How I Built This with Guy Raz - How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

After starting her career at Teach For America in 1998, Elisa Villanueva Beard has served as the CEO of the non-profit for the last five and a half years. Elisa spoke with Guy about how the organization has supported its teachers who are working in nearly 2,300 schools across the country, and how educators are finding creative solutions to engage with students during this challenging school year. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating turbulent times.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com host. Hey, everyone, and welcome to how I built this resilience edition from NPR. I'm Guy Raz, and on these episodes, we're hearing from entrepreneurs and business leaders about how they've been building resilience into their businesses during this very challenging. year. And today, my conversation with Elisa Villanueva Beard, CEO of Teach for America. Teach for America is a nonprofit that recruits members to teach in low-income communities. And if you want to hear the story of how it began, I interviewed the founder, Wendy Kopp, back in October of

2017 on the podcast. So check that out. Anyway, about 80% of Teach for America alums have a career in education or serve low-income communities. And that includes, Alisa, you yourself went through the program in 1998. What made you interested in pursuing a career in education? Well, Guy, you know, my story is quite personal. I grew up in South Texas in the Rio Grande Valley right on the Texas, Mexico border. That's where my story and interest begins. My mom came to the United States from Mexico at the age of 17 with a formal eighth grade education.

She quickly figured out the pathway to opportunity in this country is education. So she'll often tell us, you know, my first most important decision as a young adult was deciding I was going to marry a man with a college degree because I knew my kids' lives would be different, which is quite literally how she chose my father. It's a true story. They're still together. Forty-eight years later, dad's a first-generation college college college in college college. Anyway, I was the kid that did everything right in high school. I ended up in college in the Midwest. It is liberal arts, small college, DePaul University, in Green Castle, Indiana. And the short story is that when I got there, I thought, gosh, the hardest part of this is going to be adapting to a very different place at the time. DePaul was 3% Latino, 5% black. But I quickly realized that was not the hard part. The hard part was coming to understand. I was underprepared for the rigors of college, which is shocking because I was an A-plus student.

I was student-body president. I was a student-athlet. I did everything right. I didn't think I was going to make it. I called my mom a few months in and said, mom, I may not be cut out for this. Maybe I'm not college material. She told me that was ridiculous and that I wasn't welcome home with the support of my dad until I completed my degree from DePaul University.

And so the only way to get to the other side was to go through it. And I ended up thriving. So I had a very hard first year. And then I was thriving like, you know, competitive with every other kid. And I was going to be a lawyer. That was the path I was on. But then I started to get curious about how was it so that I struggled so. much and that no one, like the system shouldn't exist that you do everything right and yet you

almost, you know, don't make it. And that's when I got introduced to the systemic inequities that exist in our country, how it plays out for kids growing up in my community. And that's what drew me to teach for America. I got hooked and I joined the Corps in 1998 and I've been on staff now for nearly 20 years. Wow. And now the CEO of the organization. That's right for the last five and a half years, yes. The story you tell of your your mom saying, the only way through is through reminds me of that Robert Frost poem, and I'm paraphrasing, where he essentially says the only way through is through, which is often, unfortunately, unfortunately, the answer for challenging moments. I want to dive into this year because there's so much to unpack. This has been a, I think it's an understatement to say, the most challenging academic year in modern U.S. history, right? That's right.

walk us through what started to happen and how you began to figure out what you needed to do in February and March when it would become clear that all of these teachers that are, you know, under your sort of supervision, would not be able to teach these children face to face. These inequities that there's a bright light being shown on them now have existed pre-COVID, right? And so I think people started to realize all that schools hold. You know, I was watching suddenly our own teachers scrambling saying, how are my kids going to eat? I mean, they rely on school to eat. They rely on all these social services at schools in order to get their social, emotional, and learning needs met all at the same time.

And then the realization that most districts, most schools don't have that infrastructure to just pivot. And then how do you take care of the teachers throughout all? of this. And boy, if we talk about resilience, let's talk about our educators in this moment. And so it's been remarkable. So right away, we pivot to offering virtual spaces, our school leaders, our teachers, in order to support them through this. I mean, the big, very practical decision we had to pivot to is the way we train our teachers. So as we talked about earlier, we go out and recruit these folks. And then beyond our rigorous recruitment process, we train them and we support them.

