Four 2006 Boston University graduates returned to their alma mater last night to discuss the educational inequality they have experienced while teaching at public schools in low-income communities through the Teach For America program.
“I love that people said this is about trying to save America,” Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore said after the event. “I’ve often heard of Teach For America as a movement. We don’t protest anymore, but maybe we teach.”
The open forum, hosted by graduates working for the national corps Teach for America, told approximately 20 audience members about their teaching encounters, relating them to the problems facing the U.S. educational system.
“The biggest barrier was that the kids did not believe in themselves,” said College of Arts and Sciences graduate Maria Zambrano, who now teaches sixth grade social studies and English as a second language classes in Los Angeles. “An 11-year-old who’s lost hope in himself, that’s the greatest challenge.”
During the forum, Elmore and the panel discussed race, economic status, culture, teacher quality and funding, noting that self-esteem was the predominant reason many students fail.
“What [students] needed was someone to tell them they matter,” said College of Communication 2006 graduate Graham Veth, who now teaches sixth grade in Harlem.
The alumni expressed different perceptions about the problems of funding. COM graduate Jessica Haskell, who teaches kindergarten and pre-kindergarten in Washington, D.C., described her first experience in the classroom, seeing “rusted desks, broken computers [and] no books” and said the situation “seemed so innately wrong.”
Teach For America is a national organization seeking to eliminate educational inequality by recruiting recent college graduates to commit two years to teach in the public schools of low-income communities. TFA boasts approximately 4,400 members in 25 different regions today.
TFA recruiter Patrick O’ Donnell, who apologized to BU last semester for posting flyers students said were insensitive to minorities, said he had planned to go to Hollywood after graduation but changed his plans after just two months of teaching in the program.
“It seemed so inherently unfair,” O’Donnell said. “I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
According to O’Donnell, TFA received 120 applications last year from BU students, with only 25 students accepted into the program.
Zambaro said TFA allows her to make a difference in an issue she feels passionately about.
“Throughout college, I was into social justice, but it was all talk, talk, talk,” she said. “But you can’t be an activist if you’re not doing anything.”
Some of the TFA speakers said at a time, they never saw themselves teaching in the program.
“If you told me a year and a half ago that I’d be grading social studies tests, you’d probably get a blank stare,” Veth said.
The alumni and Elmore both said they disagreed with claims that TFA is perpetuating educational inequality by taking college graduates from higher socioeconomic classes and placing them in low-income public schools. Elmore stressed that “somebody better get out there and do something” regardless of economic class.
“I see my kids’ lives on a daily basis,” Haskell said. “My experience is different, but I love them.”
Haskell related one uncomfortable experience while teaching “a room of black students about segregation and MLK day,” when she said she asked herself, “‘How much is really changing?'”
Former TFA Executive Director in the Bay Area Hunter Pierson, a Harvard graduate, also sat on the panel, offering insight into his personal experience and his observations seeing TFA function “at the system-wide level.”
“[What’s] so powerful is that you see one person get stronger through their experience,” he said.