Continuing the Corps Mentality: From TFA to HLS

Charles J. Hamilton III ’07 hasn’t been in an Atlanta Public School System classroom for a year, but he knows what his former students, now eight and nine-year-olds, are reading. “My advanced: “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” They love all those books .... Some kids aren’t reading on grade level; from time to time you have to say ‘Come on you’re in third grade now, James.’” But the little square windows and maroon chairs with tennis balls on the legs to prevent squeaking are behind Hamilton; his two years in Teach For America’s (TFA) corps ended in 2010. But the weight he says he felt in his classroom of seven and eight-year-olds, all relying on him to escape the predetermined “school to prison pipeline,” still hangs heavily.

Hamilton is one of 51 former corps members now enrolled at Harvard Law School. Based on numbers released by the Law School Admission’s Office, that number is on the rise: with 22 former corps members in the first year class, 17 in the second year class, and 12 in the third year class, TFA’s presence at the Law School has risen by nearly half since three years ago.

Teach For America was founded in 1990 by Wendy Kopp with the mission of building a “movement to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting our nation’s most promising future leaders in the effort,” according to the TFA website.

TFA places corps members in under-resourced—and often heartbreaking—school systems in the country, with the aim of changing the trajectory of students enrolled there. Hamilton taught at Deerwood Academy, an Atlanta Public School in the poor, majority-black Southwest section of the city. Only 34 percent of black males in the school system graduate, and many spend time in the juvenile justice system before turning 20.

“I would hear administrators and teachers talk about second graders and elementary school kids as if their future is predetermined,” Hamilton says. “Saying, ‘Well it’s only a matter of time until he’s tangled up in the criminal justice system.’” But “the most important thing is not believing that,” Hamilton says. “You don’t accept it. The mission is to make your kids the exception, period.”

With surprising uniformity, former corps members at the Law School say that they plan to be involved in education reform, particularly in low income communities, after earning their JDs. These students profess that their experience in TFA had a profound impact not only on their worldviews but also on their ambitions for the future.

Of course, Harvard Law School is ranked second in the U.S. News & World Report, and as is usually the case, admissions rewards prior success. According to the New York Times, in 2007, about 10 percent of TFA students leave the program after the first of their two years. It is possible that those who had positive experiences with TFA are also those who are now enrolled here. Additionally, the program has fallen under scrutiny for not producing lifelong, master teachers, but rather 22-year-olds who spend two years doing brief service. But for many students at the Law School, TFA has become a epiphanic moment. It’s an experience they have come to order their lives around, a guiding map for the future beyond the wood-panelled lecture halls of Harvard Law.

CORPS TAKING OVER

For Law School second year Kristi Jobson ’06, being a freshman proctor in Wigglesworth and an elementary school teacher in the South Bronx could not be more different.

“There’s nothing like being in charge of a classroom full of students,” Kristi says. “It was one of the first times in my life I really felt like I was bad at something—I felt really overwhelmed and like I could really do better.”

In addition to teaching social studies to older students and English-as-a-second-language classes to all age groups, Kristi introduced a dance program at P.S.-M.S. 15—using skills she learned during her involvement with Harvard CityStep, which she credits with inspiring her to teach in the first place.

Though Kristi is among a small group of alums of both Harvard College and TFA that are currently at the Law School, she is a part of a much larger community of Harvard students affiliated with TFA.

More and more, Harvard and TFA have begun to act like complementary feeder organizations.

In the Harvard College class of 2010, 293 seniors—nearly a fifth of the class—applied for TFA. Only 100 seniors applied three years earlier, in 2007.

This boom in applications from the College corresponds to a national trend: since 2007, applicants to TFA have increased over 250 percent—a spike that many attribute to the economic breakdown—and between 2009 and 2010, applications increased by 32 percent.

The increasingly selective group of college graduates who accept their offer to TFA are going to increasingly selective graduate schools: TFA lists Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Kennedy School of Government as the education, business, and policy graduate schools with the highest amount of former corps members enrolled. The Law School is the third most common law school for former corps members, topped by the University of Pennsylvania Law and Georgetown Law.

Assistant Dean and Chief Admissions Officer Joshua Rubenstein says that the admissions office “ends up admitting a lot of TFA alums” in part because of their experience in the classroom. “A major component of what we look for is leadership experience and commitment in service. TFA produces people who we would score strongly on both of those attributes.”

He says that the Law School takes into account that the candidates who worked for TFA had the option to do a number of things, but chose to teach in under-resourced environments, where ingenuity and creativity were integral to facilitate gains among students.

Rubenstein notes that since TFA is such a selective organization already, the corps members would have been attractive candidates regardless of their TFA experience.

“[TFA] seems like an organization that has pretty high selection standards, and it selects people who already might be good candidates for law school,” Rubenstein says.

Law School third year Leah M. Watson, a 2005 Atlanta corps member, planned to become a journalist to report on social ills—social ills she saw first hand as a World History and Political Science teacher to ninth and 10th graders at Westlake High School. Many of her students couldn’t excel because of the challenges they faced outside of the classroom; some didn’t have places to live, many had family trouble, some became pregnant, and some didn’t have enough to eat—one of her students was even hospitalized for malnutrition. After a year at Westlake, she decided being a journalist wasn’t good enough. Going to the Law School instead would help her in her quest to address broad institutional problems.

“I think going to Harvard Law School gives credibility in the game,” Watson says.

Although Watson doesn’t know which angle she will take to help catalyze institutional progress, she gave examples of how lawyers can help implement change: they can draft language for education reform, for example, or represent special education students, work in federal, state, or local education departments.

