Tag Archives: Teach For America

10.27.08
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TFA Alum Michelle Rhee Explained, in the WaPo

Teach For America‘s most controversial alum Michelle Rhee has garnered media attention for her iconoclastic, unbureacratic ways as the Washington, DC, chancellor of public schools. The Washington Post published a column by Jay Mathews today tracing Rhee’s basic philosophies about what works and doesn’t work in schools back to her time as a TFA Corps member in Baltimore.

“‘It was a zoo, every day,’ she recalled. Thirty-six children, all poor, suffered under a novice who had no idea what to do. But within months, for Rhee and other influential educators in her age group, the situation changed. She vowed not “to let 8-year-olds run me out of town….

“She found unconventional but effective ways to teach reading and math….Students became calm and engaged. Test scores soared. She kept one group with her for second and third grade. She was convinced that her students, despite their problems, ‘were the most talented kids ever.'”

But Rhee couldn’t teach them forever. According to Mathews, Rhee explained: “‘All of those kids would go on to other teachers and totally lose everything because those teachers were’ lousy. (Rhee used an earthier adjective.)”

The experience of working against convention to get those kids to succeed — and then the crushing disappointment of watching them go on to fail — shaped Rhee’s outlook and mission running DC’s public schools.

Teach For America, the nation’s most famous and elite education service corps, strives to eliminate educational inequities by placing graduates of top universities for two years in critical needs school districts throughout the United States. The program doesn’t aim to develop the teacher work force or address teacher shortages so much as to make it possible for all children to achieve in school, no matter where they are born, or under what circumstances.

It makes sense that Rhee works outside conventions. The two-year program trains its Corps members somewhat differently from a traditional academic program for teacher preparation. Because Corps members receive a couple months of training before becoming full-time teachers for the first time, their training tends to be very concrete, focusing on assessment, planning, and instruction, rather than emphasizing philosophy and content that are detached from the classroom application.

Hired through school district’s alternative certification programs, many Corps members earn certification through credits they earn through out their two years.

Corps members earn a starting salary for teachers in their district; benefits such as student loan deferment and the Eli Segal Education Award come through a partnership with AmeriCorps.

About a third of TFA alums go on to pursue careers in education. Most go on to leadership roles in other fields and sectors, informed by their years in the classroom. (Read about the impact of TFA Corps members and alumni. Read more about TFA’s career transitions support.) TFA has established partnerships with graduate schools who offer scholarships, application fee waivers, admission deferments and other benefits to TFA alums.

In the past year, applications to Teach For America (TFA) soared to over 25,000, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy earlier in the year, while only 6,200 TFA Corps members served last year.

That’s a lot of applicants who are turned away.

Many of these tens of thousands of applicants are drawn to Teach For America’s mission. Other applicants may be drawn to service more generally, and have applied to TFA because it’s hands-down one of the most prestigious, best-known, and best-funded AmeriCorps programs. Other applicants still may be attracted to the honor of serving with such an elite Corps of young people.

This week The New Service blog is going to look at a few other education service corps, including Chicago’s Inner City Teaching Corps and the Mississippi Teacher Corps. While many service corps programs have application due dates in the spring for a fall start date, most education service corps have deadlines throughout the winter and start in the summer.

For graduating college seniors interested in applying to TFA this fall, note that the second for four deadlines is coming up Nov. 7. Read more about TFA admissions.

TFA has been a cosponsor of our Idealist.org graduate admissions fairs for years and this fall financially sponsored two of our grad fairs, including the upcoming event in Atlanta, Nov. 3.

Columnist Jay Mathews hosted a chat online about the column on Michelle Rhee.

Tuesday 10/28, Eli Lilly and Company and Teach For America announced a new networking partnership in Indianapolis that aims to strengthen the TFA Corps members as well as the students they teach.

10.14.08
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Career Tip, Document Your Service!

Saving facts and artifacts to share with hiring managers and grad admissions

Among the most important things you can do during your term of service is to keep records of your accomplishments now to share later, during job and admissions applications.

By “records” I mean everything from numbers to writing samples to screen shots of web sites you helped design to photographs of you or your clients in action.

