Midd Alums Teach for America
Ben Salkowe
Issue date: 10/21/04 Section: News
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Mnookin, who majored in English, is one of thousands of students who have devoted themselves to challenging the inequities of America's education system.
"The more I learned about educational inequity in America, the more I realized that it was an incredible injustice," Mnookin told The Middlebury Campus. "I didn't want to be someone that merely knew a lot about one of our societal problems. I wanted to be on the front lines working every day to affect change."
Mnookin is part of Teach for America (TFA), an AmeriCorps program that recruits "outstanding" college graduates to teach in under-performing rural and inner-city schools. The participants, officially called corps members, commit two years to teaching elementary and secondary students before pursuing graduate studies or other post-undergraduate plans.
In return, corps members receive the full salary and benefits of beginning teachers, and earn nearly $10,000 in grants for use toward future educational expenses or outstanding student loans.
Because corps members are not required to have previous teaching experience, they spend the summer prior to their placement in one of three summer teaching institutes in New York City, Houston or Los Angeles, where they are trained in teacher education and teach summer school classes.
According to Mnookin, "Corps members are in classrooms teaching actual summer school classes one week into their training."
After attending the summer institute, the new teachers are placed in one of their preferred choices of 21 sites - from New York City to South Dakota, and Las Vegas to the Mississippi Delta - where they will teach in their area of major study.
While not such a bad sounding offer thus far, the mission is far from "easy," and TFA is hardly shy of that fact. At a Middlebury College campus recruiting event last week, the campaign introduced students to their mission by showing a promotional film that opened with movies of frustrated students acting out, kids coming to school angry or in tears from problems at home and student teachers struggling just to get the attention of their class.