The Scarsdale Inquirer – Hometown newspaper of Scarsdale, New York 10583

May 27, 2011

Scarsdale alums are teaching America

By CARRIE GILPIN

Teacher Emily Lampert with her REACH advisory group, which meets once a week to promote character building. REACH stands for Respect, Enthusiasm, Achievement, Citizenship and Hard Work.

Take the idealism, devotion, enthusiasm, energy and compassion of current and past Peace Corps volunteers and combine it with a savvy entrepreneurial business sense, and you have the culture of today’s Teach for America corps members. As the largest employer of graduates at more than 40 top colleges and universities today, including the Ivy League, the 20-year-old organization continues to attract the best and brightest to teach in urban and rural public schools in low-income communities. TFA recruits at 350 colleges and universities nationwide.

Currently, five Scarsdale High School graduates are TFA corps members: Lauren Friedman, Lisa Kourakos, Samantha Lalli, Emily Lampert and Zeynep Memecan.

Recently some of those teachers met at the home of Elizabeth and Steve Edersheim, of Bretton Road, to spread the word about TFA and to fundraise. Liz Edersheim, who is on the communications team at TFA,

Teach For America: a primer

By CARRIE GILPIN

Teach For America calls itself a “movement,” with a mission to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting the nation’s most promising future leaders in its effort. In the 2010-11 school year, more than 8,200 first- and second-year Teach For America corps members taught in 39 regions across the United States. More than 3 million students have been taught since 21-year-old Princeton University student Wendy Kopp started the organization in 1990. Sixty percent of TFA’s 20,000 alumni have stayed in education in some capacity, be it business, legislation or government.

Twenty years ago, Kopp was convinced that many in her generation were searching for a way to assume a significant responsibility that would make a real difference in the world, and that top college students would choose teaching over more lucrative opportunities if a prominent teaching corps existed. Teach For America was her senior thesis proposal at Princeton. With help from a $500,000 matching grant challenge from Ross Perot, Kopp raised $2.5 million of start-up funding, hired a skeleton staff and launched a grassroots campaign that placed 500 men and women in six low-income communities across the country.

A PBS documentary “Who Will Teach For America?,” aired in 1991 and increased TFA’s profile. Teacher training institutes in Philadelphia, Houston and Los Angeles train corps members, and Mathematica Policy Inc. has conducted assessment research. Although TFA has received negative press for the high number of teachers who don’t stay in the classroom after their two-year commitment, research shows that when its teachers are in the classroom they make a difference, and that many of them stay in education in some capacity.

Since its inception, TFA has become one of the nation’s largest providers of teachers for low-income communities, and has been recognized for building a pipeline of leaders committed to educational equity and excellence.

The United States has more than 3 million public school teachers, with TFA training more teachers annually than any other single institution. At its current pace, the organization will have 100,000 teachers and alumni by the time it celebrates its 30th anniversary. TFA’s data also show that its teachers’ effectiveness has increased as the corps has expanded.

Teachers are assessed two ways: by TFA, and again by the district they work in, with the same reviews as regular teachers. TFA teachers receive salary and benefits matching their district’s range, anywhere from $30,000-$50,000 per year depending on rural or city setting. TFA also has a full medical and dental plan, scholarships, and loan deferment plans for its teachers.

The selection process is highly competitive, with an online application, a phone interview, presentation of a lesson plan, a personal interview, a written test, and a monitored group discussion with other applicants. In 2009, more than 46,000 applicants applied for 4,500 TFA positions. More information can be found at www.teachforamerica.org.

has been a supporter since 2000, when a friend on the board invited her to hear Wendy Kopp speak about the organization. Edersheim was hooked.

“Both my parents were college professors,” she said. “I have always believed teachers are America’s most important asset. I have not donated to any cause in the last 20 years except TFA. It is an amazing organization.”

Edersheim was one of 11,000 people who attended the 20th anniversary reunion of TFA in Washington. “Most organizations have some quotient of meanness to them,” she said. “There is not an ounce of that with TFA. It is all about helping each other and others. I would argue that the leaders of this country in the next generation will come from Teach For America. They are entrepreneurs and business leaders and have a consciousness that changes the way we lead and the way communities respond to them. TFA has engaged the greatest talent this country has in education, from the Ivy League and other excellent schools,” she said.

Edersheim said the founders of Kipp Academy and North Star Academy schools are TFA alumni, as are at least a dozen superintendents in major cities, and 100 principals. To demonstrate leadership in government, Edersheim points to people like Bill Ferguson, a 27-year-old Maryland state senator (46th District), who beat 20-year veteran George Della in September 2010. Ferguson, a TFA alumnus, ran on one issue: education, and is the youngest state senator to be elected in Maryland.

Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the Washington, D.C., schools, and Michael Johnston, a Colorado state senator, are also TFA alumni.

With a $185 million operating budget, TFA is well funded, with two-thirds of its donations from private sources and the rest from governmental sources. Top funders in New York include the Carroll & Milton Petrie Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation, GE Foundation and the Leona and Harry Helmsley Charitable Trust, among others.

That budget helps pay for recruiters at 350 college campuses nationwide, and funds $12,000 worth of training and mentoring for corps members during their two-year stint. Each TFA teacher is taught to set high expectations for their students, and teaching guidelines and a culture of commitment is part of the training. During training, new teachers work hard, with long hours, living in dormitories with other recruits and teaching summer school students who failed classes during the academic year.

And the work stays long and hard when a teacher gets his or her own classroom. “The single most difficult aspect of my experience with TFA has been the exhaustion factor!” said Lampert, a 2010 Columbia College graduate who teaches reading to fifth- and sixth-graders at Elm City College Prep Middle School in New Haven, Conn. “I am at school around 5:45 a.m. every morning and continue working (even if at home) until around 9 p.m., when I pack my lunch, go to sleep and do it all again. I live, however, with three other TFA roommates who share similar schedules and work with an incredible, dedicated, team-oriented staff, which makes my schedule doable. Whenever I come to school to do some extra work on the weekends, I see at least three other fellow teachers smiling and sharing snacks as we lesson plan in the staff workroom.”

Creating a classroom where each child feels cared about and respected is an important goal for each of the TFA teachers the Inquirer interviewed. All of them also mentioned the joy they feel when a child masters a concept or reaches a milestone. One challenge is teaching to a wide range of abilities in each classroom.

Memecan, a Barnard College graduate, teaches a self-contained special education class of first- through third-graders at P.S. 28 Wright Brothers on West 155th Street in New York City. “I have a student who barely knows the letters of the alphabet and another who is capable of writing a two-page essay. I have third-graders reading at kindergarten levels and first-graders solving third-grade math problems. It has been really challenging to plan lessons that target all my kids. My program director at TFA has helped me immensely with this. She’s worked with me throughout the year to help me differentiate my instruction so that it pushes each of my kids to his or her own potential.”

Memecan said one reason she became a TFA teacher was the organization’s reputation and that she knew she would have the support she needed as a first-year teacher.

Friedman works at Children’s Village in Dobbs Ferry, teaching third-graders this year, and first-graders last year. “There is a special type of moment that has become the most memorable for me over the course of my two years. This moment occurs when I see my students using the tools and strategies that I have taught them in their own independent practice. For example, when Crystal solved her first single-digit multiplication problem by drawing the cookies, when Carmen was able to subtract single-digit numbers by counting up, when Krystan articulated and identified the difference between fact and opinion and when Angel found and underlined evidence in his text to support his answers. These are the moments that have a permanent place in both my memory and my heart. It is the moments when I see each of them shine that motivate me to continue to participate in the movement to close the achievement gap that exists today.”

The difficulty of day-to-day teaching has become apparent to all of the TFA teachers. “I underestimated how much skill and knowledge it takes to be a truly great teacher,” said Lalli, a Northwestern University graduate teaching math to eighth-graders at Geraldine Johnson School in Bridgeport, Conn. Lalli, who went through Scarsdale schools from first grade through graduation, said her parents “constantly tried to impress upon me that many of the things and experiences I had were privileges that so many other children around the world did not have. In high school, I began volunteering as an after-school tutor at an elementary school in Mount Vernon. It was only 15 minutes down the road from my house, but it was a completely different world. The young boys I worked with told me that they were scared to be on the honor roll because the older kids would beat up honor roll students on their way home from school. I knew that if I ever was to become a teacher, it would be in a neighborhood like Mount Vernon where I was needed most.”

Kourakos echos Lalli’s sentiment. Kourakos, a University of Southern California graduate, teaches fourth-graders in a special education inclusion classroom at the Kelly School in Chelsea, Mass.

When asked how going through Scarsdale schools influenced her teaching, Kourakos said, “I had some incredible teachers who really inspired me. In addition to the teachers, SHS made me completely prepared for college. SHS taught me how to work hard. I knew what I had to do to get into schools. I knew whom I could talk to if I needed guidance or resources, and I knew that I was academically prepared. There are so many students in this country who don’t have those opportunities, and that is completely unjust.”

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