When Cara Ladd, a recruiter for Teach for America, looks at potential candidates, she maintains a vision for how individuals who demonstrate leadership and community involvement can work toward the organization’s mission to end educational inequity. At Syracuse University, Ladd came upon two students, Taylor John and Richard Kaufman-Hanson IV, who she feels embody these values.

John and Kaufman-Hanson, both seniors at SU, will join Teach for America in fall 2022 and fall 2023, respectively. Following a recruitment and application process, the two are preparing to fulfill personal, academic and service goals with the program.

The work that the two have done on SU’s campus, Ladd said, ultimately made them successful candidates and will carry over into the work they will do with Teach for America. The organization looks at candidates who can showcase their capability to build relationships and communicate across lines of difference, she said.

“A lot of times within our recruitment process, what we look for is student organizations that work with the same types of communities where we’re involved in,” Ladd said. “We look for student organizations that maybe have more of a focus on equity work, student organizations that are really involved in the community, things of that nature.”

John, who’s majoring in international relations and citizenship and civic engagement, is the chief of staff of the Student Association and the former president of her sorority. Off campus, she is a doula and an intern at Planned Parenthood. For John, being an educator and a leader is conducive to being a doula and her ultimate goal of becoming an OB-GYN.

“A doula is not just someone that is educated in birth practices … but they’re also there to educate the client, to educate the mom about how to breastfeed and how to nurse, how to hold the baby properly,” John said. “And then the same way you can think about a teacher … We spend most of our time as students with our teachers than we do at home, so that teacher role, that foundation, is really important and crucial to the development of the child.”

In Los Angeles, where she will be stationed with Teach for America, John said she plans to use her understanding of what it means to be an educator to better understand where her students need mental and emotional support. She also said a lot of her work will focus on listening to students rather than focusing only on school work. Part of this, John said, means tailoring teaching methods to specific points of entry and reference for children of different ages.

“The best way to relate to a younger mindset is to think about what they’re thinking about — utilizing their tools that they already have access to,” John said.

For Kaufman-Hanson, being an educator means bridging a gap between education policy and real classrooms that he saw growing up in New York state. As a policy studies major, the chair of SA’s board of elections, the treasurer of College Democrats and the interim president of Amnesty International at SU, Kaufman-Hanson said he wants to be a voice in the room that has both a grasp of policy and political processes and an understanding of the realities of a classroom.

“I think you’re seeing that a lot around the country now, where there’s a lot of policymaking happening without any real classroom experience,” Kaufman-Hanson said. “So I thought it would be a good idea to sort of get some actual classroom experience.”

Kaufman-Hanson also said that his mother, a social studies teacher and an SU alumna, was an influence on his value of education as well as on his decision to join Teach for America.

As part of the application process, candidates for Teach for America conduct a lesson plan for the admissions team to assess how they communicate and engage. Lesson plans can be anything that could be taught in a pre-K-12th grade classroom, Ladd said.

Kaufman-Hanson conducted a lesson on summations and did a walk through of algebraic summations and expressions with a high school precalculus class in mind. Though he has interest in policy, particularly transportation policy, Kaufman-Hanson said he hoped to teach high school math to fill a need at Teach for America.

“(I’m) going where I’m needed,” Kaufman-Hanson said. “There are just certain subjects nationally that there are less teachers in. So math is one of them. There are other high demand areas. Elementary special education is another big need that they have.”

For her lesson plan, John chose to give a lesson on consent. Teaching consent in a broad context and to kids at a young age, she said, hopefully results in kids having a strong foundation for consent as a concept that they can use throughout their adult lives. She said conversations with her parents and 8-year-old sibling about small ways to exercise consent inspired her to create the lesson.

John’s own experiences shaped her goal to create change that starts with education, she said. As a survivor of sexual assualt and domestic violence, John believes that sexual consent “can and should be taught” at a young age.

“The hope is that those students that learn consent at a young age are able to adapt that throughout their entire adult life,” John said. “And we would ideally have a decrease in sexual assault cases, abuse cases and things like that.”

John said that a strong alumni network through Teach for America ultimately drew her to the program. As an alumna of the program herself, Ladd said that the support built in defines its power and ability to help educators make an impact.

For Kaufman-Hanson, seeing the accomplishments of alumni helped him to envision a way to segue into policy making.

“A lot of Teach For America alumni end up in government and the policy process,” Kaufman-Hanson said. “And so I think joining that sort of group of people with these experiences is really cool.”

When John and Kaufman-Hanson begin their roles with Teach for America, though, Ladd said the most important takeaway will be the relationships they form with their students and the day-to-day interactions that shape children’s educational experience.

“Taylor and Richard (are) going to have that opportunity every day to really build those relationships with kids. And that’s really what is the lasting impact,” Ladd said. “And I know that they’ll do that with the utmost respect. And they’ll really make some lifelong connections out of this experience.”

Published on February 20, 2022 at 11:33 pm

Contact Jana: jlseal@syr.edu | @JanaLoSeal