And so our whole model requires in person. And so we have to quickly figure out how to do that virtually. So designed a new curriculum in nine weeks. And really our organization came together to really step up and meet the moment for our kids because we want it to be able to obviously provide a cohort of educators into classrooms this fall. One of the biggest needs that still exists today, there's so many of our kids like didn't have access to hotspots and broadband. And still today, 10 months into this thing,

like 15 to 16 million kids still do not have access to learning. And that is one of the biggest injustices that is just not okay. You know, we've been talking about the digital divide for decades now. And this has been the moment. I mean, you know, having access to a device, having access to broadband is like having pencil and paper. We used to say, what are the basics? These are the basics now. And we still have that.

And we still have about one to three million kids that have not been engaged. Like we don't know where they are because they haven't been engaged since March in any kind of learning. And so schools are still looking for many kids. And that's the reality that we're still facing right now. I mean, when we are facing the reality that 15 to 16 million children do not have access to broadband internet, and probably I'm assuming that many of your teachers are encountering that reality in some of the schools. because they're teaching in some of the poorest communities in the country. What do they do? How do they, what options do the teachers have to reach these kids? Right. So what I'm observing from our network is we're just watching heroes play out everywhere and communities come together.

So in some places, you know, folks start like, it's just not okay. And so they themselves are figuring out how do they raise the money, how do they partner with the right people to get our kids, the devices and the connectivity. But it's a true systemic problem. And so what we're seeing instead in some districts is, I mean, folks are handing out worksheets, you know, like, and there's no engagement with the child. And so what we are looking at and we have to be so clear-eyed about is the fact that we are on track to leaving a whole generation behind when we think about academics. And this is not even dealing with the social and emotional wellness of our kids.

I mean, we've got to get centered and grounded in the fact. that there is so much loss, so much trauma, so much fear when we think about all the crises. We're talking about the pandemic. There's an economic crisis. There is an environmental disasters happening. There's a racial reckoning. All of these things, you know, who they're impacting the most. They're impacting our kids in urban and rural America.

I mean, I have no doubt, and I think that you have no doubt, that we will begin to see the long-term effects of this over the next years and decades in the numbers of children who were left behind. I do want to ask you, though, and I don't want to be overly sunny here, not in any way to minimize the gravity of what has happened, but what kinds of creative things have you seen teachers try to do this year to do anything they can despite the overwhelming challenges they are facing and that the kids are facing? There's so much good creativity guy that is happening. I'm watching some schools, you know, the once I see most effective educators, they center students. Like they're really empathetic in trying to figure out, okay, what is the reality of where kids are?

Our kids are having to work. They're watching their parents, grandparents is their jobs. They have to go work. They can't be engaging in the virtual learning, don't always have the supports to do it. And so schools are saying, hey, you go work. We're going to offer different times for engagement in learning. And so when you fast forward and you think the status quo wasn't working for many of our kids already, they were bored, they were disengaged, you know, it wasn't really helping them learn, lead and thrive. How can we continue to build on that and take that forward where you have schooling that allows kids to work, that allow kids to engage in various ways based on their own individual needs and interests? Another thing that I'm watching is, you know, when schools are really cendering their content, you know, what kids are. kids are engaging in in the world when they're engaging community members into the actual

lessons. And it's real. It's relevant. Kids are able to even engage in problem solving in their local context. So there's lots of cool things happening like that. I was listening to a school leader talk about their school who they had good technology infrastructure when this all happened. Every kid had a device. And so that wasn't the issue. They really focused on building the infrastructure with relationships. And so they quickly said every adult is going to be assigned a pot of kids at our school, about 10 kids. And you are responsible for building a relationship. There's mutual accountability for what the school's doing well, connection with the family and the students. And so you're able to constantly adapt and figure out how do we, you know, meet our kids' needs in the moment. And so there's

lots of cool things like that that we can just be learning from. And the biggest thing I would say, gosh, if we could just center our students in this moment to really figure out how to move forward, we would, I think we'd have major breakthroughs. When we come back in just a moment, more of my conversation with Elisa Villanueva Beard and How Teach for America has worked to improve its recruiting efforts to include more teachers of color. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Resilience Edition from NPR. Hey, welcome back to how I built this resilience edition. So one of the knocks on Teach for America has been that.

