, and training
UTC teachers in my classroom.
Eva Orbuch (Bay Area) I am a Leadership for Educational Equity community
organizing fellow with Innovate Public
Schools, a small nonprofit based in San
Jose, Calif.
Adam Layne (St. Louis) I recently
began a new role with inspireSTL, an
education nonprofit in St. Louis, supporting our academic coaches in their
weekly contact with scholars.
Lee Pedinoff (Greater Nashville) After
a stint at Deloitte Consulting, I joined
the founding team at RePublic Schools,
a CMO based in Nashville.
Kelly Mallahan (D.C. Region) I’m teaching 11th and 12th grade English as an in-
Cynthia Perez (Dallas–Fort Worth)
TFA assisted me with finding the perfect
Rachael Schnurr (Oklahoma) I married
another corps member and moved to
Oklahoma City, where he is in medical
school and I am working at another lowincome school.
Samuel Shapiro (G.N.O.–LAD) I’ve
moved to Seattle and am currently
working as an investment banking
analyst at Cascadia Capital.
Andrew Sidel (Dallas–Fort Worth) I
am a regional manager with Google
for Education, working with education
leadership nationwide to plan and
implement educational technology.
Joseph Suh (Detroit) I serve as the
Global Citizenship Fellow—Education at
the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.
Eric Terrell (Dallas–Fort Worth) I am
2012
Brendan Adams (Mississippi) I participated in a summer baseball coaching
program with the San Francisco Giants
and am currently a labor relations officer with Metro in Los Angeles.
Thomas Arnott (Houston) I created
an after-school program for 40 of my
middle and high school students where
we are learning how to play the ocarina,
a wind instrument.
Lauren Boucher (D.C. Region) I am
currently working as the in-service
coordinator at Population Connection
in Washington, D.C., helping schools
incorporate environmental literacy into
existing curriculum.
Opportunity awaits. Innovate with us.
The annual Symantec Innovation in
Teaching Awards honored
six alumni for their successful
innovations and measurable
classroom results. Winners each
receive a personal award and a
resource grant.
Hilah Barbot (G.N.O.-LAD ’09)
and Adam Kohler (G.N.O.LAD ’08) partner their students
with “writing buddies” at Tulane
University.
Staci Childs (Houston ’13)
started EDGE, an after-school
program focused on social
justice, in response to rising
school suspensions.
Rachel Weislow (Massachusetts ’13) created Storybook
Café to help ESL students
compose their own stories.
PIONEERS IN EDUCATION SINCE 2001
MASTERY CHARTER SCHOOLS
THE NATIONAL TURNAROUND LEADER
“
After Teach For America, I knew I wanted to
continue making a difference in urban education
and work somewhere with leadership opportunities.
If you are committed to public education reform,
then Mastery is the place for you.
”
Matthew Troha, Greater Philadelphia ’03 and current
Mastery Deputy Chief of Schools
• 18 Mastery Campuses Throughout
Philadelphia and Camden
• 125 School Leaders
• Over 50 Teach For America Alums
Serving in School Leadership Roles
• Proudly Serving 10,500 Students
Join us today.
To learn more and apply:
www.masterycharter.org
Bobby Moore (Baltimore ’11)
teaches web-based communication and presentation skills
to his students using his online
platform, Student Opportunities
& Academic Resources.
David Gillis (New Jersey ’13)
uses Google Survey to create
interactive worksheets with
immediate feedback for his
classroom.
Jason Burger (Connecticut) I’m continuing to teach at Achievement First
in Bridgeport, my placement school in
Connecticut.
Natalia Chabebe (N.Y.) I accepted
a job teaching physics at Columbia
Preparatory School.
Deven Comen (D.C. Region) Before
transitioning to federal human capital
consulting at Deloitte, I served as assistant director for Georgetown’s Summer
College Immersion Program for KIPP
and Cristo Rey.
Austin Crowder (Memphis) I am teaching government and economics at The
Soulsville Charter School.
Walker Dunn (Massachusetts) I am
teaching seventh grade math at Spark
Academy in Lawrence, Mass.
Kelly Eischeid (Mississippi) I am a
founding lead kindergarten teacher
in South Carolina’s first public-charter
partnership school.
Holly Forsyth (L.A.) I sponsored my
school’s first graduating class to plan prom,
Grad Nite, a campout, and field trips.
Katie Graul (Baltimore) I have taken on
the role of program coordinator with the
Urban Alliance, providing professional
development and paid internships to
young adults in foster care.
Lloyd Hall (N.Y.) I work at Twitter and
live in San Francisco.
Brittney Holmes (Jacksonville) I
have started a nonprofit organization,
R.A.D.I.A.N.C.E., for girls in the Jacksonville community: www.liveradiance.com.
