Closing the achievement gap

By Gina Belmonte

With rolls of colorful posters in her arms, Kristin Swenson, '07, eagerly opened the door of her first classroom as a teacher, only to find a cramped, drab, 20-by-10 space that had served as a detention center the previous year.

Prodded by veteran teachers, Swenson claimed a larger room and prepared her first sixth-grade lesson -- a team-building exercise jump-started by reading "Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears," by Verna Aardema.

Swenson was one of 16 Santa Clara alumni who began work this year for Teach for America, an organization that offers recent college graduates a two-year corps membership in 26 rural and urban regions across the nation.

Teach for America strives to close the achievement gap between students of low-income areas and their more affluent peers, said Amber Saloner, Bay Area Teach for America recruitment director.

Nine-year-olds that grow up in low-income areas are often three grade levels behind their peers in high-income communities, and half of them won't graduate from high school by age 18, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress.

Jessica Silliman, '07, said she found it very rewarding to see the impact she made on the students and see them grow.

But working for Teach for America can amplify difficulties for first-time teachers because alumni usually have no undergraduate educational studies or teaching experience, said Silliman.

After a five-week summer training session, fresh-out-of-college graduates are given a class of their own, required to come up with lesson plans each day and encouraged to strive for at least two grade levels of growth in their students each year.

Swenson said she felt burdened with immense pressures, and she left the program six weeks after the official start of her teaching.

The drop out rate before completion of the two years is approximately 10 percent, said Saloner.

"It was so stressful because it's almost like you're pretty much putting on a show. You have to be on all the time," said Swenson.

Placed in Hunts Point, a neighborhood in the Bronx, Swenson taught sixth grade special education students in a variety of subjects.

Swenson said that often times, disruptive student behavior made it difficult to execute her lesson plans.

"A lot of the times you just felt you were a social worker and a teacher, and it's hard to do both," said Swenson.

But Silliman said that Teach for America is a great opportunity to give back to society.

"I have the opportunity to impact the lives of 100 students every day, and I don't think many people can say that out of college," said Silliman.

Melissa Peterson, '02, who teaches high school French and an SAT preparation course in North Carolina, said she joined Teach for America to give back to the community.

Both Silliman and Peterson learned about some of their students' personal hardships.

Silliman helped one student from a single-parent family fill out a resume, only to later find out that the student was denied the job because he was undocumented.

"That was just really hard for me. I realized the type of difficulties that these students are facing," said Silliman.

Earlier this year, one of Peterson's students was dealing with domestic problems and failing her high school French class.

Peterson made the effort to motivate the student, who soon showed notable improvements in class.

When Peterson showed up to watch the student star in a school play, the student ran toward Peterson after the final bow to ask what her teacher thought of her performance.

"It was such an endearing moment to see that my approval and me telling her she had done something well actually meant something to her," said Peterson.

To learn more about Teach for America, visit the Web site at www.teachforamerica.org.

Contact Gina Belmonte at gbelmonte@scu.edu.