Teachers who are part of Teach For America (TFA), a national nonprofit organization dedicated to providing a quality education for all students, celebrated two milestones this year: 20 years since the program began partnering with local schools in Hawai‘i and 35 years this month since the national organization launched.
Locally, TFA selects promising leaders who commit to teach for two years in high-need communities on Oʻahu and Hawai‘i Island as corps members. While in the program, the TFA corps members enroll in an accredited teaching program and work toward completing state teaching qualifications while teaching full-time in Hawai‘i classrooms.
TFA Hawai‘i's executive director, two TFA corps members and a veteran teacher shared the significance of TFA's anniversary and how the organization continues to make a positive difference in the lives of Hawai‘i students.
"Thousands of people have said yes, all students deserve access to a quality education, no matter what their ZIP code is or how much money their family has," said TFA Hawai‘i Executive Director Meilan Akaka Manfre, who attended TFA's two-day 35th anniversary celebration, the Summit, in Las Vegas. Over 8,000 TFA alumni, corps members and staff gathered at the Summit to reflect on the organization's past impact and how its leaders plan to make a positive impact in education going forward.
Sadie Kim, a fourth grade teacher at ʻEwa Beach Elementary School, is in her first Teach for America corps year and teaches all core subjects. (Kyler Hood) 
Emily Burt, a high school biology teacher, is in her second Teach for America corps year. Pictured here, she sits in front of the Waiʻanae High School sign. (Kyler Hood) 
Kileigh Sanchez poses for a photo beside the Waiʻanae Intermediate School sign, where she teaches seventh and eighth grade art. Sanchez earned Hawaiiʻ's 2027 Complex Area and Charter School Teachers of the Year award in recognition for her work reestablishing the school's art program. (Kyler Hood)
Sadie Kim, who recently graduated from George Mason University in Washington, D.C., is a first-year TFA Hawai‘i corps member who teaches fourth graders in all core subjects at ʻEwa Beach Elementary School.
Kim said she admires the community that Teach for America has built in Hawai‘i and sees that this TFA region emphasizes the values of "ʻohana" and "aloha."
Since 2006, TFA Hawai‘i recruited 1,228 corps members to serve in Hawai‘i. At the start of the school year, 91 teachers began their first or second year of their teaching commitment. Current corps members work in 26 partner schools across Oʻahu and Hawai‘i Island, according to the regional office.
Emily Burt is from Evergreen, Colorado, and teaches biology to about 160 tenth grade students at Waiʻanae High School as a second year TFA Hawai‘i corps member. Burt said she appreciates how TFA sets her up to be like a "sponge" thanks to the resources and mentorship it provides, so she can absorb the large amount of information she'll need to be effective in the classroom.
Burt highlighted her practicum experience teaching summer school at Campbell High School as particularly helpful for learning about the local culture and for gaining hands-on teaching experience. Practicum is an intensive pre-service training and classroom immersion experience where incoming corps members learn foundational teaching skills before starting their full-time school placements.
"It's just really exciting to know that the work that Teach for America has done and will continue to do is so ingrained in the success of communities like Waiʻanae,"said Kileigh Sanchez, a 13-year teacher at Waiʻanae Intermediate School who teaches seventh and eighth grade art.
Sanchez earned Hawai‘i’s 2027 Complex Area and Charter School Teachers of the Year award in recognition for her work reestablishing the school's art program. She was one of 16 educators recognized statewide.
Building ʻohana
TFA Hawai‘i strives to build community among its corps members and community partners by offering locally grounded training in coordination with over 11 community partners to foster an understanding, connection, and commitment to Hawai'i in TFA teachers.
"It is essential to me that we continue to double down on our commitment to play a role in partnership with many who care about quality education for kids," Akaka Manfre said.
Burt described visiting Hoa 'Āina O Mākaha, a five-acre working farm and community garden that is dedicated to teaching mālama ʻāina, how students and visitors can care for the land according to Hawaiian values. TFA corps members visited the site for a TFA Hawai‘i 'Āina Day, a land-based community service and learning event for TFA corps members that offers instruction about the culture and history of Hawai‘i. TFA Hawai‘i 'Āina Days also involve physical labor, and reflection alongside peers and partner organizations about stewardship and how they might implement these lessons in life or work.