Rachel Johnson (Oklahoma) I returned
to my home state of Missouri, where I
am currently teaching kindergarten at
Maries County R-1 in Vienna, Mo.
Jason Jones (San Antonio) I currently
serve as a general music teacher and
choir teacher, and am also the director
of the only orchestra in SAISD.
Niel Leonard (Charlotte) I have joined
the team at Invest Collegiate Charter
School in Charlotte.
Caroline Martin (Houston) I moved
to Nashville, Tenn., to be the founding
ninth grade literature teacher at KIPP
Nashville Collegiate High School.
Amanda Miller (Houston) I have relaunched the elementary art program at
my placement school, Bonner Elementary.
Jared Misner (Charlotte) I am a reporting intern at The Chronicle of Higher
Education.
Akhila Narla (New Mexico) I am
enjoying connecting with TFA alumni
and former students who are now at
Stanford, and continuing to work on
advocacy for Native health equity as a
medical student.
Ijeamaka Obasi (Houston) I co-founded a
website, Black Girls Graduate, after recognizing that women of color need to be able
to identify young professional leaders.
Rachael Parker (Southwest Ohio) I am
currently the Academic Director of the
Cincinnati Squash Academy in Overthe-Rhine, Cincinnati.
Rafael Pérez-Segura (Connecticut)
I’m teaching and doing interventions at
THRIVE Academy in KIPP New Jersey.
Jade Rivera (Las Vegas) I’m excited
to join New Mexico’s Public Education
Department as a policy administrator,
overseeing new policy initiatives in my
home state.
Austin Schiff (Mississippi) I am
executive director of Cincinnati Squash
Academy. We recruit fourth and fifth
graders from low-income schools to
learn squash and receive academic
tutoring and enrichment.
Blake Shultice (Milwaukee) I’m teaching fourth grade back in my home state
of Iowa.
Mary Alexander Street (Mississippi) I
married Peyton Thigpen (Mississippi)
in Jackson, Miss.
Elle Stricklen (L.A.) I am teaching high
school Spanish at Damien Memorial School in Honolulu, and provid-
ing professional learning community
workshops for Spanish teachers in the
Hawai‘i corps.
Abby Trimble (L.A.) I continue to teach
seventh and eighth grade RSP at Valor
Academy in the San Fernando Valley.
Robert Yates (D.C. Region) I joined
the central office in DCPS, supporting
curriculum, assessments, and professional development in the literacy and
humanities.
Daniel Zarazua (Las Vegas) I started
my new role as an academic adviser for
the Spanish and Portuguese Department
at the University of Texas at Austin.
GO TO YOUR SOURCE FOR
ALL THINGS ALUMNI
Visit the Alumni home to learn
about:
+ Awards and Fellowships
+ Job Search and Career Support
+ Events
+ How to Continue Your Impact
www.teachforamerica.org/alumni
EXIT TICKET
“My dream is to build houses for people
who don’t have houses.”
YOUR CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE &
GRADUATE SCHOOL EDUCATION
Photograph by Nick Oza
FERNANDO SALINAS
CREATING THE
DYNAMIC LINK
BETWEEN THEORY & PRACTICE
The Teachers College, Columbia
University degree programs will help
you align your passion, skills and
interests in education as a force of
equity - whether you are returning to
the classroom, designing ed-tech
applications, or taking on legislative
issues to advocate for students with
the highest needs.
FERNANDO SALINAS is a ninth grader and aspiring architect at Western School of Science and
Technology in Phoenix. In a required STEM course, he and his classmates designed and built a
project to improve their community. Guided by teachers Allison Paul (Phoenix ’12) and Leah Wilson
(Phoenix ’10), the students created an outdoor space with tire swings and climbing structures where
middle schoolers can play and kick back. Now they’re bringing their skills to community partners
like the nearby Abundant Life Center church, which has new student-designed seating.
Your transition from teacher back to
student will reignite your ambitions
for the future of education.
WWW.TC.COLUMBIA.EDU/ADMISSIONS
Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Permit #153
New Haven, CT
25 Broadway, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10004
Ranked in
Top 10%
of all NYC
Middle Schools
TEACHER SALARY:
$125,000
Join a team of master teachers at
The Equity Project (TEP) Charter School,
a 480-student 5th through 8th grade middle school
in the Washington Heights neighborhood
of New York City.
Open Positions in: Debate, Social Studies,
Physical Education, Special Education,
English, Math, Science and Music.
Apprenticeships also available.
Learn more and apply today at
www.tepcharter.org/apply.php
Teach
for TEP.
We invest in
great teachers.

leaders - Teach for America

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