In today's Wall Street Journal, we hear from college graduates who recognized a crummy job market and decided to channel their energies into service programs, like Teach for America. Great idea, right? More teachers for TFA in the interim and more opportunities to introduce grads to a career they may not have thought about.
But then we read this:
Teach for America has an agreement with certain companies, such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., to grant corps members with existing job offers a two-year "deferral" so they can teach for two years and still have a job waiting for them when their commitment is over. It also runs something akin to a career-placement office to connect former teachers with recruiters at major companies, including General Electric Co., McKinsey & Co. and Google Inc.
And this:
That kind of partnership with non-teaching career paths helped Mike Stewart's father feel better about his son's joining the organization. "My fear was that he'd go into the teaching world right off the bat," after his service, says the elder Mike Stewart, executive vice president of a medical-device company. "One thing that gives me some comfort is that he is still planning on going to law school."
With so many reasons to bail from teaching the second a commitment ends (great job connections! Parent pressure!), how will these grads consider classroom service a career instead of a bullet point on a resume?
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Teach For America
