These Teach for America Graduates Left the Classroom. But They Didn’t Forget About the Kids

Every year since 1990, in what is practically a fall tradition, idealistic college grads arrive in public school classrooms in New York City, Los Angeles and all of Teach for America’s 52 regions in between. Straight from seven to 10 weeks of summer training, these TFA corps members commit to work for two years in unfamiliar schools that desperately need strong educators. After that, they’re free to leave the classroom. While the majority of TFA’s 42,000 alumni do continue teaching, the program’s turnover rate has led some to question its success.
“My argument was: let’s take the resources you’re investing in a corps member — tens of thousands of dollars per year — and put that into professional development for training current staff on campuses,” says Robert Schwartz, a TFA alumnus and advisor at the nonprofit New Teacher Center. “You’ll see teachers that are going to stick around longer and are really invested in the community.” Schwartz’s alternative plan is voiced commonly in education circles, and it’s mild in comparison to some pointed criticism of TFA. Sarah Matsui, author of a book that gives TFA a negative assessment, argues to Jacobin that the program is mere resume fodder for Ivy League students on the way to jobs at well-heeled consulting firms like Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group. In response, TFA’s spokesperson Takirra Winfield points out to NationSwell that 84 percent of alumni continue to work in fields related to education or serving low-income communities.
But perhaps the debate over retention rates misses the point entirely. TFA’s mission statement, after all, doesn’t reference teaching at all. Instead, the organization aims to enlist, develop and mobilize “our nation’s most promising future leaders” in pursuit of a larger movement for educational equity. NationSwell explored how five TFA alums are accomplishing that outside the classroom.

In April, Sekou Biddle welcomes guests to the UNCF Education Summit, held in Atlanta.

Sekou Biddle, United Negro College Fund

A member of the United Negro College Fund’s leadership team, Biddle has always prized service, but as an aspiring management consultant at Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, he figured giving back was something he’d do as a brief detour on the road to business school. Thinking that TFA sounded like an impactful way to give younger students the same educational opportunities he’d been afforded, Biddle joined the corps in 1993 and stayed in the classroom for a decade.
After, Biddle “wanted to share the things [he] had learned” and transitioned to policymaking as a school board representative and city council appointee in his hometown, Washington, D.C. He says his TFA experience informed his votes and taught him empathy for teachers, who throw themselves into a “180-day marathon grind,” and parents, whom schools too often failed. He keeps in mind one phone call on which a dad told him, “This is the first time someone has ever called to say something good about my child,” Biddle recalls. “I was struck by the power of a relatively simple thing. Just a call certainly had an impact on this parent’s perception on what the relationship with a school and teacher could be.”
In his current role as UNCF’s vice president of advocacy, Biddle engages local leaders and school administrators with the same personal touch. Explaining the achievement gap, he lobbies for more academic and financial support for minority students, ultimately to increase the number of black college graduates. “I thought I was going to do [TFA] for a few years and feel I had done some good in the world, put enough in the bank and be ready to move on,” Biddle says. “I committed to doing two years, and 22 years later, I’m still at it.”

Mike Feinberg of the KIPP Foundation.

Mike Feinberg, KIPP Schools

While working in the classroom, Mike Feinberg, who co-founded KIPP, America’s largest network of charter schools (with 183 and counting), with fellow TFA alum Dave Levin, became “acutely aware that our students were not receiving an education that would set them up for success in college and life,” so late one night he and Levin laid out plans for a new educational model that refused to let children’s “demographics define their destiny.”
As a teacher, Feinberg saw firsthand student accomplishments that were a result of the belief that kids could and would learn. “If we believe there are solutions to problems, we can create a learning environment where we set high expectations for our students and they not only meet them, but surpass them.” Feinberg readily admits that growing up in poverty creates enormous challenges, but he reaffirms the principle that, if given a chance, education can level the playing field for those students. TFA “shaped my understanding of what education and social justice could accomplish,” he says.

Mayor Jonathan Rothschild (orange shirt) and Andrew Greenhill leading a Bike-to-Work Week ride.

