Brent Maddin never dreamed of being a teacher. Now he can't imagine his life without teaching.
A 1999 biology and society graduate of ASU, Maddin applied for a program he heard about from an acquaintance at a party -- a postgraduate opportunity called Teach for America.
"I will forever be a teacher," Maddin said. "I'll be involved in schools for the rest of my life."
Teach for America, a national corps of recent college graduates, began in 1989 as a dream to end educational inequity by placing motivated individuals in low-income schools to teach for two years, said Chris Kaleel, the southwest regional recruitment director for the organization.
"We believe that where a child is born should not determine his or her educational outcome," Kaleel said. "Our mission is to ensure that all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education."
While affecting students' education is the short-term goal, in the long run, TFA alumni work from all different areas to systemically change this nation's views of education, Kaleel said.
The program places its corps members in 22 regions around the country, he said.
Maddin said he taught ninth- through 12th-grade students in a rural Louisiana town. His two years of TFA were filled with grading papers, preparing lessons, tutoring, founding an academic decathlon team and coaching tennis, he said.
The program and his students inspired him to stay with the school district for two years beyond the TFA commitment. He went on to serve two more years teaching in rural Texas.
"I would rank it as the single best experience of my entire life," Maddin said. "I've never been challenged in the way that I was there in a lot of different ways."
These challenges included getting students to perform on the level he expected, he said.
"I demanded that they rise to meet my high expectation," he added. "And they really struggled."
One way TFA paid off was the impact the program itself left on the students, Maddin said. Last week, he coached one of his former students through the TFA application process, after she went on to the honors program at Louisiana State University and wrote her thesis on educational inequity, he added.
"She got it," Maddin said. "She realized that it doesn't have to be this way. There doesn't have to exist this educational inequity based on the color of someone's skin or where she is born."
Reach the reporter at tara.brite@asu.edu.
