Newswise — Hoping to share the benefits of their own superb educations with opportunity-deprived middle and high school students around the country, five members of McIntire’s Class of 2011 have opted to join the highly respected national teaching initiative Teach For America.
Founded in 1990 with the aim of eliminating educational inequity, Teach For America recruits outstanding recent college graduates and professionals from all backgrounds to teach for two years in low-income communities.
“Teach For America is a superb organization with highly laudable social and educational goals,” says McIntire Professor Brad Brown, whose work focuses on social and environmental sustainability around the world. “It’s a tribute to the quality of the organization that five such outstanding students have chosen to join it, and it’s a testament to the character of the students themselves that they’ve opted to do so.”
Making a Difference As a group, the five future teachers—Siggi Hindrichs, Robin Kendall, Tahlor Levine, Jason Shapiro, and Anne Wulf—all express a deeply felt desire to help provide equal educational opportunity to students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. “I had a really great public school education, which in turn allowed me to come to UVA,” says Kendall, who will be teaching middle school math in Hawaii. “I think it’s important for all students to have a chance to get a degree from great schools like UVA.”
Hindrichs, who will be teaching in the Boston area, says her own story is a testament to the power of educational opportunity. “Having started my schooling in inner-city Philadelphia, I experienced firsthand the challenges public schools face in managing limited financial and teaching resources,” she explains. “Later, I moved into the city’s magnet school. Looking now at the differences in the opportunities available to my friends from kindergarten and my friends from high school, the disparity is really shocking.”
Students Levine, Shapiro, and Wulf say their desire to give back began to take shape as a result of their Semester at Sea experience. (The three, who are good friends, all participated in the 2010 Semester at Sea.) “We were exposed to poverty—in places like India, Ghana, and South Africa—in a way that we never had been before,” says Wulf. “We started to understand how lucky we’d all been, and we wanted to give back.” With this goal in mind, Teach For America began to seem like an appealing option. “We wanted to do something that would really have a significant and immediate impact,” she says. “We realized that we could do that—that there was so much need, right here in America.” Levine will teach in St. Louis; Shapiro and Wulf have been assigned to Charlotte, N.C.
Prior Proper PreparationAlthough a Comm School education may not seem like the most obvious means of preparation for teaching in low-income communities, the students say McIntire has provided them with superb preparation for what lies ahead. “I really think McIntire has equipped us with the necessary capabilities to excel in Teach For America,” says Wulf. “The organizational, managerial, and leadership capabilities we’ve developed here will translate really well into the classroom setting.”
Levine points out that McIntire’s emphasis on communication and presentation skills will likely prove particularly useful. “I’ve had so much practice with public speaking and presenting that now I really enjoy standing up in front of a roomful of people,” he says. “Even though I’m going into a whole new place and a whole new situation, I think I’m really going to enjoy leading a classroom of kids.”
High HopesIndeed, the five teachers-to-be say that—although they’re not likely to pursue teaching as a long-term career—they’re looking forward to the challenge that lies ahead of them. “Probably one of the most exciting things is seeing what you’ll be able to do for the kids,” says Wulf. “You’ll see where they start out, and how, through mentoring and teaching, you can help them to achieve so much more. It’s a little scary, but it’s exciting.”
Hindrichs, who says she would ultimately like to work as a public education policymaker, echoes Wulf’s sentiments—but with a twist. “If you think about first-graders or third-graders, they can’t be more than a few years behind,” she says. “But when you start getting into eighth grade, they could be nine years behind. So the further we get from kindergarten, the bigger the gains you can help students make.” Still, Hindrichs remains realistic about the task she’s set for herself: “I have no doubt it will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “And I’m looking forward to that.”
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