Lesson plans, curriculums and papers to grade. Rachel Volke found herself captivated by even the more mundane aspects of teaching.
Volke is one of more than 45,000 people applying for Teach for America, an organization for which the number of applicants has increased by more than 30 percent in each of the past three years, according to Teach for America communications manager Eva Boster.
Current TFA teachers, also called corps members, said they joined the organization because of a desire to serve. Rachel Evans, the Maryland campus rep for Teach for America, attributed that passion to a type of youth movement.
“I do think that educational inequity is our generation’s civil rights issue,” Evans said. “It’s about access. It’s about equal opportunity.”
Volke, a University of Maryland senior, spent the past two years as a teaching assistant for an introductory freshman course. She had already heard about Teach for America around campus and thought it would be the right step to further her passions and make a difference.
“I started looking into Teach for America and found their work so important because they’re working with educational inequality in low-income areas,” Volke said. “A lot of teachers are more hesitant to go into those types of areas.”
Teach for America places motivated college graduates in the classrooms of low-income communities across the country. Candidates must complete a rigorous application process that includes two intensive interviews.
“What we’ve seen and what we’ve heard is that there is a growing interest among young people to be involved in public service, especially education, which is seen as one of the most important issues facing our nation,” Boster said.
Karol Janik graduated from Maryland in 2007 and became a corps member the same year. She too said that educational inequity has become an important topic in the national dialogue.
Janik also noted the fact that President Obama has endorsed the organization on multiple occasions. Obama said on April 21, 2009, “I’ve seen a rising generation of young people work and volunteer and turn out in record numbers…they are why 35,000 young people applied for just 4,000 slots in Teach for America.”
There are practical reasons to explain TFA’s growth as well. For one, the organization prides itself on ardent self-advertising.
Jamie Fritz, a 2008 University of North Carolina graduate and TFA corps member, said he always considered education as a potential career. It was Teach for America’s aggressive recruitment across his campus that caught his attention.
“They have a really effective advertising machine that will hit you from all sides,” Fritz said. “I got a bunch of e-mails and it was something that appealed to me.”
TFA actively recruits on 350 college campuses nationwide. The process includes one-on-one meetings with interested students.
“This year we met with over 30,000 people individually,” Boster said. “It provides the opportunity to hear what the experience is like and address people’s common questions.”
Maryann Girgis, a 2009 Maryland alumna, met with a TFA representative after receiving an invitational e-mail. What persuaded her to apply was a startling statistic about educational inequity.
“I read an article about how there’s a very high percentage of students in Baltimore who graduated middle school and didn’t know how to read,” Girgis said. “I wanted to make a difference in the short term.”
The nation’s ailing economy is also an incentive for college graduates. On April 14, the outplacement company Challenger Gray & Christmas, Inc., released survey results saying about half of the human resources executives who were polled believe job prospects for this year’s graduates have not improved.
Kristen Janssen, a Maryland graduate and 2008 TFA corps member, discovered a passion for education when she taught English to Spanish-speaking adults in Montgomery County.
“I was a journalism major, but I realized I liked teaching a little more than I liked journalism,” Janssen said.
She researched opportunities to teach after graduation and applied for TFA just before the deadline. After being offered a position, her decision was easy.
“The job market is so bad,” she said. “Once I was accepted I was like ‘OK I’m gonna do this so I don’t have to keep looking for a job.'”
In addition to the national trend, the University of Maryland has also been moving up in the rankings of TFA feeder schools. Evans said she estimates the school will be in the top 15 state schools in terms of producing corps members. She attributes this progress to new awareness about TFA.
“For awhile there were a lot of myths. People thought we were just for education majors or only a volunteer organization,” Evans said. “Now they’re starting to realize those things aren’t true.”
‘Snowmageddon’ delayed Rachel Volke’s application process more than a week. She just completed her second interview and is now awaiting the outcome.
“I find out this Monday [April 19],” Volke said. “I feel like I could really make a difference and it does offer a stable job, so I’m hoping….”