Andrew Greenhill, City of Tucson

Now chief of staff for the mayor of Tucson, Ariz., Greenhill entered a career in government after TFA, inspired to take a broader look at how the delivery of public services can be improved. During his time as a teacher, in addition to the regular curriculum, he seemed to be teaching an impromptu course on how to make it in America. “Students looked to me for all kinds of assistance and information. Most were new arrivals in the country,” he recalls of his middle school class. Greenhill took families to free healthcare clinics, to the library to check out books, to Western Union to send money home and even to the supermarket to show them how to ring up groceries. That non-traditional teaching translated well to local government, where Greenhill has “played a role in helping to understand and support and in some cases even streamline the different programs provided by the city and local nonprofits.”
“I think the more people know about how the education system works, the better informed they will be in helping community-wide efforts, whether they’re inside the classroom, an administrator or a citizen participating in the debates that we have at the local and national level about education,” he says. As a city official, Greenhill doesn’t believe he’s given up on his old students; in fact, he’s still trying to take care of their day-to-day needs, so that classroom teachers can stick to teaching.

Olympian Tim Morehouse works with students.

Tim Morehouse, Olympic fencer

A silver medal-winning fencer at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Tim Morehouse has a stellar pedigree to match the perceived elitism of his sport. He attended a rigorous prep school in the Bronx (where tuition today costs $40,660) and Brandeis University, a top-ranked liberal arts college in Massachusetts. It wasn’t until Morehouse signed up for TFA in 2000 that he saw how different his path could have been. Assigned to teach seventh grade at a public school six blocks from where he grew up in upper Manhattan, Morehouse realized how privileged his education had been, compared to the schooling that most children receive.
Because of his TFA experience, Morehouse returned to public schools in Washington Heights and Harlem before the 2012 London Olympic Games to coach fencing, with the hope of giving students an extracurricular to bolster their college applications and a chance at athletic scholarships. His foundation, Fencing in the Schools, last year served 15,000 students in 11 states. Like TFA, Morehouse recruited other Olympic fencers to teach kids the sport and mentor the youngsters in life skills. He says he hopes the foundation will help kids not only get to college, but also succeed there. And who knows? “Maybe they can even go to the Olympics,” he says.

Jessica Stewart welcomes guests to a debate on education issues between Oakland, Calif., mayoral candidates.

Jessica Stewart, Great Oakland Public Schools

A onetime political junkie and head of the College Democrats at Auburn University in Alabama, Stewart moved to Oakland, Calif., to teach sixth-grade math in 2005 and fell head over heels for the Bay Area City. Politics took a backseat to her work in the classroom, but Stewart’s activist streak resurfaced in 2008 when the city’s superintendent threatened to close 17 schools and a budget crisis post-financial crash generated a multi-million dollar budget shortfall.
Great Oakland Public Schools, where Stewart is senior managing director, was founded in the wake of those disasters and went on to become a major voice in city politics. In 2012, the coalition endorsed three people running for seats on the school board. “To support our candidates, we had 300 volunteers do 60,000 phone calls and 12,000 door knocks,” Stewart recalls. “On any given night in October 2012, walking into the office, you’d see people sitting on the floor (because we only had five staff members at the time) talking to voters. It would be a student next to a principal next to a parent next to a teacher. It was so inspiring to see people coming together to fight for equality.” All three candidates won soundly, but Stewart isn’t resting on her laurels, explaining, “There is still so much work to be done in our education system.”
Editors’ note: This story originally stated that Teach for America was founded in 1989. We apologize for the error.

These Students Find Out What It’s Like to Run in Someone Else’s Shoes

There is nothing quite as inspiring as watching your country’s Olympic team parade into the stadium behind their flag or seeing the amazing feats accomplished by the athletes.
Well, now with a partnership between Classroom Champions and Google Glass, some students will be able to see what it is like to compete like an athlete.
Started by Olympic bobsled gold-medalist Steve Mesler and Leigh Mesler Parise in 2009, Classroom Champions brings together athletes and students in kindergarten through eighth great at high-needs schools. During its inaugural academic year of 2011-2012, the group had five Olympians and two Paralympians working with 28 classrooms. As of the 2012-2013 school year, that number had increased to 35 classrooms and a pilot classroom in Costa Rica.
Working as mentors, each athlete adopts three to 10 classrooms per year and sends video lessons or participates in live video chats with the classroom a few times each month. Although the videos correspond with everyday school lessons – letter writing, reading, geography, math and technology – they add a new dimension to the everyday, mundane classroom activities. These athlete-mentors don’t teach from a textbook, but through their own personal experiences. They document their journeys, emphasizing how hard-work, training, goal setting, leadership, competition and, most of all, perseverance are the keys to success.
The goal? To inspire these children to dream and strive to achieve the impossible.
And now, thanks to Google, Classroom Champions is pushing it to the next level by giving their students the chance to see the world through the eyes of a blind Paralympian jumper Lex Gillette.
This year, Google launched its Giving Through Glass competition, which awards five winners with a pair of Google Glass, a $25,000 grant, Google Glass developers and a visit to the Google headquarters.
Classroom Champions is one of those recipients. Their plan is to have Paralympians wear Google Glass so that students can understand what it is like to live and compete with a disability. More importantly, however, it is showing how their determination and abilities, not their disabilities, defines these athletes.
For Gillette, the opportunity to share his experience is once in a lifetime.
“There’s a lot of things that go on with that, having someone basically directing me down this runway, and I’m running fast, he’s making calls on the fly,” Gillette told Fast Co. Exist. “I think it would definitely be cool [for kids to] see how all of that happens, see what that would look like in a visual sense.”
While most will never compete at this level like Gillette, Classroom Champions and Google Glass is helping these students to visualize their own track to success.
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The High-Tech Olympics: How Apps Are Changing the Way Elite Athletes Train

