As a junior, Beth Wierzbieniec '99 was planning a career in public health-that is, until the day she heard about Teach for America (TFA) at an alumni presentation at the coffeehouse.
“I remember saying to my friends on the way out, 'This is what I'm going to do!' Even though I had no background in education, the mission of trying to level the playing field in education spoke to me, and I wanted to be part of it.”
Wierzbieniec, then president of Student Forum, a Big Brothers/Big Sisters volunteer, and director of Union's first Big Brothers/Big Sisters summer camp, as well as organizer of a month-long series of dialogs on race and gender, was the kind of student the highly-selective Teach for America seeks.
She joined on graduation, went through a five-week training session in Houston, and arrived in Baltimore that August. She was hired by the district as a first-year teacher and received a TFA stipend as well. She also began graduate studies at Johns Hopkins through a partnership with TFA, under which teachers like her are automatically admitted. She was able to complete her master's degree in teaching, using the stipend to pay her way.
What was it like walking into the Baltimore inner-city school that first day?
“A bit overwhelming-it's the largest middle school in Baltimore, with 1,300 students in one building. And as any teacher will tell you, your first year in the classroom, you don't know what to expect. It was very, very difficult-an enormous challenge to balance what
I wanted to see in my classroom and the reality of what was going on in the building. These schools are under-resourced, so, for example, I had to use the same U.S. history textbooks that I had when I was a middle school student.” She teaches social studies to 115 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders (kids age ten to fifteen).
“I was lucky because I wasn't the first TFA teacher at my school, so I didn't have to set the stage, and I was warmly welcomed,” she adds. “At my school, there are seven TFA teachers now.”
Wierzbieniec decided to stay beyond the two-year commitment and is now in her third year. “My school has been taken over by the state for under-performing, and I wanted to see what kind of reform would get implemented. A lot of people have a very jaded view of what middle school is like, but I'm getting a real perspective on what they're trying to do to fix what's broken in the system.”
Reaching beyond the classroom for ways to motivate her students, Wierzbieniec and another TFA teacher started a girls' basketball team-the Lady Wildcats. “You have to be doing well in the classroom to play on the team. For some, this means academic achievement has to increase.”
Now also a spokesperson for Teach for America, Wierzbieniec returned to Union recently to recruit. Speaking to a packed room of students, faculty, and administrators, she told them about the power of being a part of this effort: “You not only have impact in your classroom; you join a network and can continue
to affect education throughout the U.S. As part of the Americorps network, you are paid a stipend of close to $5,000 year to be used for educational purposes-either paying off undergraduate loans or graduate education. I didn't have to write any checks to Johns Hopkins.”
Although Wierzbieniec isn't sure if she will stay in the classroom after this year, she does intend to pursue a career in education. “After this experience, there's no way I could step outside of education. I couldn't possibly walk away from it.”
Teach for America was born in 1990 to develop a national teacher corps of recent, high-achieving college graduates to improve education around the nation. There are now 8,000 TFA alumni who have taught nearly 1 million students around the country.
Eighteen Union alumni have gone on to Teach for America:
- Erin Aloan '01, Louisiana
- Jen Caruso '00, New York City
- Nathan Coffin '95, San Francisco area
- Randi Dupont '01, New Jersey
- Rebecca Friedman '00, Atlanta
- Paul Hays '95 (MAT), Louisiana
- Piel Hollingsworth '95 (MAT), Louisiana
- Valerie LeBlanc '00, Baltimore
- Michelle Leimsider '01, Houston
- Chris Leone '00, Baltimore
- Wilson Martinez Wilson '94, New Jersey
- Jen Miller '01, Los Angeles
- Paul Palaszewski '90, Los Angeles
- Sandra Rojas '95, Houston
- Joann Suchocki '96, New York City
- Sarah Teasdale '94, Los Angeles
- Gregory VanHolt '00, San Francisco area
- Beth Wierzbieniec '99, Baltimore