teach for america follow-up

Some of you may have noticed that I got a nice comment from a recruiter with Teach for America on my post about day 1 of the 2008 Willow Creek Leadership Summit. Apparently they’re doing a good job to searching for talk about their organization on the web, especially in the wake of founder/CEO Wendy Kopp’s excellent interview with Bill Hybels at the Summit. Funny, looking back I didn’t really say much about that interview at the time. Seems like I was so engrossed in it that I found it hard to take some notes, and I was just trying to get something down on the blog quickly in a summary. That said, some key ideas from her interview have stuck with me.

1. Dogged commitment to making the vision a reality. Kopp’s level of sacrifice and hard, hard work were a consistent theme throughout the interview. She wasn’t tooting her own horn either, Hybels just kept drawing it out of her.
2. Inspiration to lead for change in the face of radical inequality and injustice. Kopp’s whole vision for reaching these underserved kids was/is driven by a stark encounter with the realities of inequality in education.
3. Understanding of her generation’s willingness to respond to the issue and the vision. Hybels (boomer generation) related to her how impressed he was that she had the gall simply to expect students in the top universities to be interested in signing up to teach for 2 years in a lower income school. Wendy Kopp (gen-x) said she knew that they would respond because she was one of them and she knew her classmates and her generation.

I thought it was cool that someone stopped by here to comment and try and spread the vision, so I thought I’d post the comment in order to get their recruitment link out in a post instead of just a comment. Feel free to pass it along liberally. The link provided below invites both individuals and faith communities to get involved in recruitment. Here’s the comment:

Hi Guy,

Thanks for sharing your reflections about Wendy Kopp’s interview at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. It was a fantastic conference overall, and we’re glad you found Wendy’s thoughts on the importance of service valuable. We are so excited about continuing to grow our movement, and want leaders to join us. If you, or someone you know, is interested in learning more or joining our movement, please visit http://www.teachforamerica.org/jointhemovement.

Thanks,
Ellie Campisano
Recruitment Coordinator, Faith Community Relations Team