How it began...

In the beginning, on January 28, 2011, I came across an article about Teach For America.  Having graduated from a small state college more than 10 years ago, I had not heard about Teach For America when I was in school.  There was no campus recruiter...or if there was, they weren't looking for me.  I was actually fairly uninvolved in college life.

So January 28th, a mere two months ago, was my first introduction to Teach For America.  I was immediately intrigued and wanted to apply.  I figured that at least I should apply and then if I received an offer I could decide if this was really really something I was willing to do.

I read all about the TFA mission and began getting excited about the opportunity to be a part of reforming education in America.  I sent in my application 7 days after reading that newspaper article to meet the February 4th final deadline.  

After my application was sent, I continued to read more.  I started to get more invested in the possibility of being a teacher.  And then I came upon information about TFA's highly competitive application process and low acceptance rate.  I wondered how I would compare to young ivy league grads.  I read that in 2009 nearly 10% of Princeton graduates applied to the program and only 25% of those who applied were accepted.  I started to become concerned that this newly hatched dream may not become a reality.  


So I started making contingency plans.  I discovered that there were other alternative certification programs, many other programs.  I quickly became overwhelmed and tried to narrow down my options based on cities that I thought I would want to live in, cities I could afford to live in, cities that weren't laying off significant numbers of teachers already, cities in states that weren't completely bankrupt, and programs that seemed to offer some financial incentives.  

In the end I applied to:  

• Memphis Teaching Fellows  
• Because of the comparably lower cost of living and comparably higher teacher salary, and while knowing very little about Memphis the idea of it appealed to me
• teachNOLA
• Because I love New Orleans
• Mississippi Teacher Corps
• For the program benefits and although I knew nothing about the Mississippi Delta, it sounded intriguing
• DC Teaching Fellows
• Because I love DC

I was offered in person interviews with each program except for Mississippi Teacher Corps (Mississippi Teacher Corps does not do in person interviews).  

I will detail my experience with each program in greater detail in coming posts.  However, as of today 3/31, here is the status of each:

• Teach For America
• Phone interviewed, In-person interviewed, waiting for results to come in 4 days!
• Memphis Teaching Fellows
• In-person interviewed for an English position, received an offer! 
• teachNOLA
• Received an offer to interview for a Special Ed position, but didn't sign up quickly enough and wasn't sure if I could afford to live comfortably in NOLA on a teacher's salary
• Mississippi Teacher Corps 
• No phone interview or in-person interview, received rejection email :(
• DC Teaching Fellows
• Received an offer to interview for Elementary Education, but canceled the interview mostly because I didn't think I could afford to live in DC on a teacher's salary and it sounds like things in the school district are a particularly big mess

So now I'm weighing options of my current job, Memphis Teaching Fellows, and hopefully a 3rd awesome TFA option next week!