July 2004

Young Alumni Reflect on “Teach for America” Experiences

Dottie O’Brien, CAS/BA’00, didn’t always know she wanted to be a teacher. But when the psychology major took an internship with the Children’s Defense Fund during her senior year at AU, she knew she had found a field that felt good to work in and that she was proud to contribute. “I was reading about the disparities in schools – that basically said where you grow up will determine your outcome in life. I had never made the connection before that my zip code would make me successful or not,” remembers the Orange, Connecticut native.

That same year, O’Brien also got involved with Project Playground, an effort by her best friend, Kim Williams ’00, to build a playground in a poor neighborhood of Southeast Washington. Through the project, O’Brien helped start a new tutoring program with students from several area elementary schools. “An after-school program was already in place, but we went in and focused on homework and academics through Project Playground, and I couldn’t believe what I saw.”

Among the poor learning conditions, O’Brien recounts infrastructure issues such as schools with broken windows, spray-painted walls, and no heat; near illiteracy among 5th graders unable to sound out words; and a severe shortage of books. “Of course you can’t improve your reading skills if you can’t practice and you don’t have the materials to do so,” laments O’Brien. It’s powerful to read alarming statistics about disadvantaged children, she notes. But seeing and working with the children’s faces those statistics represent is downright sobering.

O’Brien’s new awareness caused her to take a great interest in children’s advocacy, nonprofits, and doing work to improve schools in urban areas. When she graduated from AU, it made perfect sense for her to look into the Teach for America (TFA) program, which one of her friends from high school had participated. “I remember her being one of those people who you know will be really amazing. When I found out what she was doing I was really impressed,” says O’Brien.

Almost immediately, O’Brien was also impressed that Teach for America recognized the achievement gap between affluent and poorer communities. “The organization didn’t just talk about it, but actually had concerted action steps to improve it, such as putting very ambitious dedicated individuals in a classroom where the school is underperforming and students are at least two grade levels behind in reading and math,” she notes.

Three years of teaching, a Master’s in Education from Loyola-Marymount University in Los Angeles, and dozens of students later, O’Brien is now a program director for the Los Angeles TFA office, where she oversees a staff of 60 new teachers. In that role, she spends much of her time visiting different middle school and high school sites, observing new teachers and their classrooms, giving them feedback, and meeting with them in the evening to talk about their lessons. “This opportunity allows me to take what I learned as a teacher and help others focus on the academics,” she explains.

Typically a two-year program, Teach for America trains its staff rigorously in a structured five-week summer institute that includes pedagogy and teaching summer school before new teachers enter the classroom full-time. Then, “corps members” are assigned a preferred grade level and subject area in one of 22 regions across the country.

O’Brien’s first assignment in 2000 was in Compton, Calif. “It was insane…amazing…hard. I had second graders who showed up expecting me to know how to teach them to read and do math. I realized I had this incredible responsibility: If they left 2nd grade without those skills I would just be perpetuating the problem.”

After testing her students in the beginning of the year, O’Brien found that only a few children were reading at grade level. “Most were behind, and I had four kids who couldn’t give me the sounds of the alphabet.” She set reading goals with all of them, on how many words they could read per minute and comprehension. “We worked every minute of the day strategically to build those skills. They were behind and we only had a certain amount of time.”

Of all the lessons O’Brien took away with her from that first year, one resonates more than others: “It was the first time I had worked really hard at something and didn’t succeed at it every day. There were days when I shut my classroom door [at the end of the day] and said, ‘I failed them today.’ It was a crazy first year. I was at school at 6:30 every morning.”

Now, four years later, O’Brien helps new teachers to find their way.

In February 2004, O’Brien came back to AU to do some recruiting for TFA. Of the 22 AU seniors who applied for the program, only four were accepted. “Teach for America is definitely very selective, but in a good way,” notes O’Brien. “It has to be, because the students that we go to serve need the absolute best because they historically haven’t even gotten the minimum.”

Class of 2004 grads Andrea Browning, SIS/BA was placed in Mississippi; Bridget Mann, SOC/BA will be teaching in New Orleans; Christopher Cusmano, SPA/BA, will be teaching 6th grade in the South Bronx, and Bridget Borsinger, SIS/BA, will be teaching special education in New York City. Says Borsinger: “Let’s face it: Not everyone joins TFA for some sort of profound reason. I saw the application on-line, had an interview, and upon acceptance decided that NYC would be a pretty cool place to spend my next two years. After all the pay isn't that bad, I'd get my masters, and I'm all for helping kids learn how to read.”

But once she was a few weeks into the summer training, the first day Borsinger stood before a class as a teacher, her attitude changed. “At that moment, whatever reason I thought might have motivated me to join TFA fell away as I realized how deep and profound my motivation is: I am here for the students!”

Borsinger says Teach for America alumni and staff say this year’s new teachers have it better than any other corps before them, but she still feels like she’s been to teacher boot camp. “Everything is overwhelming, we don't get enough sleep and there just isn't enough time to spread around. But somehow we manage to understand that we are not here in spite of the challenges, we are here because of them.”

For more information about Teach for America, contact Dottie O’Brien at 213-489-9272, ext 129, or dottie.obrien@teachforamerica.org.

-Melissa Reichley