The Facts of Your Service: Numbers

At the very least, keep track of your numbers. What the numbers are will depend on your type of service. Hours of training is a common one.

If you are a teacher, tutor, after-school coordinator, or trainer, keep track of numbers of students or participants; increase in grades and test scores from baseline assessments at the start of year; number of classroom volunteers you recruited and managed, etc.

If you are a project developer, keep track of dollars you raised, community partnerships you developed, clients your program served, meetings you facilitated, volunteers you recruited and managed, etc.

A great way to measure the impact of your service is not only to count your direct clients, but also the indirect clients of your service. Two examples: if you are an AmeriCorps member working with adult learners of English, look at the help you’ve offered the adults, as well as the benefit to their children, and the community. If you are an AmeriCorps*VISTA developing a volunteer program, count your volunteers, as well as the impact of their service.

When you are ready to transition, use at least some of the numbers in your resume and in anecdotes about the impact of your work! Numbers help a hiring manager or admissions committee put your resume into context and understand the impact of your work.

(See these chapters from the Idealist.org Guide to Nonprofit Careers about preparing your resume and for the job interview.)

The Artifacts of Your Service: Portfolios

One way to present the artifacts of your service is to create a portfolio — similar to a professional scrapbook — of your service term, with sections for each skill set you have built or employed.

The portfolio can start off with your position description and/or work plan, your resume, your Description of Service (for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers), constructive performance evaluations, letters of recommendation, workshop evaluations, and thank-you notes or emails that describe the impact of your service from colleagues, community partners, and others.

Skill sets to include may be anything from trail and house building to grant writing, event planning, curricula development and teaching, program development, volunteer management, etc.

Mini-portfolios to leave behind

Rather than taking the whole portfolio to interviews with you, you can photocopy relevant sections and leave them behind at the interview, for the hiring manager or admissions counselor to look at in their own time.

I don’t recommend offering more than a few samples of your work, but I do recommend you wait till you are prompted to offer recommendation letters or reference contacts.

Online portfolios

Alternately, you can create an online portfolio like Beth Kanter — the guru of social media use for nonprofits — has done, through a tool like Wikispaces (public spaces are free). Include the link on your resume and cover letters with the rest of your contact information.

Online portfolios are especially useful if you’ve used multimedia to document your service. Linking to your audio or video podcast on iTunes or Youtube is easier if your portfolio is already online.

And a warning: Keep in mind that if you have designed web pages or developed web content, capturing the image of the web page through a screen shot is still the best route for documentation. Linking to the web pages is too risky. Once you have left your service site, you won’t know if your web pages will be updated, if links will have gone sour, or if your pages will have come down altogether. Because you have no control over the pages after you are gone, it’s best to preserve them visually through a screen shot rather than linking to them.

Writing samples

Writing samples are great to include in your portfolio.  A common question I get is what to use when you are asked for professional writing samples.

Depending on  your position this year, you should have a chance to collect a variety of these. Anything professional you’ve written should work — from grant proposals, brochures and newsletters, formal emails or letters, project descriptions, focus group or survey summary reports, web content, press releases, etc.

If you are in a direct-service role with few opportunities to write, try to create a reason to write tied to your service like a narrative summary of your service or a specific service project.

Hang on to your documentation

The problem many service corps alumni face is that they’ve saved all these documents on the computer at their old service site, and now that they are finished, can’t access them easily to share during the job or school search.

Save yourself the heartache by emailing documents and photographs to your personal email account, or backing them up on a thumb drive. You can also use online tools like Google Docs and Flickr to access documents and photos later on.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers can request a photocopy of their Document of Service from Peace Corps, to be sent to them directly or to their hiring manager or graduate admissions office. (Peace Corps keeps your DOS for 60 years.)

Other reasons to document

Documenting your service is not just useful for your next steps. Keeping good records helps during your term with grant writing and reporting, monthly reporting for AmeriCorps*VISTAs, communicating with your supervisor, preparing for your mid-term or end-of-service performance evaluations, and creating public relations materials for your program.

This blog post has been adapted from a section of the forthcoming Service Corps Companion to the Idealist.org Guide to Nonprofit Careers, due out this coming spring from Idealist.org.

