SMU graduate Courtney Sartor wakes up every morning and goes to school.  There are times when she gets to class at 6:30 in the morning and does not get to leave until 6:30 at night.  She is the oldest one in the class, and she has one year left until she is finished with her educational responsibilities.  

Sartor, class of 2008, is a first grade teacher who is in her second year as a Teach for America volunteer.

“I knew it was going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she said. It’s worth it, she added, because the kids “deserve it.”

Teach for America is an organization that recruits and helps train college graduates to be teachers in low-income communities.  This year marked the organization’s first year in Dallas and a continued partnership with the SMU community. 

The new region has given the organization an opportunity to work more closely with SMU to boost recruitment and to develop new curriculum for graduate students at SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development.

According to Charles Glover, executive director of Teach for America in Dallas, SMU is one of thetop 20 mid-size schools from which the organization recruits.  The campus also provides induction facilities for a one-week training session for new recruits.  

“SMU has been extremely, extremely generous,” Glover said.

According to the Teach for America Web site, the organization started out as founder Wendy Kopp’s 1989 Princeton undergraduate senior thesis.  Over the years, Teach for America has impacted approximately 3 million students in 35 regions across the country.   

“Our mission,” as written on the Web site, “is to build the movement to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting our nation’s most promising future leaders in the effort.”

Tamara Urquhart, the Teach for America recruiter at SMU, said, “The new Dallas region has attracted an increasing number of SMU students to Teach for America.”

In the 2008-2009 school year, an unprecedented amount of SMU students applied to Teach for America, and of the 17 chosen, six will stay in Dallas, she said.

Senior Rachel Carey was recently accepted to Teach for America and will be staying in Dallas for the next two years.  

“I would have gone anywhere,” Carey said, but she is happy to stay in Dallas, where she said she is “comfortable.” 

However, students don’t always get their first pick when it comes to where they will teach.

Sartor, who teaches in Houston, said that it was not her first choice.

“I’m a Dallas girl at heart,” she said.  

Carey and Sartor are still figuring out plans for after Teach for America.

  According to Urquhart, one of the biggest challenges she faces as a recruiter is to encourage students who are not
interested in education to join.  

“We understand that teaching may seem off-track for someone interested in finance or law, so we have developed partnerships with top corporations … and top law schools,” she said. 

For now, though, these two recruits are continuing their education by educating others.