U.S. snowboarder Kelly Clark is bringing home at least one medal from the Sochi Winter Olympics — the bronze, which she earned in the ladies’ halfpipe competition. Needless to say, Clark, as an elite athlete, is in incredible shape. And she credits that, in part, to the Athlete Management Platform (AMP), an app developed by longtime ski and snowboard sponsor Sprint, that is used to track the fitness levels and performance of more than 300 athletes by more than 350 coaches. “I committed to this program four years ago, and I’ve had the three most successful seasons of my career injury-free,” Clark told the Denver Post in January. “I can be traveling, and my trainer in Utah can keep tabs on me. Basically, there is no cheating for me when I’m working with this program.” AMP enables Clark to access months of daily workout and training sessions on her smartphone. Her coaches and trainers can also access this information, provide input or update workout plans to help Clark improve her performance, and in turn get her in top shape before big competitions, like the Winter Olympics. “I wish I was a kid growing up now,” said Clark, who at age 30 is competing against riders almost half her age. “It’s a lot different than it used to be. It’s amazing to have this technology and ability to progress.”
MORE: There’s Only One Thing This Athlete Wanted More Than a Spot in the Olympics
For the U.S. skeleton and bobsled teams, the Ubersense app has been a technological godsend. This app offers real-time video analysis and feedback on smartphones and tablets — a huge upgrade from the tapes, spreadsheets, and notebooks that the skeleton coach Tuffy Latour was previously using to record his athletes’ data. “The app has taken us from the ‘dark ages’ of using a video camera, computer and hours of downloading video to a simple-to-use technology,” Latour told Smithsonian magazine in late January. “[It] has taken us to the next level in getting our athletes the video feedback they need to succeed.”
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Through Ubersense, Latour and other coaches can analyze every second of a run via slow motion, tracing and other comparison tools, and share their notes with athletes almost instantly. With a track that measures 1,200-plus meters, and athletes who travel around the world, this app bridges the technological gap between the coach and the athlete, allowing them to visualize what they’re doing wrong — and more importantly, how to correct it. “For a coach to watch a sled go by at 80, 90 miles per hour and to decipher everything that’s happening in a split second is almost impossible,” said Zach Lund, head driving coach for the U.S. bobsled team. “It’s really helped make my job easier.” But it’s not just elite athletes who are on board. Ubersense has 2 million users across 30 sports around the world — from everyday athletes to collegiate and professional teams — allowing anyone to optimize their training, even if they’ll never stand on an Olympic podium.
ALSO: In Sochi, This Olympic Athlete Will Be Skiing Against Climate Change 

This Veteran Suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury in Iraq. Now He’s Got a Chance to Win a Medal

