Steve Mandel, recent Teach for America board chair, on Wednesday will give a talk discussing the organization’s unique approach to educating children from urban and rural low income communities.
Mandel will speak at a meeting of the Darien Men’s Association from about 10:45 a.m. to 12 noon at the Darien Community Association.
— an announcement from the Darien Men’s Association
Teach for America
Teach For America is a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to “enlist, develop, and mobilize as many as possible of our nation’s most promising future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement for educational equity and excellence.”
Photo from the Darien Men's Association website
Steve Mandel
The organization aims to accomplish this by recruiting and selecting college graduates from top universities around the United States to serve as teachers.
The selected members, known as “corps members,” commit to teaching for at least two years in a public or public charter K–12 school in one of the 52 low-income communities that the organization serves.
TFA was founded by Wendy Kopp based on her 1989 Princeton University undergraduate thesis.
Since the first corps was established in 1990, more than 42,000 corps members have completed their commitment to Teach For America.[4] In September 2015, the organization reached a milestone of 50,000 corps members and alumni, who have collectively taught more than 5 million students across the nation.
The Challenge
In America today, the circumstances children are born into predict the opportunities they will have in life. Our education system was not designed to enable all children to realize their potential or achieve their dreams.
- 16M children in the U.S. live below the poverty line
- 2X more children of color are born into poverty than are white children
- 14% of children growing up in poverty will graduate from college within eight years of graduating high school
Steve Mandel is an investor and philanthropist. He founded the hedge fund Lone Pine Capital in 1997 after working as the managing director at Tiger Management.
In 1978, he graduated from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts in government. He also has an M.B.A. from Harvard University. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Teach for America.
If You’re Going …
- Darien Men’s Association meeting sessions begin with pastries, coffee and tea available at 9:45 a.m. followed by the business meeting from 10 a.m. to around 10:25 a.m.
- After a short break for more refreshments and socializing the Program Speaker is on the agenda from 10:45 a.m. until noon.
- The group meets at Meadowlands, the Darien Community Association’s headquarters at 274 Middlesex Road in Darien.