{corporate to classroom} why teach for america??

I've had a lot of people ask me why I've chosen to part ways with General Mills to become a teacher. Fair. It's a good question. General Mills has been great to me, and I've loved my time both here and in Minneapolis. So why the big switch? I figured I'd help answer that question with an excerpt from the essay I wrote and submitted with my TFA application. I've included that below. But the reader's digest version of why I want to be a teacher is that I think it is a huge tragedy that children in this nation are served the great injustice of being denied a good education. Whether the future finds me teaching math, serving as a principal to an underserved school, or working with a non-profit to end educational inequity, I feel so strongly about the broken education system in America that I couldn't not join the fight to fix it.

The Longer Version:

  In September 2011, I walked through the front doors of a Minneapolis elementary school to meet Jennifer, the girl with whom I would be reading for an hour each month during my lunch break. Sixty minutes later, as I drove back to work for a one o’clock meeting, my mind reeled with questions and frustrations about the experience I’d just had. Despite being in third grade, Jennifer spent most of our time together struggling to sound out the words to a book meant for a child just learning to read. Thinking back to the Boxcar Children books I devoured when I was as young as seven years old, I couldn’t make sense of this spunky eight-year-old, with her gapped front teeth and Hello Kitty tee shirt, reading at barely a first grade level. It wasn’t right.

     I chose to join Teach for America because I want to be a part of the movement to close the achievement gap currently preventing children like Jennifer from reaching their potential and realizing their dreams.

     I spent the past year and a half working in a cubicle on the second floor of General Mills headquarters, far removed from the battle taking place in North Minneapolis schools to provide well-deserving yet underserved children with an education that will get them to and through college and give them a chance to succeed in the 21st century. It’s happening, though. I see these kids riding bikes down the streets as I staple shingles on the roof of a Habitat home, and I help fill their bellies on weeknights at a church after-school program. Every time, I think, “These kids deserve so much more than this.”

     But wishful thinking will not help Jennifer fulfill her dreams of becoming a nurse. Good teachers will. Teachers that are invested in the lives and futures of their students, that don’t see a child’s skin color or socioeconomic background as justification for illiteracy, and that truly believe educational inequities can be overcome – those are the teachers that can change the "forevers" of kids like Jennifer. I want to be one of those teachers.

     I’m not looking to put TFA on my resume; I’m looking to put kids in college. That is my ultimate goal in becoming a teacher – that every child who enters my classroom leaves with the knowledge, tools, and confidence to successfully pursue a higher education and a better life. My success would not be measured merely by test scores, though those are undoubtedly integral in helping my students progress. Test scores mean nothing, however, if I haven’t transformed each child’s attitude from one of resigned acceptance of the status quo to one where they all believe that they not only deserve to succeed but can and will.

     The education system in America is broken, and I am passionate about the work being done by TFA teachers to piece it back together, one child at a time. I can't wait to join them.