Local Whitman graduate joins Teach for America

September 15, 2009

By Christopher Huber

Michael Anderson tries to call home to five or 10 of his new student’s families every day after class. It’s not because the boys are in trouble, but so Anderson, who is a first-year teacher at the BEST Academy, can get to know their parents and keep them posted about their child’s progress, he said.

The 22-year-old former Sammamish resident and 2009 Whitman College graduate is in his fifth week as a science teacher at the Minneapolis charter school for African-American boys. He will spend two years there as part of the Teach for America program, which places college graduates from all areas of study and career interests in schools across the country that are in need of greater educational opportunities.

He teaches fifth- to eighth-grade science at the academy and already has a lot of stories to tell. Despite the frequent long days, he finds much reward in working with the youth.

“Every day the kids come to school with pictures they’ve drawn of me, or of dinosaurs,” Anderson said. “I’ve had some meaningful moments.”

Anderson remembered well one of his calls home recently. He said he called one boy’s family to commend him for his good work in class that day. The child had just seconds earlier told his parents how much he liked his science teacher.

“When that happened, it made me forget that I had just worked a 15-hour work day and it all felt worth it,” Anderson said.

Anderson’s family still lives in Sammamish, so they miss him a bit, said his mother Terry, but they appreciate his interest in helping youth.

“He’s always been a good teacher and he’s always been good with children,” Terry Anderson said. “I think it’s a very good fit for him.”

Michael Anderson found out about Teach for America part way through his senior year at Whitman. As a religion major with a pre-med interest, he said he had not seriously thought about teaching until junior year. But the prospect of another years-long stint in medical school or the Peace Corps didn’t do it for him. He wanted to have a more tangible and visible impact on the world, he said.

“Coming out of college, I wanted to do something that had a direct impact out of college. When I found out about Teach for America, I thought it was a great opportunity,” Michael Anderson said. “I wanted to do something in the sciences. I always wanted to do something as a science teacher.”

The need for teachers in the Teach for America program tends to be in inner-city school districts and rural areas of the United States, said Eva Boster, the organization’s communications manager. The organization equips, trains and sends out more than 7,000 teachers to work with disadvantaged students from the nation’s lowest-income communities.

“We’re looking for people who can demonstrate that they’ve had past academic achievement … and also people that are deeply committed to ensure that the children they teach will have an excellent education,” Boster said from the organization’s Washington, D.C. headquarters.

Teachers are placed based on their preferences, but ultimately go where the need is greatest for their subject area, Boster said.

Before entering the BEST Academy, Anderson, along with the rest of the teacher corps, went through personal interviews and five weeks of training, where he learned teaching strategies and classroom management skills, among other things, he said.

After training in Los Angeles, Anderson said he spent a few weeks in July and August student teaching in Inglewood, Calif. to prepare for his assignment in Minneapolis.

Whether it’s playing basketball with his students after school or seeing the lightbulbs go on in his students’ minds, Anderson said the first few weeks of his two-year teaching experience has taught him more than he expected about how one person can make a difference in many lives.

“Teaching, it’s been wonderful. The kids are great. Though the challenge is daunting and the work is tedious, it’s already rewarding,” he said. “I knew that whatever expectations I had would probably be disproved fairly immediately, so I didn’t have many expectations coming into it. (I was) prepared for the worst and pleasantly surprised.”

Anderson said he has other ambitions to work in the sciences, so he plans to teach for two years and see where he goes from there.

Reporter Christopher Huber can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 242, or chuber@isspress.com.

Michael Anderson