Teach For America is the national corps of outstanding recent college graduates of all academic majors who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools and become leaders in the effort to expand educational opportunity.
Our mission is to enlist our nation's most promising future leaders in the movement to eliminate educational inequality. In the short run, our corps members work relentlessly to ensure that more students growing up today in our country's lowest-income communities are given the educational opportunities they deserve. In the long run, our alumni are a powerful force of leaders working from inside education and from every other sector to effect the fundamental changes needed to ensure that all children have an equal chance in life.
Our corps members
Teach For America corps members are a diverse group of talented recent college graduates who possess the leadership skills needed to make a real impact over the short and long term.
Who they are
While Teach For America doesn't seek any single profile, corps members have an average GPA of 3.5 and 96 percent held leadership positions on their college campuses.
Read quick facts and to hear why a Teach For America teacher joined:
As a college senior, Wendy Kopp proposed Teach For America's creation in her Princeton University undergraduate thesis. She was convinced that many in her generation were searching for a way to assume a significant responsibility that would make a real difference in the world and that top college students would choose teaching over more lucrative opportunities if a prominent teacher corps existed. As a 21 year-old, Kopp raised $2.5 million of start-up funding, hired a skeleton staff, and launched a grass-roots recruitment campaign. During Teach For America's first year in 1990, 500 men and women began teaching in six low-income communities across the country. Since then, some 17,000 individuals have joined, Teach For America has become the nation's largest provider of teachers for low-income communities, and we have been recognized for building a pipeline of leaders committed to educational equity and excellence.
Corps members undergraduate academic majors and career interests cover a broad spectrum:
Our current scope
- 25: number of urban and rural regions served
- 4,400: number of corps members
- 12,000: number of alumni
- 375,000: number of students impacted annually
- 2.5 million: number of students reached since our inception
contact us
If you are a potential applicant and have questions about Teach For America, please contact our admissions office at 1-800-832-1230 ext. 225, or at admissions@teachforamerica.org.
For our national office, please contact:
Teach For America315 West 36th Street
7th Floor
New York, NY 10018
800-832-1230
212-279-2080
212-279-2081 fax
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