From Nov. 4 until Nov. 8, Teach for America, Students for Educational Equity and the DU Programming Board (DUPB) will be hosting the first annual Educational Equity Week on the DU campus.
According to the Glossary on Educational Reform, the term educational equity is “the study and achievement of fairness in education.” The term “equity” is nuanced from the term “equality,” which indicates same treatment for all, while equity recognizes that different students will have different needs, therefore uniform treatment of all might not be the proper way to allocate funding and efforts.
“Most students at DU don’t come from low income backgrounds or poor education systems so my role is really to build awareness and educate students about the issues associated with poor public education,” said Maggie Waldner, a senior majoring in international studies and Spanish from Boulder.
Waldner is Teach for America’s campus campaign coordinator. She has been interning or affiliated with Teach for America since her sophomore year. She noted that Educational Equity Week is not about recruiting for Teach for America, but focuses more on the larger education issues that Teach for America mission works towards improving. Waldner spearheaded the events of this year’s Educational Equity Week. According to Waldner, the University Programming Support Committee was also involved in some of the original planning of the event and she hopes to strengthen the partnership with them in future years.
“A lot of college campuses do education equity weeks at their schools, so I took from that idea and catered it to our DU community. I want it to be more comprehensive than simply a ‘Teach for America week.’ Instead, it is really learning more about educational equity for all students and looking at the bigger picture,” said Waldner.
According to Waldner, Teach for America programs are principally found in low-income and struggling school districts that present a paucity in their amount of teachers. While TFA’s corps, the name given to persons or graduates currently participating in Teach for America, must apply to become a part of the TFA program and go through a five-week intensive training process, participating school districts must also go through an application process to qualify for TFA services. Waldner noted that some people believe that TFA is replacing trained teachers with their corps, many of them not education majors, but said that actually, these districts present a lack of teachers and request TFA corps to fill in these roles. Waldner explained that despite an inevitable learning curve for corps, the program is highly competitive and the trained corps are “best of the best” entering into the program. There are over 48 regions in the United States where TFA programs can be found.
A list of events associated with Educational Equity Week are as follows:
On Monday on the Driscoll Bridge from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m., DU students had an opportunity to help write letters of encouragement to K-12 students who are in schools near Denver with corps from Teach for America currently teaching.
On Tuesday there was a panel discussion called “Education as a Human Right” from 6 – 7:30 p.m. in Lindsay Auditorium. Students had the chance to learn more about the current state of education as a basic human right within the U.S. and abroad. Panelists included Teach for America alumni currently working at South High School, a South High student from Jordan who moved to the U.S. for educational purposes and a member of the Bridge Project. The bridge Project is an educational equity program originally started by DU faculty from the Graduate School of Social Work and a Ph.D. student who participated in the Peace Corps. Students had a chance to interact with and engage in discussion with the panel.
Wednesday night from 6 – 9 p.m. in Lindsay Auditorium, there will be a screening of “Waiting for Superman,” an award-winning documentary film that critiques the various failures in the American public education system, with free pizza and a discussion to follow.
Friday, there will be an opportunity for anyone considering applying to Teach for America to visit current corps member’s classrooms in the Denver area and learn more about the organization.
Waldner is also starting up the DU specific group called Students for Educational Equity, an education reform group open to anyone interested in education topics. The group is currently in process of becoming finalized as an official student organization. They currently have meetings roughly every two weeks in the Driscoll Underground on Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m., although they will not be having any more meetings until winter quarter begins.
“I’m really hoping to build it up this year and leave the organization to grow when I graduate because we get so many people who are interested in education reform but, unfortunately, if you’re not a senior you can’t apply to Teach for America yet. So I want to provide an outlet for this interest and a way to spread the movement on campus,” said Waldner.
Waldner hopes that the group will continue to host Educational Equity Week, or events similar to it, in the coming years after her graduation.
Approaching deadlines to apply for Teach for America are on January 24 and February 10. For more information about Educational Equity Week, visit the Facebook page at on.fb.me/1bSFqpr. To find more information about this week’s classroom visits or applying to Teach for America, contact Maggie Waldner at maggie.waldner@gmail.com.