They recruit teachers who don't share the same backgrounds as the kids in the communities they serve. So when I spoke with TFA's CEO, Elisa Villanueva Beard, I asked her what the organization is doing to recruit more diverse members. Roughly half of America's public school kids identify as people of color, right? Yes. But only one in five teachers do right now. And as you know, there are studies that show that children of color often perform better and standardized tests when at least one of their teachers is the same race. As you know, and I talked about this with Wendy Kopp when she was on the show in 2017, the founder of TFA. There's been a long-time criticism of TFA that it places

often white middle class, upper-middle class educators and communities of color and in areas where people are of lower socioeconomic status. And you're aware of these criticisms and critiques, and we're getting questions about this from our listeners. What is TFA doing to meet the critics and to recruit more teachers of color. It's such an important question. Guy, and I appreciate you raising it. So, I mean, I'm happy to say that over the last six years, we have fielded a core that is at least 50% people of color. This last year was just over 50% people of color. And because we understand the importance of this and have worked really hard to put forward the resources to ensure that we are able to.

to attract a strong racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse core. And so I would say we are now amongst the largest and actually most ethnically and diverse and racially diverse group of educators going into low-income communities. And further, about a third of our new core members, our first-generation college graduates. So this is something that we have taken on, believe it's so important and have it as a top priority and it's a commitment that we will continue to carry forward. Are you having any challenges in recruiting right now given given how challenging it is to teach? I mean, have you seen a drop-off in applications? Have you seen people withdrawing from the program? We are in the middle of our recruitment season right now. To answer your first question

about people dropping out, I mean, the answer to that is no. I mean, we, again, the resilience of the educators who just know their role is so important and in the midst of a lot of chaos, as you can imagine, Guy. And for us, we're in 37 states in Washington, D.C., with very different policies and very different rules. So some of our core members are facing realities where they are having to report to schools where there is no requirement of a mask. There are no safety precautions to than other extremes that, you know, are not in person. And so it's just so much to manage in our folks have just continued to show up and we continue to figure out how do we really hold our educators in this moment, the safety of them and our students at the same time. In terms of the recruitment,

we're in the middle of the season. We are watching that, you know, we're having to recruit virtually, which is completely new and different for us. And we're watching timelines get pushed into the spring as, you know, employers are trying to figure out who to recruit. And so we're seeing timelines delayed. We do expect to have a smaller core this year. year because we are managing all of these realities of COVID-19. But we're optimistic about folks, you know, stepping up and wanting to be part of the solution and realizing, you know, if you want to have an impact, there is no greater impact than teaching in classrooms and really coming to understand all the inequities. I call teaching, you know, the ground zero where you get

to see all the inequities playing out for our kids and you get to do something about it. This is a question from Gabby Barakat, also from Facebook. Gabby is a junior in college, very interested in pursuing this program postgrad, but doesn't know how it works. Can you briefly explain how it works and a bit about the application process? Sure. So you can go on www.com slash foramerica.org, click to apply. We have a process by which we will do a virtual interview that's a few hours long. And the process is pretty rigorous.

You know, one of the big parts of our entire model is, you know, being really rigorous on the front end because where we're placing our teachers and our first promise is to ensure that our kids get the education they deserve. We really want to make sure that we are recruiting and accepting someone that, you know, is going to be successful. And we have now lots of data and evidence when it comes to skills and mindsets, orientations, excuse me, that are really critical. And we study our best teachers that continue to refine our model. So that's step number one recruit. And then we have a training where we will train our teachers on the fundamentals of great teaching, you know, things that include the science of reading to how to approach the classroom in a trauma-informed ways to ensuring there is a clear approach to racial equity and cultural relevance and how we approach our classrooms. And after that training, we support our teachers.

