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How Teaching Changed Me

Three Teach For America alumni on how their time as classroom leaders shaped their lives.

By The TFA Editorial Team

January 7, 2020

‘Classrooms and Schools are the Units of Change'

 

Julie (Houston ’10)

My Teach For America experience has shaped everything about me. I really realized that classrooms and schools are the units of change and where I want to be. 

J (D.C. Region ’08)

My Teach For America experience changed what I believed was possible in classrooms, outside of classrooms, and the impact of what was going on in classrooms. It changed my perspective about who I wanted to be in the world. My students taught me a lot about the love that they deserve and what they wanted for themselves, so I really understood a lot more of what it looked like to work alongside my students and their families. 

When I walked in I thought I was going to do a lot to my children in terms of depositing information into them. As I continued in the classroom, I recognized that there was a lot of work that needed to be done in me for me to able to have the impact that I wanted to with my kids.

 

Chrissy (Mississippi ’13)

I thought a lot more about the way I was raised and a lot of the privileges I had as a student. But it also made me push myself to be the best teacher I could be for my students because they were amazing and they deserved the absolute best every single day I walked into the classroom.



 

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