On that 'Āina Day, Burt said the corps members learned about the history of farming in Mākaha, harvested crops, and built spaces for plants to grow and experiences like these put the TFA Hawai'i teaching experience in perspective:
"It's not like woohoo, I'm in Hawai'i and I'm on vacation," she said. "It's a job, and it's a job that comes with a lot of responsibility."
TFA Hawai'i offers a variety of resources and events to ensure that corps members and alumni working in education have the skills they need to adequately prepare for the challenges of their profession.
TFA corps members receive an evidence-based reading course from university partners and ongoing content support and classroom observations from their instructional coaches.
TFA Hawai'i offers literacy coaching to alumni who are still teaching in Hawai'i. The coaching is designed to improve how reading and writing is taught in Hawai'i classrooms. Alumni can also apply for funding to pursue teacher development opportunities.
TFA alumni and undergraduate or graduate students (not current TFA corps members due to the demands of the two year commitment) can also participate in TFA Ignite, a program where fellows provide online personalized tutoring in reading and math at least three times a week to students.
TFA 'Ohana Days also bring alumni and community partners together for fellowship and celebration, but usually at local venues and at a smaller scale than the celebration in Las Vegas.
Akaka Manfre said that the impact of TFA Hawai'i goes well beyond corps members' two year commitment. TFA alumni can use insights from their time as corps members to create structural improvements in education from other career fields or as they continue to work in education.
She emphasized that TFA Hawai'i will continue "to show up" for high-need communities by supporting high-quality instruction and collaborative problem-solving in education.
Teachers like Kim, Burt and Sanchez seem to have taken Akaka Manfre's sentiment to heart. Each teacher said they have found their passion and have already continued or will continue teaching beyond their two-year TFA teaching commitment.
The push toward educational equity looks different for each teacher due to their unique schools, keiki and teaching philosophies.
In Kim's ʻEwa Beach Elementary School classroom, she leads with "compassion, authenticity and humility" because "as a fourth grade teacher, you're not just their teacher. You're mom for eight hours. You're a therapist, you're a healthcare worker. You are everything to these kids."
Burt likes that TFA provides the tools and mentorship to be an effective teacher in her tenth grade biology classroom at Waiʻanae High School. She especially likes that TFA's guidance is not overly prescriptive, so she can develop an approach that she believes will be most effective for her students.
For Burt, that approach means she leads with compassion while still pushing students to develop students' knowledge of the scientific method.
"Our focus is that they are able to go out in the world and question everything around them and be observant thinkers and problem solvers," Burt said. She accomplishes this with a curriculum that has them analyze data or the world they observe, so they develop the ability to recognize patterns, a process she describes as "student-based, inquiry-based learning" that requires students to use evidence to support their hypotheses.
Sanchez leads her classroom with a focus on wonder and a full-throated support of creativity. Sanchez shared how she typically talks about Artificial Intelligence with her seventh and eighth grade art students: "AI is not original like you are. At the middle school level, you have something intangible that I can't teach you. That is your originality and creativity and your personality."
She adds that their wonder inspires her and makes her eager to come back to teach.
"Every year, kids are like, 'this is what I've created', and I'm like, 'whoa! I couldn't have imagined something like that.'"
Long-term Impact
By 2030, TFA Hawai‘i aims to have twice as many children in the Nānākuli-Waiʻanae complex area reach third grade English proficiency from the 2020 school year as measured by the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA). SBA is an annual test all Hawai‘i students in grades three through eight and grade 11 are required to take each spring. The test allows educators to assess the levels of academic progress in English and math.
TFA Hawai‘i's 10-year English proficiency goal also addresses the needs of local demographics including a large population of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students at schools where about 47% of current TFA core members teach.
Five years after TFA Hawai‘i set the goal in 2020, third grade English proficiency rose from 16% of Nānākuli-Waiʻanae complex area students to 25% of students who achieved proficiency at a third grade level. To reach TFA Hawai‘i's goal, 32% of Nānākuli-Waiʻanae complex area students must achieve third grade level English proficiency by 2030.
"If we want our students to be authentic leaders of our local and global community, they need to have literacy skills to be able to access content, knowledge, and navigate across all sectors," Akaka Manfre said.
Editors note: Author Kyler Hood was a Teach for America Hawai‘i corps member from 2016 to 2018. He taught special education English at Kealakehe Intermediate in Kona.
For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up here for our free Daily Edition newsletter.
