Your teaching assignment
Teach For America plays a critical role in improving schools and communities across the country. As more school districts seek Teach For America teachers, we are identifying even more opportunities for you to impact some of our nation’s most underserved areas. We encourage you to consider a variety of placement options where you can make a real and immediate impact at a critical time.
How our assignment process works
Our assignment process consists of four factors:
- The availability of teaching positions across the country
- Your regional and teaching subject preferences
- Regional requirements for incoming teachers
- Regional certification requirements
We work with our regions to determine the availability of teaching positions for the upcoming school year, and then we attempt to match your preferences with your teaching assignment. Our process considers the number of teachers that our regions need and regional certification requirements as they relate to undergraduate coursework.
Given these parameters, we are not always able to match preferences with placement. While we work hard to place corps member in their preferred regions, teacher placement is ultimately designed to maximize corps members’ impact on student outcomes.
Your teaching region and subject
The urgent call for change in education creates unprecedented opportunity to have a direct impact on the academic and life prospects of students across the country – especially in regions and subjects where there is the greatest need. Therefore, we are expanding in regions and districts and increasing the number of teaching placements in high-need regions and subjects. Considering this context, we encourage you to be open to a variety of placement options.
Regardless of where you teach, the magnitude of your impact will be a result of your dedication, persistence, and willingness to take advantage of the training and resources available for you.
Corps member impact in high-need areas: In their own words
Hear from corps members who are responding to the call for change in our nation’s highest-need regions and subjects.
Maisie Wright
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- Corps: Delta Corps '06
- Alma Mater: Cornell University, Anthropology and Africana Studies
- Teaching: middle school math
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 Looking at the academic data from the Arkansas Delta in 2006, it is easy to see the need for quality teachers. Only 226 students from low-income districts graduated from high school demonstrating preparedness for college (scored at least a 19 on both mathematics and language on their ACT). Fewer than ten African-American students in the entire state of Arkansas passed the AP Calculus Exam.
These numbers are alarming, yet motivate me and my fellow teachers to change the reality for kids growing up in this region. Teaching is hard. It takes constant diligence, careful planning, unmatched patience, and infinite amounts of energy. Before the year starts, I plan units, lessons, incentives, and tracking systems. From day one, we work hard to meet high expectations in character and academics. Due to the uniqueness of each student, differentiation is a must on a daily basis. I am constantly assessing where my students are and adjusting lessons to address each of their needs.
Ultimately, all the work pays off and opens our eyes to the potential of the Delta and its students. For example, at the beginning of the school year, fewer than 50 percent of my seventh graders demonstrated proficiency on their sixth grade state benchmark exam. By the end, 77 percent demonstrated proficiency on their seventh grade benchmark. These students will go on to change the data on college-ready high school graduates. Through their hard work, they are not only changing their own lives, but they are drastically changing what is possible for the Arkansas Delta
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Emily Green
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- Corps: New Mexico Corps '07
- Alma Mater: University of Texas, Special Education
- Teaching: special education
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Teachers serve as the nation's ultimate gift givers; they give the gifts of reading, writing, math, and understanding. Unfortunately, up to 10 percent of students have some form of identified disability that inhibits them from learning. They are not able to receive the gifts that their teachers offer. Special education teachers have the amazing opportunity to work with these students, help prevent them from failing, and ensure that they too have access to an excellent education.
When I first walked into my classroom as a special education teacher, I encountered a group of frustrated students. They really wanted to read, yet did not understand how. We began at the beginning and persistently worked to fill in the skills and concepts they had missed along the way. We covered everything from vowel sounds to rhyming words, from comprehension strategies to sight words.
Two years later, six of these students now read at grade level. Another three have made over three years progress in reading in less than two years. They have gained the ability to read and understand. Even greater, they have gained the gift of self confidence.
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Alex Brownstein
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- Corps: Indianapolis Corps '08
- Alma Mater: Texas A&M, Finance and Marketing
- Teaching: high school math
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For the 2008-09 school year, only twenty-six and a half percent of students in Indianapolis Public Schools passed the math portion of the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress exam. The state average was 66.4 percent. Every day, I work with students who use their fingers to count, don't know their multiplication tables, and can't comprehend negative numbers. It is imperative for us to dramatically improve their knowledge and ability in mathematics.
My high school students began this year at a pre-algebra level; they consistently made mistakes involving order of operations and shut down when they saw fractions; word problems were impossible. My approach was to break down each problem as best as I could and show every step. While this methodical approach was occasionally tedious, it was the best strategy for my kids. When grading assessments, it was always fun to see many of my students work out every tiny step of a problem, exactly as I taught it to them.
My kids displayed tremendous growth over the course of the year. While they didn't master every standard, they mastered the majority of them - and I could tell they enjoyed it. I made it a point to tell them how smart they were and that they were mastering standards that aren't easy to master. Our district has four benchmark exams each year, and my students not only beat district average every time - we led the district twice!
