Hey, I want to Teach For America.

Ok beautiful blogging world, I promised it to you and now you're going to get it! This blog will be dedicated to my application to Teach For America. TFA's mission is this: to eliminate education inequity by enlisting our nation's most promising future leaders in the effort. What is education inequity you ask? According to their site, educational inequity is the reality that where a child is born determines the quality of his or her education and life prospects. One of the reasons I'm really passionate about getting involved with this organization is that I witnessed, first hand how this occurs as I grew up in a school district where nearly half of all high school students drop out by their senior year. I also have worked with at-risk, middle school girls in my time at Transy and I know that I'd like to continue working with youth in an educational capacity.

The TFA application process is a long and arduous journey. It all started back this summer when I meet with Michael Cronk in the Career Development Center to change my computer science resume to a teaching resume, highlighting the experiences I've had that would be pertinent to teaching . After a massive resume overhaul, I started working on the first part of the online application. This included a letter of intent, my resume, personal information, academic and professional information, interview information, and some other supplemental information. The hardest part of this section was the letter of intent because it was all about me and how I would really rock out in their organization, it's comparable to a personal statement for grad schools.

I found out in September that I made it through to the next step in the process, which was a thirty minute phone interview and an online written activity. The online written activity wasn't too long but involved responding to a series of questions over the reading and responding to a hypothetical situation that could arise in a school, it asks you to look at the situation from a couple of different view points; nothing to really stress about.

 I found out in early October that I had moved on to the final leg of the application process, a final, in-person interview. The final interview stage also included a bunch more information that they wanted online, including transcript information and two recommendations.

I had my final interview on Tuesday in my hometown of Indianapolis at IUPUI campus. The interview was a most of the day kind of thing, it started at 9 AM and ended whenever you had your one-on-one interview in the afternoon. It was a busy day that started with group activities in the the morning: everyone (there were 13 people at the session) taught a five-minute lesson, then we discussed issues in education in smaller groups of 6 or 7 people, learned more about our program, and complete a written problem solving activity. During the morning session, we split up into our two groups all signed up for times for our one-on-one interviews with one of the two interviewers. Seeing as I was driving the farthest, all the way back to Lexington, that afternoon the other people in my group let me sign up for the first slot and I was done with everything by 1:30 PM. I really enjoyed getting to talk with my interviewer and it was nice knowing that I wasn't competing against the other people in my interview because as the two interviewers said, they wanted us all to be invited to join the corps.

So now I wait. I find out on November 9th (my 22nd birthday) whether or not I was selected. :) Send positive thoughts my way!