COVID-19: A Period of Learning and Reflecting for Educators
Winners and finalists of TFA's Sue Lehmann Excellence in Teacher Leadership Award share advice on showing up for students amid the coronavirus school closures. Read more
A ‘Hope Dealer’ and Her Kids Face Online School Together
A teacher and mom of three says her family will ‘power through with grace,’ despite the challenges of life during the pandemic. Read more
COVID-19: Community Voices
Students and parents open up about life and learning while schools are closed during the coronavirus pandemic. Read more
A Message From Our CEO
This is an unprecedented moment. Students, parents, and teachers are navigating an incredibly challenging and disruptive time without a clear endpoint. Right now, I am especially thinking about our students in low-income communities who depend on schools for so much. Across the United States, more than 124,000 schools serving 55 million students are facing closures in response to COVID-19. Students not only face the significant loss of learning time, their families are also dealing with a lack of child care and healthcare, financial insecurity, and employment uncertainties.
In this moment, as always, Teach For America will work for excellence and equity to ensure all children can learn, lead, and thrive. Our corps members work in more than 2,400 schools in 350 communities across the country. We are working around the clock to support our corps members and to help them support their students' transition to online learning.
Our network of over 60,000 alumni and corps members is laser-focused on meeting urgent needs across our country. Last week, Teach For America launched a virtual space on Slack for our network to connect and collaborate on solutions. In a matter of days, nearly 2,000 alumni and corps members have joined together to share resources and discuss solutions for challenges facing their communities. Through all of this, we will continue to be present to the needs of our students and families who will be profoundly impacted.
I am drawing inspiration right now from how we are coming together in different and powerful ways. Corps members are learning new ways to teach and reach their students. Alumni—working in schools, health care, community leadership, and more—are already identifying needs and resources for kids. From the first-year corps member in Cleveland leading a space to share online resources to teach 11th-grade English, to the alumni nonprofit leader closing the technology gap and distributing computers to students in Houston, our network is charging forward, meeting this moment.
I am thinking of our community in this challenging time and am hoping all of us can stay healthy and safe. Our work is more important than ever, and I couldn’t be prouder to be a part of Teach For America. We will get through this unprecedented challenge the same way we do so much of this work: together.
Onward,
Elisa Villanueva Beard
Stories From Our Network
A teacher in Eastern Kentucky shares his experience transitioning to remote teaching in a school district where 30 percent of students lack high-speed internet access
As the pandemic intensifies inequities in education and across our already fragile safety nets, social entrepreneurs and nonprofits are feeling the urgency to find solutions.
Incoming corps member Hannah Yi, together with fellow students at Indiana University launched a program to offer virtual tutoring sessions to K-12 students.
Forget downtime: High school senior Aaliyah is working part-time during the pandemic while applying for scholarships and crafting her graduation speech.
So Many Missed Milestones for High School Seniors
May 1, 2020
Daniel Garrison (Dallas-Fort Worth ‘10) and his robotics and engineering class at Woodrow Wilson High School are using 3D printer to make medical masks.
(Teach For America corps members, alumni, and staff only).
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