A few weeks back, I blogged (once, twice, and three times) about Teach For America (TFA) and its impacts on Penn, Philadelphia, and the US as a whole. Today, Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach For America, and Princeton grad, spoke in Huntsman Hall to an audience of about 50 people.
The irony of Huntsman Hall as the location was almost too much to ignore.
Kopp told the audience she came up with the idea in her final years at Princeton. As a public policy major, she noticed how Wall Street firms (the same ones with flyers posted outside the door) aggressively recruited her fellow Tigers and wondered why public schools weren’t doing the same thing. After all, educational disparity, she said, is one of the “greatest problems” our nation faces.
Kopp also addressed one of the issues I brought up in my blog — the problem of teacher attrition. While it is important to get well-educated and motivated teachers into schools, she doesn’t think TFA is a silver bullet.
Instead, Kopp spoke of cultivating a “new generation of leadership that will understand the urban classroom.” So, even if corps members stay in the classroom for only two years, if they can go on to positions of influence, the urban classroom might be better of because of it.
I’d have to judge Kopp’s speech a success, if only because Huntsman was the location. If any future I-Bankers walked by and heard what was going on, the guilt trip alone might change their career plans.
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