Miami Quarterly

Issue date: 4/13/09 Section: Economy & Job Market

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When Miami senior Monica Morse takes her diploma this May she won’t need to worry about finding a job. She will not be susceptible to company cut backs or lay-offs, nor will she be gearing up for grad school in the fall. Instead, Morse feels confident when she steps into her Teach for America classroom for the first time this fall, after only weeks of educational training, she will be ready to impact her kindergarten students for the next two years.

Like several other graduating Miami students, Morse is joining Teach for America corps (TFA), a program that enlists the country's most promising future leaders, with no educational background, to walk into high-poverty classrooms. Since 1990, TFA has recruited college graduates of all majors and career goals to participate in this two-year, paid program, and has now reached approximately 3 million students by enlisting 20,000 graduates.

When she applied in November, Morse thought her chances of getting into this competitive program were slim, and even held on tightly to her "back-up plan" of attending grad school at New York University before finding out in January that she had been accepted at TFA. While it was a challenge to leave behind her dreams of attending grad school for theater, Morse feels confident she made the right decision.

 "I am such a plan person. I always have a master plan," Morse says. "It was really scary looking at this plan that I've had for eight or ten years and realizing if I accept this I may never go to NYU. But I knew that I could put [NYU] on the shelf and it would still be there, whereas Teach for America might not always be there."

In fact, while her plans to attend grad school are pushed aside for two years, TFA may help Morse increase her odds of going to grad school because, as the website states, graduate schools are eager to recruit TFA alumni since they know alumni have already gone through a highly selective process. Morse was required to go through several interviews and a mock-classroom interview before finding out she had the job. While theater at NYU remains on the back burner for now, Morse still hopes to keep her passion for drama close by her side over the next two years by teaching students about art. This was one reason she accepted the job.

"Kids in low income areas need to experience beauty and need to experience something bigger than their situation," Morse says. "I want to incorporate songs and dance whenever I can."

This passion is one thing that led Morse to her future classroom in Florida. TFA recruiters usually find that passionate leaders have what it takes to excel as teachers. According to recruitment director Courter Shimeall, TFA recruiters spent this past year recruiting several Miami students to the corps. A TFA alumnus himself, Shimeall believes that leadership translates well into the classroom and is the cornerstone for why this program has been so successful.

One of the Miami leaders Shimeall spent time recruiting this past fall was senior Tyler Miller, who originally had no intention of joining TFA having never heard of the program prior to his senior year. After an intense recruitment process filled with applications, essays and interviews, Miller found out he was placed in Connecticut to teach high schools students and believes his passion for impacting people is what landed him the job.

"I hope that for once in my life it's not about me so that I can look back and say my life was a service to others at some point," Miller says. "It seems like we have a very selfish society where the first 25 years of our lives are just schooling for ourselves. To serve others selflessly is what I'm most looking forward to."

Miller and Morse both believe that faith played a large role in their decisions to join TFA because although it is a secular program, Morse saw an opportunity to live and work with people of her same Christian religion.

"There is a huge population of Teach for America that self-identify as people of faith," Morse says. "That was good for me going in."

Morse hopes to live with people she meets at the month-long educational crash course this summer in New York, known as Institute, so that she immediately has people who she can rely on for support and who will be facing the same challenges. Miller plans to live by himself in Connecticut in hopes of growing individually. Given the immediate culture shock upon arrival in their locations, Miller and Morse face challenges that both believe will stretch them in new ways.

 "We're going from this high-class Miami to a place where I'm going to be a minority," Miller says. "I'm used to being a white male majority. I'm not going to be making a whole lot of money, and I'm going to have a big lifestyle adjustment coming off of my parents. But that's what I'm looking for."

Morse echoes a similar fear about being a white, female minority in her new neighborhood, but remains confident that her commitment to the cause will pull her through.

"Teach for America is honest with you that this is going to be hard," Morse says. "One of the biggest things is to know that you are ideologically committed to the point that whatever challenges hit you you'll stick with it."

While their graduating peers will step into offices and graduate schools in the fall, Morse and Miller will be walking into classrooms with first-day nerves, but with confidence that they will soon be affecting children's lives.

"Will I be a great teacher?" Miller asks. "Not sure. But I hope that I can be someone who can be their friend as well. Someone who they can learn from, who is a positive role model."

Morse also hopes to be a positive influence in her students' lives and is even ready to put aside all future plans in order to achieve this goal. Come August, she will be joining the thousands of other TFA leaders whose number-one goal for at least two years will be to end educational inequality. Though the task at hand is a great one, Morse is confident the end result will be worth the challenges and tears that may arise.

 "I know going down there might change my life. So while I'm keeping the option of grad school open, I might go down there and think this is where I need to be for the rest of my life," Morse says.

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