Teach for America is to commence recruiting eligible individuals that live in the United States under the status of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to join their educator corps in an attempt to expand career and educational opportunities for immigrants that graduate from college.
A non-profit organization founded 24 years ago, back in 1990, Teach for America is based out of New York and trains recent college graduates to become teachers. Young educators are placed by the program in low-income and rural neighborhoods, which encourages commitment in order to combat the educational inequality that is often prevalent in such areas. The focus of Teach for America in this brand new initiative is to be able to match these immigrant graduates with committees that share their ethnic and racial backgrounds. Creating this connection between these new teachers and the students they are educating has been found by the organization’s studies to have an extremely positive impact on comprehension and learning.
Many Teach for America members believes that these new young graduates have valuable life experience that will be of benefit when trying to connect with their new students and that their insight into the immigration experience, as well as their bilingual backgrounds, will add diversity to the membership of the organization.
In order to be eligible, immigrants that came to the United States as children need to have been granted Deferred Action status, a minimum GPA of 2.5 and have received their diploma by June this year.