“Talking about it wasn’t going to be enough,” Watson says. “I needed to take ownership of doing that work.”

“CATCHING THE BUG”

No landline, no signal, no mail delivery, and no internet. Her first two years after college, Hanseul Kang was “totally unreachable.” After graduating from Georgetown College—immersed in an overwhelmingly white student body on a campus of Kate Spade and Betsy Johnson accessories—King moved to Thoreau, New Mexico—a town with a population of barely three thousand—to teach social studies in a school that was majority Navajo Indian.

Kang says she intended to apply to law school after her time in the corps to study international law policy. But after two years in the corps, she changed her mind.

“At one point I felt like it was my responsibility to carry the success I’d had forward into a career that seemed very prestigious,” Kang continues. “Through teaching and working with my students, I wanted to pay that forward not just during two years—I wanted to continue giving students similar opportunities that I had had.”

Like thousands of other corps members, she had caught “the bug.”

“The vast difference between school systems in this country can make you very angry in a productive way—in a way that’s not going to go away until you’ve seen gains,” Jobson explains. “Sometimes people describe it as the bug.

Jobson—who says all but one of her friends from TFA are still teaching—dreamed about one day being a litigator. But, like every other corps member interviewed for this article, she says she now feels passionate about using her law degree to reform education or serve low-income communities.

“You’re not able to let go,” Jobson says.

The numbers support Jobson’s claim—corps members are quantifiably not able to “let go.” Sixty-three percent of TFA alums are in the field of education, while nearly 10 percent are full-time graduate students, and four percent are in the field of law, according to information released by TFA.

Watson says that sometimes, being so far away from the classroom is a source of frustration.

“It’s hard going from throwing yourself 100 percent in the field, and being able to sleep at night, to going to law school, which is kind of a more selfish endeavor,” Watson says.

But a Bronx 2005 corps member, former recruitment director for TFA at Harvard, and current Law School second year Meredith D.L. Boak says that former corps members’ experience giving 100 percent in the classroom gives them purpose in their graduate school endeavors.

“You know exactly why you’re coming to law school,” Boak says. “You are going to want to go back into the community and help your kids. The motivation that drives you really can help you to be more successful.”

TEACH FOR AMERICA AMID CONTROVERSY

When Law School first year Tim M. Visser arrived at his classroom at Little River Elementary School in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami, he wasn’t the first one there. It was 6:30 a.m., but eight fifth graders were waiting for morning tutorial. More than 12 hours later at 7 p.m., Visser would have to force students to go home.

Visser saw the entire fifth grade—around 100 students—all of whom were three to five years behind, all of whom had been “left behind or passed on.” But once they had someone in the classroom who was willing and able to work with them, they latched on.

“Without fail, my kids were as motivated or more motivated than I was,” Visser says. “It was personally motivating.” (Visser used some iteration of the word “motivating” multiple times in his interview for this article.)

Like Kang, Watson, and Boak, Visser realized that in order to help the kids in Little Haiti on a macro level, he needed to go to law school.

“I understand some of the more systemic and policy based aspects of the problem,” Visser says. “I realized how much power a law degree has in changing those.”

Before attending law school, though, Little River encouraged Visser to work with TFA. Though there were already five or six corps members at the school—which was otherwise staffed with teachers who often did not have the requisite education to teach, Visser says the school hoped more corps members could come and alleviate the shortage of teachers.

Though TFA corps members may have facilitated the continued operation of an appreciative Little River Elementary, there remains controversy about the place and effectiveness of TFA in public school systems.

Some critics say that the program fails to foster real teachers—only teachers who quit the profession for graduate school or a more prestigious job before mastering their skills. Though 61 percent of corps members stay to teach at their assigned school past the two year requirement, few are remaining after the fifth or sixth year.

President Obama, adding to the din surrounding the program, praised TFA last April.

“I’ve seen a rising generation of young people work and volunteer and turn out in record numbers,” Obama said. “They have become a generation of activists possessed with that most American of ideas—that people who love their country can change it.”

Regardless of the laudability of the young volunteers, a study produced last summer suggests that corps members might prepare students less for standardized tests that assess knowledge and comprehension.

A study by Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig of the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education, and Dr. Su Jin Jez, of California State University, Sacremento, says that although corps members perform better than non-credentialed teachers, the report notes that “the students of novice TFA teachers perform significantly less well in reading and mathematics than those of credentialed beginning teachers.”

Despite the contested effectiveness of placing 22-year-olds in some of America’s toughest classrooms, the experience can serve as an awakening for young people in the program to passions about policy and justice.

“It just became so real when it goes from a statistic to a real student when you understand how grossly unequal it is,” Visser says. “They’re so talented, so bright …  they just have to climb over hurdles other kids don’t have to.”

All of these corps members, of course, have moved on to some degree, out of the classroom. Hamilton, for one, found, after two years, that teaching was not his true calling. But the burden doesn’t disappear. Both Visser and Hamilton, for example, expressed interest in helping to ensure the eradication of the “school to prison pipeline” that they witnessed in their respective cities.

While explaining the struggle to have faith in students despite overwhelming opposition to such faith—outside influences, a system that already assumes the worst, communities stricken with poverty, drugs asnd violence—Hamilton himself struggles to express his emotions: “You just, you don’t believe it ... The most important things is not believing that. You don’t accept that ... There’s no reason it can’t happen. You need to believe.”

It’s a belief that haunts many corps members; one that has driven Hamilton and his fellows to the Law School, in order to affect changes in the classrooms they left behind.