So every core member, who's what we call our teachers, will get supports in the region. There will be national supports. There's regional supports that ensure that our teachers are successful with their kids, are learning from other teachers who are teaching in their content area, and really just have the emotional support and the inspiration of an entire network who's getting up every morning to pursue educational equity and excellence for their kids. You know, the past year and this school year and half of last school year will ultimately give us so much data and information about the needs and the gaps. And you mentioned the idea that a device and access to the Internet is like having a pencil and paper.

It is absolutely essential for students today. And I suspect that that will hopefully inform policy decisions going forward when this is done. And with everything that's happened during the pandemic and the onset of digital learning, what do you think teaching will look like when this is over? Well, Guy, my hope is that teaching looks very different as a norm than it did before, that this is a chance for us to really lean into what a reinvention. I think it would be just such a massive missed opportunity if we just try to go back to how it was, we really don't want to do that, right? And when we center on a 21st century global society

and what our kids need, our kids need to learn critical thinking skills. Our kids need to know the difference between facts and opinion. Our kids need to be compassionate and empathize. They need to learn how to work with, you know, people who are very different than them. And so these are all skills and they have to be adaptive, you know, they have to be prepared to do jobs that we don't even know what they're going to be in the next 10 years. And so when you think, about that, we think, gosh, the learning has to be relevant. And if kid has access to a device, the role of the teacher changes, right? Too many times still is the teacher giving information. Well, the kids have access to all the information. And so it allows you to then start to think about

how can we be creative and think about learning differently? How do we involve the community in learning? And how do we personalize our children's experience so that we're really stoking their interest and their passions. We're allowing that to really take hold and fostering things like collaboration and teamwork, all these things that we know are really important. And so my hope is that as we go back to this, I mean, I think technology will play a role. I think there's a need for that, but it's a way that allows us to more effectively meet the needs of our kids, give them access to the world, and foster some of these 21st century skills that we all talk about that I think we have a real opportunity to maximize in this moment. So many of us have been working and also trying to help

our kids with school from home this year. I count myself among those, and I know you've got four children yourself. What advice do you have for parents who are trying to make virtual learning work for their kids? Well, there's nothing easy about this. As you said, we had to do that in the spring. And thankfully, my kids have been back in school physically since September. One of the things that I think has been really great is that parents are really getting proximate to what it means to be a teacher. And so the level of just empathy and compassion to what it takes to do this well is a topic of conversation. So we're literally having this conversation all across the country, which I think should then help us lead to questions of, you know, the role of the teacher and, you know, what is required of them and all the policies that might become discussable around what it takes to ensure that we are. fielding great teachers, supporting them, ensuring that they are retained. But as for the parent,

I think it just depends on the situation. My husband and I are both former educators. And it was very hard for us to meet the needs of our kids, given the roles that we also have. And so I just think parents need to really be asking kids more than anything, how are they doing and getting them access to content that is relevant, that gets them excited about. learning that gets them curious. And so that's what we were focused on. And there are so many great programs out there right now, Khan Academy. I mean, there's access to tutoring programs that are rigorous. They're accessible. They're easy to get access to. And so, you know, try to lower the pressure for everybody a bit and just focus on the things that matter the most. And more than anything,

we're watching our most effective educators just are approaching all of this with a very humanistic orientation first and meeting our kids where they are to figure out how to get into the learning and the academics of this all. That's an excerpt from my live conversation with Elisa Villanueva Beard, CEO of Teach for America on our How I Built This Resilience series. To see our full live interview, you can go to facebook.com slash how I built this. And if you want to see all of our past live resilience interviews, you can find them there or at YouTube.com slash NPR. And don't forget, you can join our live conversations every Thursday at 9 a.m. Pacific, noon Eastern. And if you want to find out more about the series or other virtual NPR events,

you can go to NPRPresents.org. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger with help from Farah Safari, J.C. Howard, Bruce Grant, El Manion, Gianna Capadona, John Isabella, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Janet Lee. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This Resilience Edition, from NPR.