Spring Break
Graduates enter in Teach for America
Keri Wabrowetz
Issue date: 9/22/08 Section: News
Three UW-Eau Claire graduates have been accepted into Teach For America, a highly selective program aiming to end educational inequity. The program recruits top college graduates of all majors for a two-year commitment to teach in underfunded and understaffed rural or urban schools.
Eau Claire graduates who began teaching this fall include Gina Livingston, a December 2007 graduate and Spanish major, Christopher Nielson, who graduated in May with a degree in political science and Rebecca O'Brien, who also graduated in May with majors in Latin American studies and biology. They are among six Eau Claire students to be accepted into the program.
Each graduate underwent a five-week training program to prepare them for their teaching assignment. Livingston, who attended her training in Houston, felt she couldn't have been more ready to teach her students.
"It's probably the most difficult thing I have ever done," Livingston said of the training. "I feel like it was four years of education crammed into five weeks … I didn't have a free moment but I left feeling like I was ready to teach … I was so prepared."
Livingston began her two-year commitment as a second grade teacher at Cole Art and Science Academy in Denver. She strives to uphold "a sense of urgency" in the classroom, a phrase she adopted from TFA.
"I walk in there and feel like I can't waste a minute," she said. "If I'm not urgent in second grade, what's going to happen by the time they're in fifth grade?"
Livingston has seen firsthand the harsh realization of what it's like in a school where students are on the wrong side of an achievement gap.
"The job itself is very eye-opening," she said. "It's so rewarding but so tough and sometimes it's hard to take the reality … just the reality of the effects of poverty and not a whole lot of resources on kids."
O'Brien also attended her training in Houston and is now a middle school science teacher in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
Eau Claire graduates who began teaching this fall include Gina Livingston, a December 2007 graduate and Spanish major, Christopher Nielson, who graduated in May with a degree in political science and Rebecca O'Brien, who also graduated in May with majors in Latin American studies and biology. They are among six Eau Claire students to be accepted into the program.
Each graduate underwent a five-week training program to prepare them for their teaching assignment. Livingston, who attended her training in Houston, felt she couldn't have been more ready to teach her students.
"It's probably the most difficult thing I have ever done," Livingston said of the training. "I feel like it was four years of education crammed into five weeks … I didn't have a free moment but I left feeling like I was ready to teach … I was so prepared."
Livingston began her two-year commitment as a second grade teacher at Cole Art and Science Academy in Denver. She strives to uphold "a sense of urgency" in the classroom, a phrase she adopted from TFA.
"I walk in there and feel like I can't waste a minute," she said. "If I'm not urgent in second grade, what's going to happen by the time they're in fifth grade?"
Livingston has seen firsthand the harsh realization of what it's like in a school where students are on the wrong side of an achievement gap.
"The job itself is very eye-opening," she said. "It's so rewarding but so tough and sometimes it's hard to take the reality … just the reality of the effects of poverty and not a whole lot of resources on kids."
O'Brien also attended her training in Houston and is now a middle school science teacher in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
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