Teach For America’s mission is to find, develop, and support a diverse network of leaders who expand opportunity for children from classrooms, schools, and every sector and field that shapes the broader systems in which schools operate.
Teach For America recruits a diverse pool of recent graduates and professionals from more than 850 colleges and universities to lead and support the critical efforts to ensure educational excellence and equity. In recent years, the Jacksonville corps has been the most diverse yet, with 74% identifying as people of color or from a low-income background, and 15% having grown up in Jacksonville. These talented teachers begin their path with a two-year commitment to teach in Duval County Public schools. Deeply affected by their experience in the classroom, after two years, they join our alumni network and continue to advocate for students in many different roles in education and other fields. Since 2008, Teach For America – Jacksonville (TFA – Jax) has brought passionate teachers to Duval County Public Schools (DCPS) working to expand opportunities for all children. Like educators, parents, and students across the system, we believe that every child deserves an excellent education – one that empowers and supports her potential and realize her greatest dreams.
To help ensure all students in Jacksonville receive an excellent education, Teach For America currently supports 87 corps members and over 250 alumni still working in Jacksonville. These corps members and alumni are working relentlessly in over 40 low-income schools to change the education opportunities for more than 20,000 Jacksonville students this school year.
During the 2018-2019 school year, the majority of incoming corps members are teaching in schools grouped within three specific feeder patterns that include Jacksonville’s highest needs schools. With this placement structure, students moving through these feeder patterns will have Teach For America corps members at multiple stages of their educational progression, starting in elementary school and moving to middle and then high school. This will enable us to create change at both a school and system-wide level as we work to ensure student success over the long term.
Impact in Jacksonville
Since arriving in Jacksonville in 2008, our corps members have had a positive impact on thousands of students across Duval County. An external study performed by The Schultz Center for Teaching and Leadership, which compared the performance of students of Teach For America-Jacksonville teachers with the performance of students from non-Teach For America teachers in DCPS, found that in every subject and at every grade level tested, Teach For America corps members had a positive impact on student achievement. Our internal measures validate the results of these external studies. This means that TFA teachers were able to use instruction to help students learn more than a year’s worth of knowledge, which brings us closer to closing the student achievement gap. This high level of classroom achievement is reflected in the support from local principles and our partners at DCPS:
Our most recent Principal Survey found that 93% of principals in Jacksonville partner schools were satisfied with their Teach For America corps members and 95% reported that they would hire another Teach For America corps member. Since 2008, 49 Teach For America corps members and alumni have won Teacher of the Year at their schools and three have been named semi-finalists. This year alumni, Stephanie Bellino, was named 2018 Florida Blue Duval County Teacher of the Year out of nearly 9,000 teachers. Additionally, an increasing number of our alumni are choosing to stay in Jacksonville to continue to create change for students. More than 85% of our alumni continue to work directly in education, with the large majority focused on improving opportunities for students in low-income communities. Following their two year commitment as corps members, approximately 52% of our alumni have chosen to stay teaching in Jacksonville.
STEM in Jacksonville
This past school year, Mimi Beck, a second year TFA – Jacksonville corps member at Robert E. Lee High School, devoted her classroom and teaching to creating an engrossing scientific environment for her biology students. Ms. Beck integrated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) strategies into her classroom and was able to expose students to scientific lab experiences that give them hands-on opportunities while increasing their knowledge and academic skills. By setting rigorous and high goals for her students, Ms. Beck’s students performed 11.5% above the district average on the Biology End of Course exam with an 89% passage rate. She consistently used data driven instruction and regularly assessed students to ensure they were on track to meeting their end of year goals. Ms. Beck says, “I try to let my students know that a mistake is not a failure, its room for growth. Learning from mistakes is going to set you up for success and give you the power of choice in your life. My students know that when they come into my class every day, they are going to work, and they will work for the full 90 minutes… and it’s not just to pass the End of Course Exam.” Your support will help provide more advanced and specific support for our STEM teachers, like Ms. Beck, allowing them to provide authentic experiences to further students’ knowledge, confidence, and opportunities in society. Funding will provide cohesive and thorough training in STEM implementation and increase resources for these specific subject classrooms and after school programs.
STEM Support
Through our work in DCPS, TFA – Jax participates in strengthening STEM education. Through this proposed initiative, TFA – Jax would be able to continue providing specialized training and professional development for our STEM teachers. Out of our total corps members, 60% teach STEM. To support and provide teachers with high quality resources, constant training, and coaching, TFA – Jax has created specialized cohorts based on content. This allows for TFA teacher coaches to become experts in one content and support their cohort in becoming highly skilled educators. Math and Science each have their own cohort with a designated teacher coach. This provides these teachers with consistent teacher observations, feedback sessions, 1:1 support, resources, and professional development designed to support them in their specific subject. Through this initiative, the STEM teachers’ professional development development sessions look unique. Funding provides the means for more face to face time and resources to be allocated to practice teaching, coaching cycles, collaborative studies, and strategy sharing. Through this collaborative approach, STEM TFA teachers are able to work together to address challenges, celebrate successes of their students, and continue to aim for high achievement in their classrooms.
To encourage and integrate STEM into classrooms and prepare students to become valuable members of society in the STEM field, DCPS has launched STEM-focused after school clubs in several schools. Several of those clubs are led by TFA – Jax teachers as they encourage their students to use their STEM skills in a variety of formats. By leading the STEM effort, TFA – Jax teachers continue to elevate their students’ critical thinking and collaborate with other educators to spread STEM teaching strategies.
By focusing on STEM education, TFA – Jax is committed to developing high quality teachers to prepare the students in Jacksonville’s hardest-to-staff schools for opportunities within the world that they may otherwise not have access.
To affect change on a systemic level, provide all students in Jacksonville the educational opportunities they deserve, and increase STEM opportunities and passage rates for all students, we must continue to grow to scale in Jacksonville. To achieve this, we have expanded our impact by maintaining our number of corps members reaching over 20,000 students in Jacksonville, and continuing to grow our alumni base with 250+ alumni working from all sectors to accelerate the pace of change. At this scale, our corps members are reaching approximately 25% of all students from low-income communities in Jacksonville, a scale that will change the game for education reform in our city.
With your support, we can achieve this collective vision and see the needle move against educational inequity in Jacksonville in the next few years.
