For most, graduation from Georgetown means never entering a classroom again. Sure, some Hoyas go on to law school or medical school or some other form of higher education. But for a significant percentage — 8 to 15 percent, in fact — of Georgetown seniors, according to Steve de Man (COL ’04), the Georgetown recruitment manager for Teach For America, graduation is just the starting point for their academic career.

According to de Man and others, the goal of Teach For America is to create more equal opportunities in education across America. By teaching in some of the lowest-ranked schools in some of the most impoverished regions in the nation — from the inner cities of New York and Washington, D.C., to the isolated plains of Mississippi and New Mexico — TFA hopes to give both students and teachers a chance to succeed.

But the story isn’t always bright. Students have claimed that the 26 Teach For America sights, focusing primarily on minority students, are also usually plagued by administrative problems, lack of funding and other resources and generally bad learning environments.

Teach For America is known for its long application process, as well as for its many success stories. Following a formal written application process, there is a phone interview and a day-long interview including the infamous sample five minute mini-lesson. Since most of the accepted applicants have had no formal teaching experience, there is a summer training session extensive enough to prepare them for the challenges they will encounter.

Competition to get into the program is intense as well — approximately 20,000 people nationwide apply for 5,000 teaching positions; on a national level that means that 17 percent of applicants are accepted, says Dr. Dan Porterfield, the vice president for public affairs & strategic development and an advocate for students in TFA. But at Georgetown, the rate gets a bit higher, with about 30 percent of the 140 Georgetown applicants being accepted.

“It’s very, very hard to operate at such a high level all the time and be so selfless,” de Man says. “We need the most talented individuals in America.”

Many of the participants are motivated to help for a variety of reasons, the main ones being the desire to be challenged or to give back to the educational system that helped them.

Monica Esobar (COL ’07), currently a teacher at Anacostia High School in the District, said that it was a desire to give back to the community that inspired her to become a teacher.

“One in every 10 low income students graduates from college. I was identified as a low income student and [was] here [at Georgetown] on a full ride as well,” she said. “I can’t be that one that graduates and not give back.”

Picture Perfect

For Patrick O’Donnell (GRD ’10), Teach for America was just like the brochure promised. He showed up, taught for two years and says he made a major difference in his students’ lives.

“The fascinating thing about it is that I saw huge, huge growth,” O’Donnell says.

After graduating from Boston College in 2003, he started teaching seventh and eighth grade English at a middle school in South Central Los Angeles. He wanted to live somewhere with a warm climate, and he was attracted to Los Angeles because he thought he might eventually want to pursue a career in the entertainment industry.

But he realized right away that his assignment was going to be a challenge.

“I remember the first and second week, diagnosing my kids to find out what reading level they were on. I had eighth-graders who were reading on a second-grade reading level,” O’Donnell says. “It was totally shocking to me that the education system would allow kids to get to that point.”

So O’Donnell set goals for himself and his students. His first order of business: making his students believe in themselves.

“You just go on a mission to convince your students that absolutely they can succeed,” O’Donnell says. “You create a plan to get them from point A to point B.”

For one group of students in particular, O’Donnell’s plan worked to perfection. During his second year at the school, he started teaching an advanced eighth-grade English as a Second Language class. All 22 of the students in the course had failed their advanced ESL class in the sixth grade and again in the seventh grade.

O’Donnell knew the stakes were high for this class. A third year of failure would not just be demoralizing — it would mean that the students would have to continue to take ESL classes in high school. The problem with ESL classes is that they do not count for credits toward high school graduation, which would further hold back the struggling students.

“It was like if they didn’t pass this class, they were pretty much condemned to not graduate from high school,” O’Donnell says. “They had to pass this class.”

And they did — every one of them.

“That put all of them on a completely different life path by passing that class,” O’Donnell says. “Now they were in regular English, they were better prepared for high school, and they could graduate high school and go on to college.”

Though he finished teaching in 2005, O’Donnell says he remains in contact with his former students and visits Los Angeles often. In a recent visit, he drove some of his former students to soccer practice and had dinner at their homes.

“I’m still in touch with a lot of my kids and the vast majority of them are on track, and it’s amazing,” he says. “I wouldn’t say that was all because of what happened in my classroom. I’d like to think that a good foundation was laid there. But it’s pretty amazing to think what if those kids did not catch up in eighth grade?”

What the Posters Don’t Tell You

It’s easy to think that all TFA experiences are as perfect as O’Donnell’s, but Porterfield said that the program is “demanding-physically, intellectually, motivationally … It’s important as [the applicants] try to continue to imagine what it will be like to be accepted. It’s an almost 24/7 commitment.”

Porterfield said that many students shouldn’t expect the picture-perfect success story to happen overnight.

“It will be hard and lonely at times and people don’t always feel successful when they’re doing it, especially in the first year,” Porterfield said.

For Mallie Smith (COL ’06), a former senior Guide editor for The Hoya, the first impression of Teach For America was one of obligation. “I absolutely knew I wanted to do TFA,” she said. “I felt like I had to it. It was unlike anything else.”

