How many tfa corps members are there

TFA will notify you of your admissions decision about two weeks after your interview. After your TFA interview, you will rank the regions where you would prefer to teach. Corps members teach in TFA regions across the country, each with a unique opportunity for impact. I feel like I am part of something so much bigger than my own classroom and that I am working towards a goal that matters, with an inspirational team that challenges me to be better.

Ready to learn more about TFA? The TFA website has everything you need to explore possibilities and start your journey. Transform Education Through Teach For America With TFA, you can teach in an underserved community while you earn your teaching license and prepare for a transformative career in education. What Is Teach For America? Top photo credit: Sally Ryan.

Teach For America in North Carolina. Why Teach For America? Through TFA, you can get your teacher licensure and earn a salary and benefits. TFA offers high-quality preparation, mentorship and a nationwide network of leaders in education. Salary and Benefits TFA corps members are not volunteers.

Education award As part of the AmeriCorps national service network, most TFA corps members are also eligible for an AmeriCorps education award after each successful year of teaching.

This experience is intended to help you build fundamental knowledge, not mastery. During these sessions, you will lay the groundwork for your ongoing development as a leader working toward systems change. How do I apply to Teach For America? Am I eligible for TFA? Fill out your application now! Teach For America leaders come from diverse backgrounds and have a multitude of experiences. They are mission-driven and committed to equity. As educators in San Antonio and across the nation go back to school amid a global pandemic and racial tensions, we asked a few teachers—Teach For America San Antonio corps members—why they joined TFA and how they feel about entering this school year.

What did you do before TFA? I was recently a classroom teacher, going into my seventh year in the classroom: I taught art for two years, and English for four years. Beyond the classroom, I served on district leadership teams focused on diversifying texts in the English Language Arts curriculum. How are you feeling as you begin teaching amidst a global pandemic and racial tensions across the country?

As a mother of three Black and Native children, racial injustice and equity have always been a conversation in our household. I hope the conversations continue and real change happens. One way I am contributing to change this year is by forming a student-led group to elevate student voices, discuss important topics, and advocate for change on issues that are important to them. Why did you join TFA?

I joined because I truly believe in its mission and vision of TFA and their focus on diversity and inclusion. TFA allows me to expand my resources to help support my students and continue working towards educational equity.

In my last semester of undergrad, I completed an internship at a local nonprofit that provides free early childcare services to the underserved community of Durham, North Carolina. Entering the classroom as a first-year teacher during the current climate of racial injustice and COVID is scary and unpredictable. And yet, the need for high-quality education and opportunity for all children is higher than ever. You will be able to apply for open positions within Teach For America, receive guidance on how to apply to other opportunities within the Atlanta area, and be able to use the Teach For America Corps Member Computer Lab and Resource Room as needed during your transition.

After I complimented her espadrilles, she replied that she'd gotten them at a discount through her retail job. I am standing, arms crossed, back hunched, whispering with Ms. Jones, as we sort supplies our students will need for the Criterion Referenced Competency Test. In the last few free minutes before testing begins, Ms. Jones is sharing her candid, and often hilarious, views on first-year teaching.

Jones is known as a no-nonsense veteran teacher, and I had found her quite intimidating before I realized she is incredibly kind. I went through a teaching program, and I taught in four different classrooms before I ever had these kids on my own. The intercom buzzes to announce a five-minute warning before testing will begin, and that reminds Ms.

Jones of the labyrinthine set of test procedures to come. You know we have to cover ourselves. Jones is not fixing to be on Channel 2 tonight. By the end of the school year, I felt like I would scream if I ever heard the phrase cover yourself again. Within Atlanta Public Schools, this phrase embodies a general spirit of fear and intimidation, not to mention sad tolerance for the fact that teachers are seen as little more than passive cogs in the wheel of the city's education machine.

Valuable minutes of classroom instruction time were lost to filling out accident reports when kids occasionally fell out of their chairs or poked each other with pencils. When I was once asked to fill in for an unexpectedly absent colleague, one of her second-graders chose to confide in me about his abysmal home life. I immediately reported the incident to an administrator, who reacted with what appeared to be annoyance that one more paper had to be filed at p.

This was an administrator who really does care about children and wants to improve their lives—but the all-important duty of covering the legal interests of the district can make crucial social work feel like just another rubber stamp.

My immediate reaction was shock that so many teachers could be complicit in something so outrageously dishonest. Midway through the school year, though, I came to understand exactly how it had happened. APS has some of the best teachers in the country, but surviving in the district means covering yourself, and during standardized testing this means ensuring objective success.

In a top-down, ruthless bureaucracy like APS, teachers are front-line foot soldiers, not educators encouraged to pursue their calling. Atlanta Public Schools teachers spend countless hours teaching to exhaustion, spending their own money on classroom supplies, and buying basic necessities for their poorest students, only to be reminded constantly that their job performance will be judged according to test answers bubbled in by wobbly little fingers barely able to hold a pencil upright.

Teaching children is inherently much more intimate, messy, and personal than any office job could ever be. It's about guiding, pushing, and spending most of your waking hours with other people's children, whether they need a Band-Aid, a bear hug, or a fresh set of markers that their parents can't afford.

Many teachers in schools like mine would agree that often the most-struggling students improve in ways that will not be reflected on the state test. They might learn to say please and thank you, or they might master a set of academic skills that still will not be enough to pass on-level, or they might gain a healthy dose of self-respect. After a year in this environment, I realized I could understand how, when the annual testing frenzy rolled around, a lot of teachers chose to put their heads down, tune out, and cover themselves.

Teach for America cited the Atlanta scandal as a sad example of what is wrong with education's status quo, one of the many reasons America's schools need even more reform and innovation.

But what occurred to me, as I worked my way, ill-prepared, through Atlanta Public Schools, was that the two systems are not as far apart as either might like to suggest. TFA strongly encourages its teachers to base their classes' "big goals" around standardized-test scores. Past and present corps members are asked to stand to thunderous applause if their students have achieved some objectively impressive measure of achievement, and everyone knows that the best way to work for and rise through TFA ranks is to have a great elevator pitch about how your students' scores improved by X percent.