Emily Schaffer (LA '02) went from the quiet suburbs outside of Boston to the boisterous city of Compton, Calif. Her West Coast surroundings were more than just 3,000 miles away from Gate of Heaven Catholic School in South Boston, where Schaffer volunteered as a Tufts undergraduate. "There's a very different demographic," Schaffer said. "My school in Compton [Ralph Waldo Emerson Elementary School in Compton Unified School District] was 60 percent African American, 40 percent Latino, 100 percent free [or] reduced lunch and 87 percent below poverty line. There were a lot of language and culture challenges."
Upon graduating from Tufts, Schaffer joined Teach For America (TFA). The national program aims to eliminate unequal education by having recent graduates teach at impoverished schools across the country. Originally from California, Schaffer chose to work in her home state for TFA.
The school where Schaffer taught had a history of poor performance. "Compton was coming out of state receivership due to abysmal test scores, and I started the first year they came out of that [receivership]," Schaffer said.
Schaffer's students moved up 1.5 grade levels in one year, but Schaffer is modest about her students' success. She said it was less an indication of fantastic teaching ability than an indicator that the students had previously been academically neglected.
"Some of the students come in so low," she said. "They've been under-taught for a while. By no means was I superwoman. It's more a matter of training, leadership and great support within my school."
The unique perspective that TFA afforded Schaffer enabled her to understand the Compton community. "One of the things Teach for America gives you is the opportunity to live in an area you would never ever live," she said. "I know someone who lived in the Mississippi Delta."
"You really get to know the families," she said. "Every week, I was at dinner at another person's house. I didn't live in Compton, but I practically did."
Teaching the children of the Compton community helped Schaffer to put the reputed violence of the area into perspective. "There are families that live in this community," Schaffer said. "Every day these students walk to class and no one shoots them on their way to class."
Schaffer, however, admitted that crime in Compton does exist. "I had to promise my dad that I would take a self-defense course and buy a club," she said. "It would just be a lie to deny that there is violence in the areas we work in."
According to Schaffer, the negative stereotype of the Compton area is reinforced by the media. "These communities are constantly in the press, and any news was always bad news," she said. "No one ever wanted to know when the children were achieving."
One of the controversial aspects of TFA is that even if they are very effective, the graduates the program employs as teachers are only placed in schools for a two-year period. Critics have charged that as a result of this time limit, the progress implemented by TFA teachers in their low-income schools is temporary rather than ongoing, and those schools again fall by the wayside once the teachers' two years are up.
But after completing her two-year commitment, Schaffer decided to stay on an extra year in Compton and switch from teaching kindergarteners to teaching fifth graders. The quantitative economics and Spanish double-major taught a dual-immersion program, and her students finished out the year bilingual.
The relatively short length of her stay at the Compton school was something Schaffer tried to make up for by aiming to keep her programs alive after she left. "I knew going into Teach For America that I wasn't going to stay in the classroom for more than a couple years," said Schaffer, adding that she took steps "so that change could [be] perpetuated after I was gone."
Schaffer was involved in the school outside the classroom as the school's technical coordinator, as well as the secretary of the school's PTA. She also set up a nutrition program and designed new registration procedures.
"There's so much to do - you can actually get a huge amount of responsibility if you're willing," Schaffer said.
That opportunity for leadership uncommon. "The reason I ultimately chose Teach For America was that I knew I would have some really valuable skills," Schaffer said. "[A lot of jobs offer] a huge array of experience, but they haven't necessarily executed something."
Schaffer said that although TFA was rewarding, the decision to participate was not an easy one. "I applied to a variety of programs and jobs, and I knew I wasn't ready to devote my life to shuffling papers," she said. "I knew I wasn't ready for the full time office environment. I was afraid that I would be a slave and not have any free time, but in the end I wanted to take the risk."
The active lifestyles of Tufts students often make them a good match for TFA, Schaffer said. "Tufts students are typically very active in addition to their course work," she said. "They're involved in two or three activities. They're accustomed to multitasking. It just seems like they're able to tackle many things at once."
Schaffer herself multitasked as an undergrad: she was on the Spirit Coalition and the rugby team, worked as a manager at the Office of Student Activities, worked for Tufts Public Relations and participated in a program called Peace Games in schools in South Boston. She also studied abroad in Sevilla, Spain, and took a Tufts-funded trip to Cuba.
Schaffer is currently working at a San Francisco neuroscience company where she is helping "to create a curriculum and implement a software program for elderly people, [that] helps combat cognitive decay."
She said that although the work there is very different than her work with Compton kindergartners, it is related to both teaching and the social justice mission of TFA. In the future, Schaffer would like to work with school administration and public policy in the public sector.
