Lesson Plan

When Brittany Corprew was a college sophomore, she knew exactly what she wanted to do after graduation. During one of her Women and Criminal Justice classes at Penn State in 2011, a recruiter dropped by to distribute brochures about the nonprofit Teach for America program.  While the pitch was intended for seniors, Corprew was hooked. She waited until her senior year and applied to Teach for America in October 2013. She interviewed by phone and again in person, and was accepted to the program by January. Corprew is now a third grade teacher at Pugh Elementary School in Houston.

Launched in 1989 as the product of founder Wendy Kopp’s undergraduate thesis, Teach for America recruits college graduates to teach in low-income communities, typically for two-year stints. In exchange for their public service, recruits are paid an entry-level teacher’s salary and offered assistance with their student loans through concurrent enrollment in the federal AmeriCorps program. Twenty-five years after inducting its charter corps, the organization now places teachers in 50 cities and rural communities nationwide.

In spite of challenges with two recent recruitment cycles, which Teach for America officials attribute to an increasingly competitive economy, the program remains popular with college seniors. About 45,000 individuals applied for just 5,300 spots in the 2013-14 corps, hailing from a diverse range of Ivy League schools, flagship public universities, small liberal arts colleges, and historically black colleges and universities. According to Harvard Magazine, about one in five of the university’s seniors has applied in recent years. Corprew joined a cohort of over 40 corps members from Penn State alone. In terms of hiring, Teach for America is something of a millennial whisperer.

Read more about Teach For America here.