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Rashid Williams didn’t aspire to become a teacher.

PHOTO/PAUL WILLIAMS III

Rashid Williams, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Charlotte, is in his first year with Teach For America, a national program that trains recent college graduates to improve education opportuniites in high-poverty schools.

Williams, a first-year seventh grade social studies teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, didn’t have career aspirations. He just wanted to give back.

“I am big on social justice,” he said. “I am concerned about our future. I believe our youth deserve the best educational opportunities possible. It crushes me daily to see the statistics and how our young men are being reduced to numbers more than they are viewed as individuals.”

Williams was recruited by Teach For America, a national program that trains recent college graduates to improve education opportunities in high-poverty schools.

In the U.S., 9-year-olds in low-income communities are already three grade levels behind their high-income peers. Half are not likely to graduate from high school, and those who do will read and compute math, on average, at an eighth-grade level.

“Every student can be successful when given the right environment and right opportunity to learn,” said Tim Hurley, executive director of TFA-Charlotte.

Recruits commit to at least two years in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong advocates of educational opportunity.

TFA works with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to place corps members in the district’s most under-resourced schools. Over 200 corps members are teaching in 61 of CMS’s 70 FOCUS schools and the public charter school Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP. In the 2008-09 academic year, 24 percent of new hires for the district’s FOCUS schools were TFA recruits. 

“It starts with effective teachers on the ground that can effect grass roots change and make a difference,” Williams said.

Williams said statistics about the achievement gap in high-poverty urban areas is not a deterrent.

“It motivates me. I connect with these kids because I have been in their shoes,” he said. “They are growing up similar to how I grew up.”

Children growing up in poverty face challenges that students from wealthier communities may not. Often, their circumstances interfere with learning.

“You have to understand and address these issues in a way in which they are not used as excuses,” said Erica Davis, who will spend her first year teaching seventh grade science at Wilson Middle School. 

Davis, who has a master’s in social work, joined TFA because of a deep desire to empower and make a difference in the lives of children who have been marginalized by society. “Education is the most powerful mechanism of empowerment,” she said.

Davis believes the disparities in education are a social injustice and lack of access to quality education for poor and disadvantaged children is a human rights issue.

“When you have such large gaps between such large groups of people it is a systematic problem,” she said. “It is an embedded stereotype about people of color and economically disadvantaged students’ capabilities and desire to learn. The attitude is they don’t want to learn.”

Davis said it is the accepted norm for poor students to underachieve.

“They are not held to a high standard,” she said. “Having these norms embedded in children hurts self-esteem and confidence and weakens their belief that they can learn.”

TFA recruits are ambitious and have high expectations for their students. Williams said it is about setting high standards.
“The expectation has to be high,” he said. “You have to expect greatness to get greatness, and when you give your best, you receive the best.”

Davis believes in setting high standards for her students. “If you hold the standard high, they will jump up and meet it,” she said. “I always tell my students they can do this.” And for many that is what makes all the difference."

“It is often our teachers that see something positive in [us] that we may not see in [ourselves],” said Williams. “When they focus on the positive and don’t just harp on the negative, it boosts self-esteem because they see us as someone better than we can see our self.”

Although TFA recruits work in high-poverty schools, they  focus their efforts on being effective.

A 2008 Urban Institute study found that TFA corps members were, on average, more effective than other teachers in all subject areas, especially in math and science. In all cases, the positive impact of having a TFA teacher was at least twice that of having an experienced teacher relative to a new teacher.

A 2004 independent study by Mathematics Policy Research found that students of TFA corps members make 10 percent more progress in a year in math than is typically expected and slightly exceed the normal expectation for annual progress in reading.

“It is exciting to see teachers whose students succeed. Their students are proving that all children are capable of exceptional achievement,” said Hurley. He said the mission is not “to go in and save these kids, but give them the opportunity to prove themselves and their abilities.”

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