Teach For America

I thought I start out by letting everyone know about my new job with Teach For America.

Teach for America is a nonprofit organization whose vision is that "one day, all children in our nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education". Its goal is to provide a corps of excellent teachers for inner-city and rural areas where chronic teacher shortages occur, helping to close the achievement gap afflicting low-income and minority students in urban and rural public schools. Teach For America has been around for 15 years and is currently in 22 regions (expanding new sites every year) across the United States. TFA teachers are committed to two years of service to disadvantaged communities. The hope is that these personal experiences will motivate young leaders to either continue in education careers or to become strong advocates for education reform in the business and public sectors. This year a little over 19,000 candidates applied and only 3, 300 were hired.

Making this decision to apply to Teach For America was definitely just the first step! I had to make it through TFA's rigorous application process-which started in August 2005 and continued into late November. Right before Christmas I find out I had been accepted into the Teach For America program and mid Januraray I received my letter of acceptance, and my regional placement, Philadelphia-"The City Of Brotherly LOVE".