Although many of the students at Loyola Marymount University were gone for the summer, the campus was alive with the more than 380 participants in the LMU/Teach For America Partnership program.
The six-week program, which ran June 17 through the last week of July, provided graduate support and training for TFA teachers.
Teach For America seeks to close the educational gap through a national teacher corps of recent college graduates who commit to teaching in under-resourced schools. During the summer program, participants take several training courses, attend weekend workshops and teach part-time under the guidance of a faculty advisor. The faculty advisor provides one-on-one feedback and monitors the participant’s progress.
“The program offers hands-on experience in the classroom,” said Doris Madrigal, associate director of the LMU/TFA Partnership Program. “TFA students receive a realistic view of the population and content area they will be teaching and continuous one-on-one supervision.”
This fall, the participants will teach full-time while studying for a teaching credential and, in some cases, a master’s degree in education from LMU. In the past four years, about 80 percent of the participants surveyed continue to teach at their school even after their two-year commitment was completed.
“Our participants are dedicated to their students and want to continue to make an impact,” Madrigal said. “They know they’re helping to make change happen.”
LMU’s School of Education became a university partner with TFA in 2000 and has grown to become the exclusive university partner for Teach for America in the state, serving Los Angeles, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. The partnership has ranked among the top Teach For America partnerships nationwide in corps member satisfaction, according to national surveys.