Voorhees native Katie Price knows she had a great education growing up.
In 2011, she graduated from Eastern Regional High School, and just a few months ago, she graduated from Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland with a degree in English and a minor in education and business.
Starting this school year, Price hopes to give something back by trying to bring quality education similar to what she had in her own life to a high-need, low-income community in Indianapolis through the non-profit organization Teach For America.
As described in TFA’s mission statement, the organization started in 1990 as way to “enlist, develop and mobilize” the nation’s promising future leaders to “grow and strengthen the movement for educational equity and excellence.”
The organization sets out to accomplish that mission by selecting college graduates to teach for a commitment period of two years in low-income communities across the nation.
That’s where Price comes in.
“I had a very great education growing up, and it’s something you kind of take for granted,” Price said. “When you see the same public education system for someone else and it looks so different, it kind of boggles the mind that we’re selling it as the same thing for everybody.”
Price said she first learned of TFA as a freshman in college from an upperclassman involved with the organization while the two served on the student government association. She learned more about the organization with a professor during her junior year while participating in an independent study.
“I know Teach For America doesn’t see itself as the only solution for all of these problems in the education system, but it’s a great way to keep talented people … coming into the educational system and hopefully change things,” Price said.
While education was only one of her minors, Price said one of the reasons she was attracted to the program was because it allowed her to experience teaching firsthand and see if it was for her.
“Teach For America gives you that classroom experience and the certification that goes with it, so I could study teaching English in college and now decide if teaching was for me,” Price said.
Before beginning teaching, those admitted to the TFA program must go through a five-week training course.
Price said above all else, TFA taught her not to come into the experience thinking she alone could change every problem in the education system and solve every problem in every one of her students’ lives.
“They taught me to expect nothing, to not come in with any assumptions, don’t assume I know what my students are going through in their personal lives, don’t assume I know the situation going on in the community — just come in with an open mind,” Price said.
That mindset may serve Price well, as she was set to start her teaching in late August at Marion Academy, a new charter school in Indianapolis, unique in that it specifically targets students who have been suspended or expelled from other schools or who have been placed in juvenile detention.
Throughout the 2014–15 school year, 10,600 TFA corps members taught in 50 regions across the country along with 37,000 alumni working to ensure children’s access to quality education.
“I would hope and expect by the end of it that I would have a much better awareness of what’s needed to help a student in an educational setting and just way more experience and tools to be effective in a classroom,” Price said.
