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Teach for America Brings Harvard Graduates to Underprivileged Communities

Across the Yard from recruiting meetings at the Faculty Club, Teach for America (TFA), an AmeriCorps program, is showing some students that there are worthy careers outside of investment banking and consulting.

Information sessions for TFA are not your typical recruiting mingle-fests. That's just one of the things about the AmeriCorps program that students found out on Tuesday, when two TFA alumni came to Phillips Brooks House to discuss the program with prospective applicants.

Xanthe F. Jory, a student at the Graduate School of Education (GSE), unfurled a TFA banner while about 20 people filtered into a tiny room.

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"One thing you learn as a teacher--a visual aid is important," Jory said.

Heather A. Harding, another GSE student, later joined her to lead the informal information chat.

The two discussed their experiences teaching in the Bronx and rural North Carolina respectively and gave a brief sketch of how TFA works.

After an intensive, five-week training program over the summer, TFA places its 1,000-member-strong Corps into under-resourced schools in 13 different locations, from Washington, D.C. and Houston to rural Louisiana.

"It's like a boot camp course," Jory says. "Does is prepare you to enter a classroom in the fall? Not really. But nothing really can."

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