Teach for America recruits at USD

Nick Miller / Staff Writer / The USD Vista

The magazine Business Week just named Teach For America “one of the year’s best places to launch a career.” If you are looking to really propel yourself onto a meaningful career path as well as doing something amazing for our country’s future, you should look at applying for a job with Teach For America. They are working tirelessly to eradicate educational inequality by hiring motivated and qualified individuals to teach in some of the poorest areas of our country.

Teach For America seeks to hire both recent college graduates and working professionals. Once you have completed your two-year commitment with Teach For America, they actively help you further your career through one of their many partnerships. This organization has formal relationships with many of the top companies in America like Goldman Sachs, General Electric, J. P. Morgan, Wachovia, Google and many others. If your plans for the future take you to graduate school before entering the job market, Teach For America also has formal relationships with more than a hundred of the top graduate schools in the country including Stanford, Yale and Harvard.

“It’s a really great organization because you get to give back to your community as well as further your own career,” Kim Skraby, a student who works to promote Teach For America on USD’s campus said.

Teachers who work for Teach For America, also known as corps members, will get to work and experience firsthand what it is like combating one of the greatest injustices in our society today. Corps members who help students overcome the challenges that they face are providing one of the greatest assets we can give these children.

If you are interested in applying, there are some prerequisites that must be met. You must have a bachelor’s degree by the time you start your first day. So, if you are a senior that is going to be graduating this May, apply now. You must be graduating with a minimum of a 2.5 GPA. This requirement is set by the school districts and the credentialing programs that Teach For America uses. Finally, you must be either a U.S. citizen, or have legal permanent resident status. So, if you are here with a student, work or tourist visa, you can not apply at this time.

The Teach For America program pays its corps members a salary, determined by a sliding scale, which depends on the cost of living in the city in which they work. For instance, if you were to become a corps member working in Los Angeles, you would make between $37,000 and $40,000 per year where as a corps member who takes a job in St. Louis would make between $32,000 and $36,000 per year because it is less expensive to live in St. Louis than in Los Angeles. In addition to the competitive salary that corps members are offered, Teach For America also offers some great benefits such as comprehensive medical, vision, dental and prescription drug coverage. They also are paid for time off with up to three weeks paid vacation, a paid winter break at the end of December and 10 paid sick days. Teach For America also offers a retirement package in which they will match 100 percent of the contribution that the employee puts into their retirement account. In addition to all of this, Teach For America offers its corps members three months of paid disability leave as well as family and parenting benefits.

If this seems like a job that you would be interested in pursuing, apply right away. The deadline is on Nov. 7. You can apply for Teach For America at their website online at www.teachforamerica.org.