Teach for America helps staff local schools

Thursday, Aug. 26, 2004 | 8:49 a.m.

Sara Kienzle knows she was lucky -- she had a stay-at-home mother, a financially stable family and the opportunity to graduate from Michigan State University.

Now Kienzle, 22, has come to Clark County to give something back.

"I have been blessed -- now I have a responsibility to try and do my part," said Kienzle, a Teach for America recruit who will begin work at Cheyenne High School Monday.

Now in its 14th year, Teach for America trains recent college graduates to serve two-year assignments in some of the nation's most impoverished schools. In its first year in Clark County, the nonprofit organization will place teachers in hard-to-fill positions at 32 schools. Chuck Salter, executive director of Teach for America's Las Vegas operations, said the group hopes to bring as many as 100 additional teachers to the district in 2005.

While they make up a small percentage of the 2,000 new teachers hired for the 2004-05 school year, the Teach for America participants are an important addition, said George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources for the district.

"They are taking actual positions that we might otherwise still be scrambling to fill," Rice said.

Wendy Kopp, who came up with the idea for the nonprofit organization as her undergraduate thesis at Princeton University, told a Las Vegas audience Wednesday there has never been a greater need for dedicated teachers.

The achievement gap between children living in low-income areas and their peers in more affluent communities is widening, Kopp said.

"We feel a greater sense of urgency today than ever," Kopp said. Teach for America interviewed nearly 14,000 applicants for 1,750 new positions at schools nationwide. Of the organization's 9,000 alumni, about 40 percent are either still in teaching or working in education-related fields.

Kienzle, who will teach freshman biology at Cheyenne, said she realizes her bachelor's degree in microbiology could have led her down more lucrative career paths. Rookie teachers in Clark County make $28,491, plus a $2,000 signing bonus paid after 30 days.

Teach for America provides additional training and professional development for its participants over the course of the two-year assignment.

But the job isn't about the money, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., told an assembled crowd at Robert Lake Elementary School Wednesday.

"There isn't one of you that couldn't be out making more money, but there isn't one of you that could be doing anything more meaningful than what you're doing," Reid said.