This fall, nine graduates from the Class of '09 will join Teach For America, making Haverford one of the largest contributors to the program among schools its size

Teach For America (TFA) is a national corps of outstanding recent college graduates who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools. In the upcoming academic year, over 7,300 first- and second-year teaching corps members will teach in 35 regions across the United States.

Founded in 1990, TFA has developed an extensive and increasingly selective application process to identify individuals who will be successful teaching in low-income communities. This year a record 35,000 candidates applied to join the corps.

“At more than 130 colleges and universities, more than 5 percent of the senior class applied, including 14 percent of Haverford seniors and 11 percent of all seniors at Ivy League universities,” reports Lorraine Anderson, managing director of regional communications for TFA.“Due to the enormous number of diverse and highly qualified candidates, we were able to increase both the size and strength of the incoming corps,” she says.

This year's 4100 member corps, the largest in the organization's history, earned an average GPA of 3.6 and a combined SAT score of 1333, and 89 percent held leadership positions as undergraduates.

Stephanie Pickering '09, who will be teaching high school math in Charlotte, NC, says she feels extremely privileged to have been selected for TFA.“It is an incredible organization involved in an even more incredible movement--closing the achievement gap in the United States,” she says.

Pickering describes educational inequality as the civil rights movement of our time.“The fact that where you are born, how much money your family makes, and the color of your skin determines the caliber of your education and thus your future is absolutely absurd,” she says.“I went to public school in suburban Boston and received an excellent education. I joined Teach for American because all children deserve that same excellent education.”

Pickering, who graduated pre-med with a B.A. in Religion, recently returned from a five-week summer training institute, which is required of all TFA members before they begin teaching. “So far, I have learned that teaching is so much harder than anything I have ever done,” she says.“Being a good teacher is not easy; being a great teacher takes everything out of you.”

“You do everything you possibly can for your students,” says Pickering,“whether that means re-drafting a lesson plan that you know isn't going to work, or calling parents to tell them how well their child did that day, even if it means going to bed an hour later that night.”

Pickering hopes she can close the achievement gap for her students.“In my opinion, educating the youth of America is the most important job out there,” she says.“For me, these two years in the classroom is only the beginning of a lifetime of service toward ending education inequality.”

-Heather Harden ‘11