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It's still dark, just after six in the morning, when Alex Baranpuria, dressed sharply in a red shirt, matching red tie, and black slacks, packs up a bagel with tofu, grabs the A train from Fulton Street in New York's downtown Financial District, and heads up to 125th Street. From there it's a quick subway transfer to 135th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem. Just across the street from the subway stop is St. Nicholas Park; St. Nicholas, the patron saint of Dutch New Amsterdam, is also the patron saint of children. Facing the park is a middle school, which inhabits a building of generic-schoolhouse red brick relieved by some imposing entrance columns, called KAPPA IV.
Baranpuria '06 is in his second year with Teach For America, now the largest employer of recent Duke graduates. Formerly on a firm pre-med path, he teaches sixth-grade science at KAPPA IV, the fourth iteration of a model school begun by a Teach For America alumnus. The school's principal, Briony Carr, is a product of the New York City Teacher Fellows program, which is roughly equivalent to TFA. She says nothing discourages Baranpuria, adding that she often leaves late in the evening and finds him still working on student assignments and lesson plans. "You can feel his passion when you walk into his room"—a passion for his subject matter and his students alike.
The school places unusual expectations on students and their parents, including an extended school day, from 7:30 in the morning until four o'clock, two days a week. And it offers unusual opportunities, among them, field trips to colleges that are meant to excite interest in higher education. A "Commitment to Excellence" contract is signed by the parent, teacher, and student during orientation for incoming sixth-graders; it commits students to exemplifying scholarly behavior. KAPPA is an inner-city school, but it's far from a typical inner-city school.
Teach For America teachers like Baranpuria build on the legacy of Wendy Kopp; as a senior at Princeton University, she wrote a thesis that was the starting idea for TFA. From its origins in 1990, it now has a nationwide scope, with Kopp as chief executive. Corps members work in urban and rural areas identified by the organization as showing an appreciable gap in educational achievement. They are paid directly by their school districts and receive the same salaries and benefits as other beginning teachers. In its publicity, the organization says the salary ranges from $25,000 in rural areas to $44,000 in cities. That's hardly in the same universe as salaries for novices in investment banking. But TFA is a member of AmeriCorps, the national service network funded by the government, and corps members enjoy student-loan forbearance and receive stipends toward education expenses.
New recruits go through a five-week summer institute, which includes practice teaching, coaching, and discussion of classroom practices. They're hired by school districts through state-approved alternative-certification programs. Most of those programs require new teachers to take courses toward official certification.
Given the fervor of their commitment and the challenge of the work, TFA corps members might find solace in the slogans that fill the hallways of Baranpuria's school. Signs promote success through effort—"Give the world the best you have and the best will come back to you"; "Success is measured by the willingness to keep trying." There is also a nutrition chart, explaining the benefits of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. Alongside it is a drug-information chart, summarizing the effects of stimulants, steroids, and hallucinogens. A more engaging visual display is a photo gallery of the students. The majority of the students are Hispanic; most of the rest are African American.
After he greets the security guard at the building's entrance, Baranpuria, an avid runner, finds a serious hike, five flights up to his science classroom (there's no elevator). Room 505 has the familiar features of science instruction: a small library of biology, chemistry, and earth-science textbooks; posters describing forms of energy; a model of the solar system; a model of the anatomy of a frog.
The students walk silently to their seats and remain standing; they place green binders on the table in front of them and slip their backpacks underneath. Then Baranpuria leads them in a science chant. Shouting six-graders don't exactly perform in harmonious unison, and the chant is hard to make out, but it begins: "Science explains how things are/Like food in digestion and gas in your car." It goes on to name some scientists, notably including women, and ends, in a collective assertion of self-worth, "Through knowledge and wit, I will be able to rise."
Self-worth is clearly a guiding theme in Baranpuria's classroom. Even as the students are filing in, he's calling out supportively: "Vanessa's doing her job—beautiful." "Thank you for being so quick and efficient." "A minute and forty-five, and Rayshawn is ready to go." "Excellent job, scholars."
Friction is the day's lesson for Baranpuria's three classes. He makes each table a demonstration station. Students rotate from station to station. They roll a toy car along a rug fragment, for example, or drop balls down inclined planes that are smooth and polished and, alternatively, coated with sticky vegetable shortening. One student solemnly expresses concern to a class visitor over New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's idea to impose a Halloween curfew. Still, he and his peers are uniformly upbeat about a class with a hands-on approach to studying science—including, earlier in the school year, growing mold on bread.
For the lesson on friction, two classroom stations are set aside for special purposes. One is covered with cookies and donut holes provided by Baranpuria. It's meant to celebrate students who have earned a "VIP Card" for solid performance in meeting academic expectations. The other has the students learning about consensus-making, as they decide who at the school to reward with a public "shout-out." Recording their recommendations on Post-it notes, many of them single out Baranpuria: "Thanks 4 giving us cool experiments. U Rock." "Thanks for making science fun. Professor B., you are the best." "Prefess. B.: Thank's for running the place well." And, "Prof B., you are the best and the coolest."
During a brief pause between classes, Baranpuria talks about teaching. Teaching has been "the challenge of a lifetime," he says. But it's not just the satisfaction of performing a social service that's appealing to him; it's also the promise of instant results. TFA is very measurement-minded. The organization boasts of providing "a toolkit to help corps members create a data-driven, student-achievement-focused classroom from day one," with instructional plans tailored to state standards and the district's curriculum, diagnostic tests, and other assessment and tracking tools. Baranpuria's students know they'll be expected to master the properties of matter, the kingdoms of life, and much more. And Baranpuria knows he'll be judged on their mastery.
"I'm making such a big impact now, and I couldn't say that if I were starting med school or grad school, or working as an I-banker," he says. "I know I'm making a change in the lives of every one of these students." Those words perhaps capture a generational outlook: In a Harris Interactive poll last year, a striking 97 percent of young people declared an interest in seeking work that "allows me to have an impact on the world."
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