"When people think the issue can be solved, it becomes a moral imperative to be part of the solution."
As Wendy Kopp neared college graduation, she still had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. Desperately, she started searching for job opportunities. Though she hadn't previously considered teaching, Wendy decided that she wanted to spend time teaching in New York City. But it wasn't that simple. She soon discovered that trying to figure out how to land a teaching job in NYC was like trying to get through a maze. This difficult process led Wendy to ask an important question: Why don't we recruit people to teach in low-income communities as aggressively as people are being recruited to work on Wall Street?
Wendy became convinced that many college graduates would be interested in making a difference through teaching if an effective teaching corps existed. Passionate about this idea, Wendy devoted her undergraduate senior thesis to the topic. In her thesis, she outlined a two-year teaching corps that would recruit, train, and place recent college graduates in low-income schools across the United States.
In 1990, just one year after submitting her thesis, Wendy had raised $2.5 million dollars to officially launch Teach For America. With the mission to eliminate educational inequity by involving top-graduates in the education process, Teach for America began with a corps of 500 teachers working in six low-income communities.
Two decades later, Teach For America has grown to become a widely recognized and respected organization. Teaching corps positions are highly-coveted among college graduates: this year more than 46,000 people (including 12% of all Ivy League seniors) applied for about 5,000 positions. Currently, Teach For America boasts a network of over 28,000 current teachers and alumni that are impacting more than 300,000 students each year.
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I'm interested to know readers' thoughts on different innovators and their ideas. For example, what do you think of Teach For America? What about other corps-types of experiences?
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