CONWAY, Ark. (April 29, 2016) – Two Hendrix College seniors Jessica Amos ’16 and Audrey McMillion ’16 will join Teach For America, a national nonprofit working to expand educational opportunity for low-income students, after their graduation from Hendrix this spring.
Teach For America members commit to teach for two years in high-need urban or rural public schools and become lifelong leaders in pursuit of educational equity.
Amos, a politics major and anthropology minor from West Helena, Arkansas, will teach secondary (7-12 grade) English in Arkansas.
McMillion, an English literature major and biology minor from Arkadelphia, Arkansas, will teach special education in San Francisco in the fall.
“I applied to Teach For America because I want to contribute toward the movement for educational equality, and I believe that all students deserve opportunities and resources to achieve at their highest levels,” said McMillion. “I hope to inspire my
students, fellow educators, and communities as they also inspire me. I’ve spent my senior year at Hendrix working on an English literature thesis about how literature can inspire educational change in communities, and I plan to continue to study literature as a vehicle for possible and necessary societal
involvement, whether this study manifests itself as a graduate degree in education or English. I want to be involved in education for the rest of my life.”
Amos is awaiting a specific school placement, but she would love to return to the Arkansas Delta to serve her home community.
“As an alumnus of KIPP Delta Collegiate High School, I was accustomed to having many TFA Corps members as teachers. I found this band of educators to be one of the most phenomenal groups of people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting,” said Amos. “Four years after graduating from
KIPP, I am now committing myself to doing my part in the fight to eradicate educational inequality. Through Teach for America, I hope to give back to my native Arkansas Delta community and educate the next generation of young leaders.”
“It is my philosophy that education is a fundamental right, not a privilege, thus all people should have access to a fair and equal education,” said Amos, whose future plans include graduate school following her two-year commitment with Teach For America.
“Currently, I am leaning towards pursuing a Ph.D. in education with an emphasis on diversity and educational leadership. My time here at Hendrix has helped me to better understand my passion for social justice, and now I am moving on to the next phase of my life as an educator and an advocate for equality.”
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, by the time they reach fourth grade, students eligible for free and reduced lunch are almost two years behind in reading and a year and a half behind in math, when compared to their higher income peers. Working in partnership with parents
and principals, and alongside educators of all backgrounds, Amos and McMillon join a diverse group of individuals dedicated to addressing these gaps.
A growing body of research demonstrates the effectiveness of Teach For America corps members. Recent studies by
Mathematica Policy Research,
the University of North Carolina,
Louisiana, and
Tennessee found that corps members have a positive impact on student achievement.
KIPP Delta founder and executive director Scott Shirey will address the Class of 2016.
Like Amos and McMillion, Shirey is a liberal arts graduate and, after graduating from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, he taught for three years in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as a Teach For America corps member.
“Teach For America provided me a path straight out of college to do meaningful and impactful work where it was needed the most. It was an incredible gift to serve well-deserving students,” said Shirey. “TFA also connected me with a group of like-minded, mission-oriented peers who were as dedicated as I was to the
elimination of the achievement gap and educational inequity. That’s powerful too, when you can align yourself with others in a common mission.”
Amos and McMillion will now have “the responsibility of helping someone else in their educational journey” and learn “how to be truly selfless in those spaces,” he said.
Teach For America corps members are essential for schools like KIPP Delta, Shirey said.
“Our students deserve teachers just as talented, dedicated, and passionate as any of the best school systems in the country. Teach For America can place young, talented people into our community, which is going to provide a major lift,” he said. “I would emphasize that the balance of our natural talent here with the
constant infusion of new energized talent is an important component to growth and success. Our job is simple: to get the most talented people possible into the classroom to serve our children.”
As Teach For America corp members, Amos and McMillion can have a "transformational and unlimited" impact on the students they teach, Shirey said.
“If you can open a door and give students a new perspective, it can change their whole outlook, and therefore, their trajectory,” he said. “Our job is to provide kids an opportunity they might not have otherwise known, experienced, contemplated, or seen. The challenge of a teacher is, how many new
doors can you open for the students?”
About
Teach For America
Teach For America works in partnership with communities to expand educational opportunity for children facing the challenges of poverty. Founded in 1990, Teach For America recruits and develops a diverse corps of outstanding college graduates and professionals to make an
initial two year commitment to teach in high-need schools and become lifelong leaders in the movement to end educational inequity. Our corps in the 2013-14 school year included 11,000 teachers in 48 urban and rural regions across the country. Today, our 37,000 alumni are working
across sectors to ensure that all children have access to an excellent education. For more information, visit
www.teachforamerica.org and follow us on
Facebook and
Twitter.
About
Hendrix College
Hendrix College is a private liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas. Founded in 1876 and affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884, Hendrix is featured in Colleges
That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges and is nationally recognized in numerous college guides, lists, and rankings for academic quality, community, innovation, and value. For more information, visit
www.hendrix.edu.