Letter from Wendy Kopp

Dear corps members and alumni,

Last year, Teach For America and the Amgen Foundation convened corps members, alumni, and leading thinkers for the first annual Amgen-Teach For America Mathematics and Science Summit in Washington, DC. The summit provided an opportunity to discuss major challenges and potential solutions surrounding the provision of high-quality science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education for all children. The urgent need for excellent math and science education in our country demands that we do more, and we are excited to build on the energy generated at last year’s Summit with this year’s gathering in the Bay Area.

The Amgen-Teach For America Summit is a key component of Teach For America’s math and science initiative, which brings increasing numbers of outstanding math and science teachers to our lowest-income communities — where there is often a disproportionate need — and engages our alumni in working toward effecting systemic change both within and outside of our nation’s STEM classrooms. Other components of the initiative include targeted recruitment — today more than 1,350 corps members are teaching math and science to more than 115,000 secondary school students and we aim to have 2,000 corps members serving 170,000 students by the year 2010 — and additional training and support — the Medtronic Math-Science Seminar was piloted last August with 150 incoming corps members and is growing in size and scope for the summer of 2008.

The second annual summit looks to inspire greater involvement in support of math and science education in the classroom and beyond, to advance thinking on key strategies, and to maximize connections to professional resources and leadership opportunities. I invite you to join fellow corps members, alumni, and other committed professionals at this year’s summit to learn more about how you can maximize your contribution to improve STEM education for all of our nation’s children.

Sincerely,
Wendy Kopp
CEO and Founder, Teach For America