10.06.08
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Corps Finances: Personal Financial Management for the Service Corps Member

Earning a stipend doesn’t mean suffering financially

These rocky financial times call everyone’s attention to government spending, and cause those in public service to wonder how the nonprofit sector will survive the turmoil on Wall Street — which affects the ability of foundations and donors to contribute financially.

Scobay (CreativeCommons, Flickr)

Scobay (CreativeCommons, Flickr)

The mess we are in also calls us to pay more heed to our own financial circumstances.

What does that look like for a member or stipended volunteer in a service corps?

Depending on the program, and on a member’s spending needs, a service corps stipend can be challenging to live on.

For service corps members facing challenges, the term of service is a great time to get schooled in personal financial management. If you are working with clients who have low incomes, the lessons you learn can also benefit them.

Do no harm

While most financial advice will tell you how to save and invest wisely, Corps members may not have any extra money to save. The priority for you, then, is to do no harm:

1. Get Your credit report free annually, know your FICO score (which doesn’t come with your free annual credit report), and learn how to protect and increase your score.

2. Track your money—all your money. Save receipts or take notes for a week. It helps to see it in black and white. That way you can spend according to priority not habit, and find cheaper alternatives.

Thinkpanama, Creative Commons, Flickr

Thinkpanama, Creative Commons, Flickr

For example, you might spend a lot on buying coffee at coffee shops, where you could make coffee at home or the office. That change would allow you to choose organic produce if that’s important to you.

A big expense that can build up unexpectedly are ATM fees. If you withdraw money from another bank’s automated teller machine, not only that bank but your own bank can deduct fees from your account. Imagine losing $4 every time you withdraw $20. And you may not see the fees till you get your monthly statement.

As part of tracking your money, list withdrawals and deposits in an account ledger like the kind you get for free with your bank account. Overdrawing your account can cost a lot of money.

3. Make a budget. Allow yourself to spend a maximum amount on a certain category each week or pay period. Some people like to put cash in envelopes at the start of the week, and when the cash runs out, so does the spending.

One envelope may be for food, and could include groceries and eating out. Another could be for gas, a third for entertainment, etc. You don’t need a fancy worksheet, all you need is to list your living expenses (rent, groceries, childcare, credit card, utilities, transportation), their due dates and their monthly costs. Make adjustments where you see waste as mentioned in Tip #2.

4. Be responsible with credit cards. Avoid running up credit card debt, as well as carrying a credit card balance from month to month.

The Truth About, Creative Commons, Flickr

The Truth About, Creative Commons, Flickr

Paying just the minimum payment fee on your monthly statement or paying the fee late can incur costly fees, and damage your credit score.

Also be careful about the due date in your monthly credit card statement. Those companies switch the date around like a fickle fiance, and they win if you pay too late.

If you are serving in Peace Corps or another international service program and are taking credit card debt with you, you can do a few things to help yourself out: sell off your car, books, and other valuables to pay off as much as you can before you go. If you won’t have enough cash to pay off your credit card that way, you can instead use the money to pay the minimum fee (or a set amount above that fee) monthly through an automatic bill pay that you set up through your checking account at home. It’s a very expensive solution.

Choose a credit card wisely, and understand the true cost of using credit cards. Use this calculator to figure out how much you really owe. Check out Frontline’s The Secret History of the Credit Card for understanding the fine print of your credit card agreement and more.

5. Live simply. Here are some of the biggies: live with roommates; borrow books and movies from the library; ride a bike whenever possible — going car free saves a lot of money; cook at home and have friends over for pot-luck dinners; forgo internet access and cable television at home; shop at thrift stores and swap clothes with friends; cut down on expensive drinks  like beer; reuse, reduce, recycle.

Richard Masoner, Creative Commons, Flickr

Richard Masoner, Creative Commons, Flickr

6. If at all possible, save. Similarly, avoid spending your savings you came into the Corps with. Even $5 a week adds up.

7. Know your financial goals. In the next five years do you want to enroll in school, buy a house, buy a car, pay down student loans, start a family, retire?

