Four Boston University graduates returned to campus last night to share their experiences with Teach for America, a program that placed 23 graduates from the Class of 2005 in low-income schools to teach underprivileged children.
About 35 students attended the four-member Alumni Panel, a question-and-answer presentation in the College of Arts and Sciences.
TFA sends college graduates to low-income classrooms across the country to teach for two years. Last year, 2,900 graduates were placed of 19,000 applicants.
“[Teach for America] is more than a program,” BU campus campaign manager Melissa Martin said. “It is a movement. Since its inception, Teach for America has had over 17,000 corps members and has impacted the lives of over 2.5 million students.”
TFA Recruitment Director Patrick O’Donnell said the program has two steps: Using graduates to close the achievement gap in disadvantaged classrooms and educating graduates entering various professions about problems in public education.
“I wholly believe in what [TFA] stands for,” panelist and 2005 CAS graduate Jennifer Sullivan. “You’ve got to teach people about the reality of the problem.”
Sullivan plans on starting a career in government after she is done with her service and said she will take what she has learned and apply it to her job in New Brunswick, N.J. She praised the program for teaching students who “are going to be the future.”
“[The gap] needs to be fixed, and it is everybody’s responsibility,” panelist and 2005 School of Management graduate Sean Freund, who is teaching in New Orleans, said during the discussion. “To me, the achievement gap is very real, and it sits in my class everyday.”
After giving a brief background about the organization, O’Donnell introduced the four panelists. The teachers had their own stories with different challenges they had to face and different rewards they enjoyed.
“There was a student who at the beginning of second grade knew only six of the 500 words that a second grader should know,” she said. “So I made it my goal to get him up to a second-grade level by the end of the year. I worked with him one-on-one, and by the end, we achieved our goal, and this was an amazing success for my first year.”
None of the panelists had planned to teach while at BU, but they said the idea that they could do something tangible to help the community attracted them. Panelist Aaronthomas Green, a 2005 College of Communication graduate who teaches in Los Angeles, planned to become a doctor but graduated with a journalism degree. Now he is staying more than the two years required for the TFA program and might start up his own Knowledge is Power Program Academy of Opportunity.
When Freund graduated, he had two other jobs lined up, with General Electric and Hewlett Packet, in case he did not get accepted to TFA. He said he was teaching in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana.
“[After the hurricane], kids came to school not knowing where their parents were,” he said. “It was mind boggling to me. To see kids deal with this is a triumph in itself.”
The questions asked by the students ranged from technicalities about the procedure of choosing a location and grade to panelists’ plans after their service is complete.
Green became the campaign manager for Teach for America his senior year, recruiting candidates for the program.
“I brainwashed myself, but in a positive way,” he said.
But what Green said really got him to look seriously at the program were the statistics, particularly one statistic TFA uses more than others. O’Donnell announced to the audience what is printed on TFA flyers: “nine-year-olds growing up in low-income communities are on average already three grade levels behind their peers in high-income communities.”
“That means that some kids are on target, which is great, but others are even more than three grades behind their peers,” Green said.
O’Donnell and audience members said the panelists communicated well about the program. The panel event was effective because “the panelists have first-hand experience, and they are all teaching right now, so they know the current challenges,” he said.
CAS senior Lindsay Miller has already applied for the teaching program.
“I came because I wanted to talk to them about what it was really like, rather than just reading about it,” she said. “They don’t make it sound easy, which is good.”
Other students left the panel with questions answered, including CAS junior Alexandra Smith, who said she is “very interested in this program.”
“It is between this and the Peace Corps,” she said. “Overall, it was a very positive presentation. I had questioned whether it might be right for me, but it is good to know that they prepare you during the summer workshop for many different situations. This program seems like a great stepping stone. It could be my way of giving back.”