All the athletes who qualify for the Paralympics have overcome obstacles to excel at their sports, but perhaps none more so than Army veteran Joel Hunt, who was named to the U.S. Paralympic Alpine Ski Team on Wednesday. Joel Warner profiled Hunt’s quest to make the team last year for Westword, writing, “during his three Iraq deployments, Hunt was exposed to more than 100 improvised explosive-device blasts, explosions that left him with a traumatic brain injury that, among other things, has slowly paralyzed his left leg.” Hunt had to use a wheelchair to get around after his 2007 discharge, and PTSD hit him hard—in a speech he often gives about his story, he says there were times he “wished that I had died in Iraq rather than face the difficulties of my situation.”
But then in 2008, when his health had been deteriorating for years, his parents encouraged him to attend a three-day event in Breckenridge, Colo. to help vets with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) learn to ski. Hunt had begun to leave his wheelchair for walks, and although he was skeptical about skiing, when he tried it, it appealed to him immediately. “Hold on,” Hunt told Warner he remembers thinking, “This is like roller skating.” Operation TBI Freedom bought him a ski pass, and Hunt skied 125 times that winter.
The next winter, Hunt began training at the National Sports Center for the Disabled’s program at Winter Park. The Challenged Athletes Foundation’s Operation Rebound donated the $3500 fee required to participate. Hunt kept at it, improving at ski racing year by year, and in 2013 he qualified for the Paralympic Alpine Development Program in Aspen.
Even with a paralyzed left leg and double vision, Hunt can speed down the slopes, and now he will be the first Paralympic skier with a TBI. He’ll join three other veterans on the Paralympic Alpine Ski Team: Army veteran Heath Calhoun, Coast Guard Veteran Chris Devlin-Young, and Marine Corps veteran Jon Lujan. These vets will head to Sochi to compete at the Paralympic Winter Games from March 7 through 16, offering ski racing fans plenty to cheer about.
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In Sochi, This Olympic Athlete Will Be Skiing Against Climate Change

Getting world leaders to discuss climate change is something that has been notoriously difficult, but Andy Newell, a U.S. cross country skier competing in Sochi this year, is using the Olympic spotlight to bring attention to the issue, hoping global attention on winter sports could highlight the dangers of climate change.
Over the last two months, he has been rallying his fellow Olympic competitors to sign a letter calling on world leaders to come together on a comprehensive climate agreement in Paris in 2015. So far, 82 athletes have signed the letter, which makes an emotional plea to address the issue. Here’s part of the letter:

As winter Olympic athletes, our lives revolve around the winter and if climate change continues at this pace, the economies of the small towns where we live and train will be ruined, our sports will be forever changed and the winter Olympics as we know it will be a thing of the past.
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The power we have as Olympians on a global stage is immense.   Let’s use this year to make a collective statement, to send a message to the world’s leaders to recognize the impact of climate change and to take action now.

A joint Australian-Canadian study recently made headlines for predicting that 13 of the last 19 Winter Olympic locations, including Sochi, won’t be suitable for winter sports by the end of the century, if the pace of climate change continues.

The Surprising University That’s Educating a Huge Number of Olympic Athletes

DeVry University, the learning institution you might know from commercials and subway ads, is actually one of the leading feeders to next month’s Olympics. Seriously. According to the New York Times, the institution has 15 students heading to Russia next month to compete in the Winter games. That’s pretty impressive for a school that has no coaches, mascot, stadiums or notable sports teams. In fact, the for-profit school is not far off from the top Winter Olympics feeder, Westminster College in Salt Lake City, which has about 20 students on Team USA.
So what’s the secret? First, DeVry is an official Olympic education provider and offers reduced or waived tuition for classes. Second, because there are about 90 campuses nationwide and tons of online courses, it works especially well for athletes with busy training schedules who also want to pursue higher education. Bobsledder Elana Meyers, 29, is currently studying business administration at DeVry to prepare for life after the Olympics. She told the Times, “Whether I win a gold medal or I finish dead last, come March, I’m going to need to find a job.”
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Many Olympic Athletes Can’t Afford Their Dreams, So One Woman Stepped Up to Help

Only a few lucky Olympic athletes receive corporate sponsorships. Many elite contenders have barely enough money to feed and house themselves, let alone pay for their training and competitions.

That’s why Emily White, a musician manager for Whitesmith Entertainment, is using her talent development skills to help competitive athletes. White founded Dreamfuel, a crowd-funding platform, to select athletes and launch their fundraising campaigns. After college, athletes are often caught in a dilemma: train full time to work toward their dreams, or work full time to support themselves. White, a former Division I swimmer, realized that most determined athletes would rather struggle than give up. “I was talking to another music exec who had a friend who was an Olympic weightlifter, who was living in her coach’s basement,” White told Fast Company. “I realized this is a thing.”

But Dreamfuel doesn’t just raise money and give it to the athletes; it also helps them market themselves and build a higher profile social media presence to attract potential sponsors in the long run. This is where White’s expertise comes in. She said that musicians, unlike athletes, know they need to get their fans engaged. White said Dreamfuel wants athletes to know how to develop their brands for long-term success. “We put together all the plans, all the benefit tiers, teach them how to create and sell merch, how to market themselves online,” White said. “Basically, all the things I do for bands, I’m flipping to the sports universe.”

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