Overview

Greater New Orleans is a world-famous region where history and culture intertwine to create endless opportunities for everyday life. It is a rich and dynamic region that is steeped in the innovations of its past and continues to inspire its inhabitants to this day.

At the same time, Greater New Orleans has long been a region divided by race and class, infamous for having one of the worst public school systems in the nation and a disparaging achievement gap, which made Greater New Orleans one of Teach For America’s charter placement sites in 1990. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, two-thirds of the region’s public schools were deemed academically unacceptable. In Orleans parish half of public school students didn’t graduate from high school, and one out of every three school-age children attended non-public school. Forty percent of adults living in the City of New Orleans were illiterate, an issue which still affects rebuilding efforts today.

Hurricane Katrina and Growth Plan

Former New Orleans Mayor Marc Moriel is quoted as saying “Because Katrina put it out there, no one can play the pretend game anymore that there isn’t poverty and inequality in this country.” When the injustices in the Greater New Orleans region were exposed to the nation, education reform agencies, including Teach For America, stepped up to put in the hard work necessary to begin the rebuilding of this region.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, an unprecedented opportunity arose to create a new public education system in the Greater New Orleans area. Community leaders are literally rebuilding the education system from the ground up. Unfortunately, while there are definite signs of progress, the achievement gap still persists. In Orleans Parish alone, nearly 85 percent of 32,000 students are still at least a year and a half to two years below their grade level. A third of these students are as much as four years below grade level, or more, and for the most part, high schools are still not preparing students to attend or graduate from a four-year college or university.

In our pledge to be a part of the rebuilding process, Teach For America has rapidly scaled up our presence. In total, we have quadrupled the total historic corps size in Greater New Orleans. Teach For America is providing a much-needed influx of leaders who will positively shape the future of Greater New Orleans by making a significant impact in the classroom as well as serve as future school, district, and community leaders at all levels of the region’s revitalization.

Greater New Orleans is thus not only rebuilding its communities - it is experiencing a renaissance. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a public education system that provides excellent academic opportunities to all students, and to be a pioneer in shaping the education reform movement in our country.

Life

While recovery efforts will continue for years to come, there are countless opportunities for corps members to engage in the vibrant life and hotspots of the region. A crossroads of history, culture, nature, cuisine and music, Greater New Orleans features a combination of activities that entertain all interests. The region's warm temperature lends itself to countless opportunities to bike, run, play Frisbee or basketball, or just sit and relax near one of the region’s many parks and bayous.

Although our corps members work in a variety of cities and surrounding areas, most choose to live in the City of New Orleans. New Orleans offers the opportunities of a large city as well as many small-town conveniences. Corps members can get almost everywhere in the city in a personal car or in one of the city’s streetcars in less than 20 minutes, and no matter where corps members live and work, it is hard to venture anywhere in the city without running into fellow corps members, alumni, co-workers, and students. The neighborhoods here are vibrant, bustling, and are the hubs of community activity. Several neighborhoods had little physical storm damage while others have undergone massive rebuilding. Many corps members live uptown, near Tulane and Loyola universities; in Mid City, an area near City Park, with its own Mardi Gras parading society; or in the Marigny, a historic and artist-friendly area downriver from the French Quarter.

Corps Culture

Teach For America corps members are on the front lines of the rejuvenation efforts of the Greater New Orleans public schools and believe that educating their students is the core of this effort. To encourage close collaboration and support, corps members are often clustered at each school site; in fact, over 90 percent of corps members teach in a school with at least one other corps member or alumni. The entire corps comes together for professional development approximately four times a year to engage in learning that will increase their proficiency as teachers. Additionally, each corps member works several times a semester within a professional learning community, which is a small group of other corps members teaching the same subject and/or grade that is led by a content mentor to become experts in what they are teaching.

Greater New Orleans corps members also have core group mentors: a small community of three to five first year corps members led by a second year corps member or alumnus. Finally, all corps members matriculate through the Louisiana Practitioner Teacher Program, an alternative certification program that meets once every two weeks for about three hours in the evening. This program was recently ranked by the Louisiana Board of Regents as one of the top performing in the state, and found that students taught by teachers who have graduated from this program outperform students taught by traditionally trained teachers in the core subject areas of math, reading and English Language Arts. Corps members still find time to have fun, from relaxing at the local music joint Tipitinas to watching the Rebirth Brass Band or just sitting on a fellow corps member’s porch and catching up.