You may not be able to put a lot of money towards these investments this year, but can educate yourself about the financial needs you will have. Knowing what lies ahead for you may motivate you to watch your pennies now. You can also take workshops on these topics as you see them offered in your community. Sometimes they come with free pizza!

Resources

The National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) offers an array of resources to help people think about money strategically, begin with Smart With Money’s Taking the First Step. Also check out this resource on Life Events and Financial Decisions.

Partnering with Idealist.org, NEFE published Making a Difference: A Guide to Personal Profit in a Nonprofit World especially for young people looking at a career in the nonprofit sector.

Service corps members are often eligible for programs that benefit all people with low incomes (such as housing for people with low incomes, Food Assistance and individual development accounts).

Another resource to check out regularly is Michelle Singletary’s Color of Money column in the Washington Post and NPR podcast.

Finally, keep an eye on the blogs in the Money Life Network.

For prospective corps members

If you haven’t yet joined a corps, have confidence that hundreds of thousands of people have participated in service corps and made it financially.

That said, do take a hard look at the numbers and make sure you can afford to live on a stipend. Take into consideration student loans (qualified loans can be deferred or put into forbearance during the term), child care expenses, rent/mortgage payments, car payments, etc. Service Corps programs, local nonprofits and government agencies may be able to offer help with certain expenses, so be sure to ask. It’s not impossible to thrive on the stipend, but a term of service isn’t worth ruining your credit history or incurring deep debt.

Also note that not all Corps are the same in terms of stipends. Peace Corps Volunteers don’t get rich, but typically earn enough to cover all their expenses (including housing, utilities, food, even medical expenses are taken care of), and sock a bit away for extras. AmeriCorps*VISTAs on the other hand, who work to end poverty, earn 105 percent of whatever is poverty-level income in their area—which can be a struggle!—and aren’t allowed to take on side jobs. Teach For America Corps members earn the starting teacher’s salary for their school district, while AmeriCorps*NCCC members earn $400 a month but have all their basic needs taken care of for their ten-month term. The terms of every program are different, so be sure to ask.

Do you know of other personal finance tips, or resources, useful to service Corps members? Are you a service Corps member or Alum? What have you done to be successful financial through your term?

09.17.08
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Building strong ties to local college career centers

Your service corps program and your Corps members can benefit from a good relationship with local college and university career services offices.

This afternoon I have the honor of working with directors of Oregon’s AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps*VISTA programs around the topic of career transitions for Corps members. One message I want to drive home is that developing ties to local career centers can help both with recruitment of new Corps members, and also helping current members with their next steps. Here are some ideas:

Getting Started: Invite career center staff from local colleges and universities for a brown bag lunch in your office to share resources and compare complementary needs. Some schools are part of a consortium that hold regular meetings; you could ask about presenting at one of these meetings. Some career centers have a counselor who focuses on public service; when you make your first call, you might ask for that person.

Be a presence (not just a flyer) on campus when it’s time to recruit: Staff tables at the school’s career fair, and let the career counselors know that you are available to speak at panel and round table discussions. Ask if there is a way to post your general and recruitment information on the career center’s website or resource library, or to staff a general information table on campus. (Idealist.org also organizes nonprofit career fairs hosted by career centers on college campuses throughout the United States.)

Be a resource on national service: Work with the career counselors to put together a panel on national service opportunities for college students. Help find current or former AmeriCorps, AmeriCorps*VISTA, and NCCC members, Jesuit Volunteers, Jewish Coalition for Service program participants, Peace Corps Volunteers, Teach For America, Public Allies, or City Year Corps members (seek people from a variety of service programs) to speak on a panel discussion, to help clarify college students’ options and understanding of the differences among the programs. Students may not understand how to apply to a program, or may be confused about the de-centralized application process for some programs. Be ready to offer guidance at least for your program!

Educate counselors about the benefits of national service: Let career counselors know that for some graduating or even gap-year students, doing a year of national service is a really good way to serve your community in a more concentrated, intense way than you may be able to through traditional, episodic volunteering. It’s also proven to be a  launching point for a public service career. Students looking for a year of work experience before going to graduate school will benefit from serving – often with a high level of autonomy, challenge, and responsibility – for an organization that doesn’t expect a long-term commitment. If they can think of the term-of-service as a fifth and/or sixth college year – during which the students serve the community, learn tuition-free, and may not have to pay student loans – the investment makes more sense. Not to mention the networking and the educational benefits!

