Wendy Kopp Quotes
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I'll get up at 5 or 6. I try to catch up on sleep on the weekends, so I'll try to get seven hours of sleep. During the week, my ideal is to go to bed at 9 and wake up six hours later.
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I myself was completely torn by the decision to start Teach For America. There was a voice in my head telling me not to do it - to take a more normal path. I did have one thing going for me, which was that I had been rejected from all the other jobs I'd applied to.
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If the world's leaders are serious about improving collective well-being, we'd better get serious about prioritizing education in our nations and in our global discussion.
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Research shows that whether you are low-income or not, mindset is a bigger predictor of success than academic skills, and how students gain great academic skills and persevere in the face of challenges.
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In the long run, we will need many more African-American, Latino, and Native American leaders, and leaders from low-income communities, who can bring additional insight and a deeply grounded sense of urgency, and who are the most likely to inspire the necessary trust and engagement among students' parents and community leaders.
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I think the way to understand Teach for America is as a leadership development program.
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If we freed up all the money in the certification process, think about how much more money we'd have to put into teacher salaries.
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The teachers are trying to build the same culture in the classroom as we're building in the organization.
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Imagine how different those classrooms could be if hundreds of Nigeria's most talented recent graduates and professionals channeled their energy not only into the country's banks, but into making education in the country a force for transformation.
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Research confirms that great teachers change lives. Students with one highly effective elementary school teacher are more likely to go to college, less likely to become pregnant as teens, and earn tens of thousands more over their lifetimes.
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Charter laws do something really important. They give educators the freedom and flexibility that they need to attain results. But we also have to invest a lot in the leadership pipeline to take advantage of that freedom and flexibility.
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It's possible to train great people, but a person with great training who doesn't have certain characteristics is only going to go so far.
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I've heard a number of our alumni - people who are running schools and school systems - think a lot about different models for the teaching profession.
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Tests that sugar-coat the truth only set up our kids to fail in worse ways down the road.
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The lack of diversity in higher education is a problem we as a country must tackle if we're going to live up to our promise.
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It's easier to poke holes in an idea than think of ways to fill them. And it's easier to focus on the 100 reasons you shouldn't do something rather than the one reason you should.
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When I started Teach For America, I wasn't trying to come up with an idea that would change the world. I was trying to solve a problem much closer to home: I was a senior in college, and I had no idea what I was going to do with my life!
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There's no how-to guide for how to change the world. But it's easy to get hung up by misconceptions about what it takes to make an impact.
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When I started Teach For America as a college senior, I sensed that there were thousands of talented, driven college students and recent grads who were searching for a way to make a real difference in the world.
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Technology has enormous potential to address educational needs more efficiently, help teachers improve their performance, and enrich and individualize student learning.
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Across the globe, disadvantaged children are not living up to their potential because if they attend school at all, the schools are usually not designed to meet their extra needs.
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We are working essentially to build a leadership force of folks who will, during their first two years of teaching, actually put their kids on a different trajectory - not just survive as a new teacher, but actually help close the achievement gap for their kids.
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We are looking for a set of personal characteristics that predict success, the first and foremost of which is perseverance in the face of challenges. We also look for the ability to influence and motivate others who share your values, strong problem-solving ability, and leadership.
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We must broaden the definition of who our neighbors are, and extend the boundaries of our interest and empathy.