Alumni teach America's youth

Now, the former student body president, one of 51 UNC alumni currently involved with Teach for America, teaches literacy to sixth graders in a New York City middle school.

"It's an extremely tough experience," Tepper said of his first two months in the classroom. "And I thought I had a busy year last year. ... I'm always exhausted."

Teach for America, a member of the national service organization AmeriCorps, is a nationwide network of college graduates who commit two years to teach in low-income urban and rural communities.

The elementary and secondary schools involved in the program characteristically under-perform and have poor resources.

When searching for college graduates to participate in the program, recruiters try to draw from as diverse an applicant pool as possible, said Melissa Casey, regional recruitment director for Teach for America.

"We need students who have demonstrated a track record of achievement, leadership potential and the ability to set ambitious goals," Casey said.

About 2,000 graduates from a variety of backgrounds are selected each year for the corps. They attend a summer institute that provides classes on effective teaching strategies before moving on to regional orientations, which prepare them for experience in real classrooms.

These training sessions provide some of the first lessons in teaching that corps members receive - many members hail from fields including government, language and other social sciences. Only 2 percent of last year's Teach for America group majored in education.

Lisa Guckian, who graduated from UNC in 1996, first encountered the program when she was a high school student in Warren County. Both her history and Spanish teachers possessed an unusual energy and perspective - and both were members of Teach for America.

The young corps members related to high schools students well and were creative in making the curriculum relevant, Guckian said.

"They allowed me to look past my current world," she said.

After graduating from the University, Guckian joined the corps and began teaching math and science to seventh- and eighth-grade students in the Bronx.

She quickly realized the realities of an overcrowded urban school system. "I had 35 to 40 students in one class, with some students not even on grade level."

Despite the daily challenges, Guckian noticed an overall trend of growth and learning and felt supported by other teachers in the school and the families in the community, she said.

The drive she puts into her current work in education policy at North Carolina's Hunt Institute is a result of the people she was surrounded by during her work with Teach for America, she said. "Knowing my impact can be greater, that is my drive. I want to help schools like the one I worked in."

Within North Carolina, Teach for America sends teachers to Charlotte and eight eastern counties.

And the program offers applicants much more than a salary and additional educational awards of up to $9,450, Casey said.

"There's the idea of joining a movement, a unique opportunity to have both immediate and direct impact," she said. "Corps members are taking on a tremendous responsibility of providing students with the education they are entitled to."

The program has two application deadlines for each new corps class. This year's Oct. 24 deadline yielded 5,797 applicants nationwide, 37 of whom were UNC seniors.

The remaining due date for 2005 is Feb. 18.

Senior Kasey Johnson, a middle school education major from Asheville, plans to participate in the second round of applications.

She wants to help out in schools that are in need of teachers and would like to experience "somewhere big" like New York City or Chicago, she said.

For Tepper, days in the Big Apple are unpredictable, and he never knows when he'll go home excited or frustrated.

He still isn't sure what he'll pursue after his two-year commitment ends, though law school or journalism school seem probable, he said.

But Tepper said he knows he's in the right place when he sees the looks on his students' faces when they grasp a concept.

"You get that feeling, you know you're supposed to be there, and you know you're doing what you're supposed to be doing."

Contact the Features Editor at features@unc.edu.