Exchange career transitions support: As you develop relationships with career centers in your area, you might:
•    Ask if Corps members can attend resume and other workshops at the career center.
•    Arrange for college students to shadow Corps members for a day; establish a list of members who would be open to informational interviews and share it with career office contacts; invite college students on community service projects.
•    Offer for you and your Corps members to play the “employers” for mock interviews with college students – it is a great exercise for your members to be on the hiring side of an interview process.

Find more career resources for national service members on Encorps‘s Beyond the Service Year and What’s Next, and on Idealist.org through the career center, career guides, and Term-of-Service page.

This blog post has been adapted from a section of the forthcoming Service Corps Companion to the Idealist.org Guide to Nonprofit Careers, due out this coming spring from Idealist.org.

09.12.08
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Service Nation Town Hall Meeting

Follow tweets by RocchiJulia.

Moderated by David Gergen, Senior Political Analyst at CNN and advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton. In his opening remarks, Gergen says this is the most hopeful movement he’s seen since the civil rights movement.

Participants include Lt Gen Ben Freakley, Vanessa Kirsch (New Profit, Inc.), Mallory Josol (City Year and Jumpstart alum), Michelle Nunn (Hands On Network), Usher (er, well, of Usher!).

Kirsch was part of the founding of Public Allies. Says Eli Segal would be proud of the bipartisan support of national service we have been witnessing during the Summit. Emphasis on public-private partnership. We can actually solve problems with the human capital invested through national service! Teach For America used to be a small idea, and now tens of thousands of top college graduates are applying. Need to scale up national service to meet the desire to serve.

Gergen: how do you mobilize this many people to sign up? (Kennedy and Hatch’s Serve America Act would authorize the funding of 250,000 national service slots.)

Michelle Nunn says Kennedy-Hatch bill includes many different types of service: national service, community volunteering, international service. Coalition includes all sectors, faith-based groups, and more to work together to “make the bill a reality.”

Usher: Youth have always been on the fore-front of change. Youth leaders need a sense of ownership. Incentives may include scholarships. (Soft spoken but then says he’s nervous! Audience cheers him on.) Youth are engaged by leaders who lead example. Not “this is what you should do” but “this is what we will do together.”

Mallory Josol: (She is so young, and so, so well-spoken!) It’s important to have leaders call on youth to serve, but it’s more important to live the example. Youth will answer the call to service if they know about the opportunities. Need is all over the country, youth are all over the country. Josol says she is from a zip code “of need.” You don’t have to be wealthy to serve.

Lt. Gen. Freakley: Programs, civilian or military, offer youth opportunities to serve and to realize their potential. Not organized on the internet! Have to get into social networking! Bring military retirees into the process: they can plan, they can execute, they can train!

Gergen: Where does government fit in?

Kirsch: Middle way. Not about big government or just the private sector. Government, philanthropists both partners. Citizens elevate programs, government invests. AmeriCorps is a network of organizations, succeeding with capital invested from the government. Not “big government.” Most organizations that receive AmeriCorps funding are otherwise private-sector funded for the most part.

Freakley: Move youth from entitlement to empowerment. We adults have given them a sense of entitlement. When they feel empowered, they will serve.

Participant: It’s a religious experience being here. Largest coalition of bipartisan support for service. Serve America Act is an appropriations bill. May compete with labor bill. Can we build an even broader coalition so that we don’t do harm but instead to good?

Participant: The U.S. Public Service Academy be successful? Will it compete with military service academies?

Freakley: Need Public Service Academy to train people to serve in public sector and alumni who can speak out for service.

Harris Wofford steps up to the microphone on the ballroom floor: The reason Kennedy and Shriver were confident that Peace Corps could grow to 100,000 is because the original CCC employed 500,000. AmeriCorps is primarily a nonprofit sector endeavor. Seed funding from government.