It was the overall mission of TFA that appealed to her. “I was immediately smitten with the program; it was such a good concept,” she said. “What appealed to me the most was being in schools serving the students; being on the front lines. I wanted to do more good.”

After growing up in Manhattan, Smith knew that she wanted to return to New York City, so she was initially thrilled with her placement in the South Bronx. Although she had wanted to teach little kids, her Georgetown math experience made her a candidate for teaching older students in eighth grade.

“They had a separate training program, which I did for three months that I found excellent,” she said.

High expectations quickly came crashing down with a few weeks of her new life, however. Smith said that the next three months were filled with fear and frustration.

“I did not feel safe. It was really hard to get out of bed every day. I felt very alone once I was in the program really full time,” she said.

Smith said that there were 14 TFA teachers at her site, but the parts of the school were highly separated from each other. And with roughly 1,500 kids in grades six through eight, she said it was easy to get overwhelmed.

Smith said she didn’t believe that her experience was unique. She said school violence, lack of funding and lack of peer support made the task extremely difficult.

Frustrations with certain aspects of the program, such as interaction with students and school staff, are common.

According to de Man, TFA teachers face obstacles everyday, and the job is far from easy. He said that it is sometimes hard to do the day-to-day activities.

“There were so many times that I felt like I was running my head into the brick wall and was getting knocked down,” he says. “I could have said ‘Enough. There’s nothing I can change, it’s a broken system.’”

Smith could no longer deal with the constant uncertainty of the classroom.

“To respect myself and take care of myself I had to get myself out of that situation,” she said. “I’m normally a very happy person. … it got to the breaking point at the end.”

Smith said that while there are many issues from an organizational and administrative standpoint that caused the hardships that forced her to quit, she still respects the program.

Smith said that TFA does a good job with on-campus recruiting and brochures, portraying the experience as one that while difficult, will ultimately lead to success. She said that isn’t always the case.

Since leaving Teach For America, Smith has found another way to give back to less fortunate communities. Her current employer, JP Morgan, has started a partnership with TFA, being the first major investment bank to do so. She helped start a network of former teachers who now work in areas such as business and finance.

“All of those ‘golden children’ for TFA don’t teach anymore. They left the classroom,” she said. “But the concept, I still agree with it.”

But de Man claims that while teachers may stay for only two years, the “most important mission is building a pipeline of future leaders in all sectors to create systematic change in the system.”

”If you can get these individuals advocating, that’s the agent of change,” de Man says.

A New Frontier

Before her Teach For America assignment, Hanseul Kang (SFS ’04) had never been to the Southwest before. “I was very much an outsider to the region,” she says of her position as a U.S. history, government and economics teacher at a Navajo Nations school outside of Albuquerque, N.M.

But one of the first challenges she faced was the hesitance of the students there.

“Who is this girl from Georgetown? Is she going to think she’s better than us? ... I was nervous but drawn to teaching specific subjects, given how sensitive they would be,” she said.

The students Kang taught, the majority of whom were 11th- and 12th-grade Native American students, spanned a wide range in terms of educational background and levels, as well as commitment and desire toward school and learning.

One girl, who Kang described as angry and sullen but still very bright, participated in traditional dances and pow-wows with her family. When working on the Declaration of Independence in class, Kang recalled that “she raised her hand and asked, ‘Why are we bothering to learn this? This is a lie. What happened to peoples’ liberty, equality?’”

Kang was moved. “What a way to end class,” she said. Later, when the class moved on to Langston Hughes’s poetry, Kang said that the same girl was actually participating and expanding on the ideas of other students. “At one point she raised her hand and smiled at me, Kang recalled. “That’s when I knew that we had established a connection.”

Kang speaks with pride as she describes another of her success stories — a special education student with a visual impairment and a second-grade reading level in twelfth grade. She had been simply instructed to keep him from failing her class.

But Kang said that with a little attention, the student defied the odds.

“It took a lot more one-on-one time, but in the end [he] took the same test as the rest of the kids,” she said. “A lot of people were surprised at what he was capable of.”

Despite the tough aspects of teaching, Kang said the experience was made considerably easier with the outstanding support of the TFA program directors and administrators at the school.

The great experience motivated her to stay involved with the program. She said she makes a point to return to visit her students on the reservation. “I go back at least once a year,” she says.

“One of the hardest things was that we really loved our students and were really devoted to them, but it was a really rural area, far from our families and far apart,” she said.

Still, Kang does acknowledge that TFA is a very big commitment.

“It’s a big decision to make because two years seems like such a long time. It’s daunting,” she said. “I couldn’t picture myself standing in front of a classroom in front of 30 kids.”

But Kang said that overcoming that initial fear is what makes the experience worth it. “Everyone is going to be nervous, but sometimes you have to take that leap of faith. The biggest fear heard over and over again is the fear that you won’t be good enough and find out you’re a terrible teacher,” she explained. “The truth is the only way to be a bad teacher is to stop trying to improve. Working throughout terrible time shows you are not a bad teacher, you will be a good one.”