After 16 years of deploying thousands of motivated college liberal-arts graduates to work in the nation’s urban and rural schools, Teach For America plans to launch an early-childhood-education initiative this coming fall.
The Teach For America regional office in Washington—where 15 TFA recruits will begin working in pre-K and Head Start classes in September—will serve as the pilot site for the initiative. Another 15 teachers will be added during the 2007-08 school year.
Summer training programs are being updated in Washington to address the distinctive issues related to teaching in early-childhood classrooms.
During the 2007-08 school year, the project is set to kick off nationally, with Teach For America planning to place 150 early-childhood “corps members” across the country.
“We are thrilled to be the incubator for this initiative, because all the research shows that early interventions can make real strides towards closing the achievement gap,” Amy Black, the executive director of the Washington office, wrote in an online newsletter last month.
