Senior Commits to Teaching Underserved Communities
The love of teaching and big city dreams has brought senior Elementary Education major Amanda Larabee the opportunity to live and work in Chicago, Illinois this coming academic year.
Through Teach for America, a recruitment program that trains and sends teachers to underserved communities around the country, Larabee will be employed for the next two years in the type of urban environment she has always wanted to face.
“My goal for a while has been to live in a city and teach in low-income communities” said the Massachusetts native.
In June, with the assistance of the program, Larabee will be moving to the bustling Midwestern city to teach grades 1-6, where she hopes to stay for longer than the minimum two year commitment.
“I hope to achieve experience teaching in these communities," she said, "Growing up in Western, Massachusetts and attending school in Vermont has limited my experience in urban classrooms."
With the help and encouragement of the Director of Career Services, Renée Beaupre-White, the long three-part application process for the program took place and was submitted in October for review. Larabee also explained that without the help of Professors Patricia Van der Spuy and Scott Roper she does not know how she would have navigated through the program’s 15 percent acceptance rate.
Despite the 13-hour travel distance back home to the East Coast, Larabee does not have any hesitations about the journey. She looks forward to helping underserved communities and all that she will learn while teaching in a new setting.
“I believe that if you desire to be a teacher already, and have an interest in the educational inequity gap, then Teach for America is definitely a great program and opportunity,” said Larabee.