teaching for america.

I'd heard of Teach for America in various classes in college. Some attractive guy (occasionally with accents--because apparently in America, accents make everything better) comes at the beginning of class and gives a brief, fast-paced, superficial spiel about it. They give few--if not any details--except for the fact that they pay you and you can go across the country (sometimes even topping it off with a "free pizza information night!"). So of course, I wasn't interested when yet another guy came to my class last week...well, you know how I was at first. It was only class of the day and I wanted to be done, eat lunch, and catch up on blogs. But when he mentioned Seattle? That got my attention.

One of the biggest reasons why I never pictured myself doing something like Teach for America is because of the whole location thing. Someday I'll post about my not-so-amazing days in the dorms. Yeah. I'll just say, I get homesick easily.

Anyway, about the whole Seattle-Northwest thing. So Seattle isn't really close to where I am, but my family visited there last summer and I actually kind of liked it. I'm am NOT a city person. I mean, I have a huge personal space thing. But...there was something intriguing about the city (I'm not talking about the Gum Wall either. But we did see it).

Why else would I be interested? Well, after watching a short clip on Waiting for Superman, I am more convinced now that I want to teach kids who don't have the same advantages I have/had growing up in a middle class home. In one of my pre-teacher classes, I read Unequal Childhoods by Annette Lareau. I hated reading about the advantages I had as a child and easily took for granted because I didn't know what others didn't have. I also want to feel like I've made a difference in kid's lives and I feel like I'd make more of a difference teaching underprivileged kids.

And to top it all off, I was *just* casually browsing their website and discovered they have an early childhood education program for corps members (if I haven't mentioned before, I have the MOST experience with preschoolers and I've always enjoyed working/teaching/playing with them...here's a whole other post to write about). And well, can I just say, I'm a bit more interested? I'm still not sure if this is something God's leading me to do or not, but I'm leaving it out in the open...