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Whitnie Low
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- Corps: Miami-Dade Corps '07
- Alma Mater: Boston College
- Teaching: middle school science
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State assessments focus on reading and math, often leaving science lost from the radar. As a result, only 31 percent of Florida students pass the eighth grade science Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). To help students catch up, it is absolutely essential that enthusiastic, hard-working teachers teach science.
In my classroom, I make sure that my students are always engaged with hands-on, objective-based activities so that they can directly correlate their experiences with the information they need to be successful on the FCAT and beyond. Every week, I hold after-school tutoring; each night, I call (or text) at least one of my 130 students to make sure they are doing homework. Additionally, as science department chairperson, I work every day during homeroom to tutor students on essential concepts.
My students showed an amazing amount of growth in the state tests and proved that they are just as capable of learning high-level content as their more affluent counterparts. They learned how to think with a scientific mind and use quantitative observations. More importantly, in preparation for high school, they became more diligent and accountable.
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Kara Ebe
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- Corps: Indianapolis Corps '08
- Alma Mater: University of Missouri, Business Administration and International Studies
- Teaching: high school math
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Math forms the foundation of almost everything we do in our daily lives. Unfortunately, so many young people do not have basic foundational math skills like multiplication or subtraction - skills that are necessary to advance through pre-algebra or algebra.
As a math lab algebra teacher, I work one-on-one with a number of students each class period. This is essential because so many of my students need a tremendous amount of remediation in basic math. We constantly work on strengthening their skills in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division while incorporating those growing skills into the algebra curriculum so they do not fall further and further behind. With continued practice, review, and encouragement, many of my students have improved.
I was fortunate to have a significant impact on a handful of students. One in particular was Darnell. When I first met Darnell, he told me that he did not know what division was. He was averaging 30 percent on the first few quizzes and tests. At the end of the semester, he scored a 78 percent on the final. He is a phenomenal student; his success and improvement is an incredible feeling that both he and I share.
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Alyson McGee
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- Corps: Delta Corps '08
- Alma Mater: University of Georgia, English
- Teaching: first grade
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Teaching first grade in the Delta has been an eye-opening and enjoyable experience. On the first day of school, not a single child in my classroom could correctly identify every letter in the alphabet. Very few had mastered one-to-one correspondence (the ability to count physical objects) past five.
We read everyday from morning to afternoon, after which the students went home and read more. Everyday, we counted and worked on math; and then my students went home and worked even more. Because they began to feel the excitement that comes with academic success, their confidence grew and they were inspired to work even harder. We talked about making sure that our entire class could experience success together, which led to a natural decrease in behavioral problems.
My students finished the year at a second grade middle-of-the-year reading level and mastered eighty percent of the first grade objectives. I have become incredibly passionate about early education because I've seen my students flourish this year and know that whatever else happens, they will always know how to read. They have the foundational tools and a passion for learning that they will take with them after they leave my classroom. Most importantly, they know that hard work leads to achievement.
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Pete Schu
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- Corps: Rio Grande Valley Corps '06
- Alma Mater: Purdue University, Creative and Technical Writing
- Teaching: high school science
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Science education is lacking across the nation. In the Rio Grande Valley, that gap is exacerbated because science is typically neglected until fifth grade, the same year that students take a standardized state test in the subject. As you can imagine, cramming four years of foundational science knowledge and skills into a four-month test blitz is an uphill battle.
In order to catch my students up, I knew I had to make science accessible and motivating. The first obstacle was the fact that 95 percent of my students exclusively spoke Spanish outside of the classroom. I overcame this challenge by doing hands-on labs every week with my students and encouraging them to investigate science phenomena in their neighborhoods and ranches. I also taught them how many science words in English and Spanish share the same Latin root.
On my diagnostics at the beginning of the school year, students achieved an overall average mastery of 36 percent. Knowing I had to meet my students where they were, we started with basic tasks such as using a ruler to measure everything in the classroom. As their confidence grew, so too did their scientific skills. My students were engaged in science, whether investigating their own cells under a microscope or completing their own independent science fair projects, something none of my students had ever done before. We ended the year with an overall average mastery of 80 percent, but what really resonated with me was the look of confidence and excitement on my students' faces during the science fair. What would have seemed an impossible task at the beginning of the year was now the most exciting part of their day.
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Elsie Urueta
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- Corps: St. Louis Corps '07
- Alma Mater: University of Oklahoma, international business and marketing
- Teaching: special education
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There is no doubt that our students with special needs are those in dire need of good teachers. Our special education students need the most support, but sadly they often receive less.
My sixth grade students started off the school year at reading levels ranging from pre-K to fourth grade. I knew that I had to set individual goals to ensure that each student was challenged and had opportunities to grow. I then showed the students reading assignments at their current reading levels and compared them to reading assignments at their goaled reading level. This turned out to be extremely helpful, as students were able to conceptualize exactly what two years growth in reading meant. Lastly, I customized instruction to meet the needs of my higher-level readers, lower-level readers, and those in the middle.
One of my students entered my classroom without knowing the letters of the alphabet. By the end of the year, he advanced two years by reading at a mid-first grade reading level. My other students enjoyed similar results. At the end of the year, every student in the class improved by one and a half to three grade levels in reading.
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Your teaching assignment
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