Core Member, Teach for America

>> Hi, I'm Danielle Duran, and I worked for Teach for America for seven years. Two of those years was as a corps member in, starting in 2004 I'm actually often asked about what the most difficult part about transitioning is, so I'll talk a little bit about that. As a student, you're very much in charge of your schedule, and for most people during the corps, it's one of their first jobs straight out college, and just the first job straight out of college is always challenging. But this is a particularly challenging job. Being a teacher is a really tough job, no matter where you're teaching. All of our schools are typically fairly low-income and very low-performing, mostly very underperforming, so you are working with a group of students that are very far behind, and you're bringing them up to speed or pushing them ahead. A lot of people that apply to Teach for America are very high-achieving people. So typically, presidents of organizations on campus, really high GPAs, people that probably, since their earliest memories, have succeeded at pretty much everything they've ever done. And this is not something that pretty much anyone ever succeeds at right away, so one of the biggest challenges is working really hard at something and feeling like you're giving it your all, and you're not succeeding right away. So that's one of the challenges that most people find most difficult in the beginning. And all I can say to that is you'll be fine. It will -- >> It happens to the best of us. >> Yeah, it happens to everybody. Anyone listening to this is probably sitting at the computer thinking, "Not me; I will be the one that succeeds." No. But you will do amazing things. You just have to -- you'll get through. You'll get amazing support.