Guest MINDSETTER™: Teach For America Helps Low Income Children
Monday, September 26, 2011
I was disappointed to read Aaron Regunberg’s recent column on the impact of Teach For America. As a Rhode Island teacher and Teach For America alumna, I know firsthand the impact a teacher can have in their first and second year of teaching and the importance of increasing the number of leaders committed to the movement to provide every student – regardless of their zip code or family income – with the excellent education they deserve.
As a Rhode Islander who attended Providence public schools as a low income, English Language Learner, I understood the challenges many students need to overcome in order to reach high levels of academic success. I owe much of my success to the teachers I had growing up who pushed me beyond what was merely expected, and challenged me to chase after levels of education no one in my family had ever attained.
Although my heart was set on teaching in Rhode Island, I started teaching in Dallas in 2009 because Teach For America had not yet joined the education community in the Ocean State. Although thousands of miles away, Teach For America gave me the opportunity to teach children faced with similar struggles I faced while growing up. As a bilingual Kindergarten teacher at Herbert Marcus Elementary School, I helped all my students make incredible academic progress despite the challenges they faced growing up in a low-income community.
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One of my students in particular, Edwin, stands out in my mind because of the tremendous growth he made in Reading. He came into my classroom just 6 weeks before the school year was over after suffering a terrifying life trauma that separated him from his mother for most of the academic year. He arrived with many emotional issues, and without any English skills, or previous schooling. He arrived just two weeks before the state exams would be administered and he didn’t know how to write his name, or even identify the letter A.
I knew I only had 6 weeks in the classroom with him in order to help him get back on track and get him ready for first grade, and although it seemed like an impossible task, I was up for the challenge. I got a group of teachers and even my husband to help give him individual instruction around the clock during the school day. My commute was bumped up an hour early to give him morning tutoring and an hour later for afterschool instruction. I am so proud to say that he graduated Kindergarten knowing the entire alphabet, and beginning to read! Although I had less than one year of teaching experience under my belt at the point he came into my class, Teach For America’s mission to reach every single student was ingrained in my mind. When many told me to forget about him, and to just let him repeat the grade he had missed, I couldn’t feel satisfied not giving him the education he rightfully deserved.
TFA Helps Close Achievement Gap
I’m now back in my home state, teaching Kindergarten at Blackstone Valley Prep, A Mayoral Academy. Like two-thirds of the nearly 24,000 Teach For America alumni, I’ve chosen to work full-time in education. Through my two years as a Teach For America corps member I was able to not only witness the incredible discrepancies in achievement between high and low economic students, but I was also able to help 46 students rise to the academic level of their more affluent peers. My experience as a teacher helped me realize how critical and attainable solving the problem of the achievement gap is in this nation. Although I originally planned to go to medical school after my two years with Teach For America were completed, with this acquired mindset, I couldn’t have chosen any other path.
This year, more than 9,000 Teach For America teachers, including 55 here in Rhode Island, are positively impacting the lives of some of our country’s highest-need students. A growing body of rigorous research bears out their effectiveness in the classroom. Recent studies from Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee found that corps members have a positive impact on student achievement. The Tennessee study identified Teach For America as the most effective of the state’s 42 teacher-preparation programs, with corps members demonstrating a greater impact on student achievement than the average new teacher in every evaluated subject area. Earlier peer-reviewed research conducted by the Urban Institute and Mathematics Policy Research reached similar conclusions.
Rather than look at this large body of rigorous research to inform his opinion, Mr. Regunberg relied on just one report. That report, funded by Teach For America’s critics, is a compilation of previous research and contains a number of inaccuracies. I hope Mr. Regunberg will take another look at Teach For America and the important role the organization plays in the effort to eliminate the disparities in educational opportunity available to our students growing up in poverty and their wealthier peers. I’ve seen students like Edwin overcome enormous hurdles to achieve academically with hard work and support from caring adults. Every kid deserves a great education and the opportunity to reach for their dreams. We need leaders at every level to commit to making that vision a reality.
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