One Day, All Children...: The Unlikely Triumph of
Teach for America and What I Learned Along the Way
by Wendy Kopp
Completed April 2001
Truth in advertising requires me to disclose that Wendy Kopp is my sister. Take what I say with a grain of salt because of that, but read this book.
Wendy's story is both inspiring and insightful. Her story is the story of founding Teach for America, the national corps of people who compete to teach in some of America's most challenging inner-city and rural schools. There are some great things to take away from this story, whether you're trying to give every child an equal opportunity at an excellent education or you're trying to build the next great company. A few of her insights:
Creating momentum is not done gradually, it's done with critical mass. Teach for America could have started small and grown, but it wouldn't have been a "movement." If it hadn't been a movement, it wouldn't have affected 100s of thousands of students, and might not even be here today. How Wendy made that decision -- to go big -- and stuck to it in the face of countless objections, is fascinating.
Idealism and indomitable confidence is good, but experience does matter. Wendy could not have founded Teach for America and made it successful had it not been for her confidence and her refusal to accept that her good idea must see the light of day (with characteristic humility, she calls this "naivete"). But it wouldn't have reached the point of institutionalization -- becoming a meaningful, on-going movement with a life of its own -- if Wendy had not had the wisdom and the courage to change. Not only would it mean seeking and accepting the help, guidance and advice of others, it would mean changing what she did and how she did it. In my limited experience, this is such a difficult transition -- from raw individual energy to leading and managing a group of people with deeper experiences. It is a transition is so rarely well-made, and One Day, All Children provides an inside look at how one individual and organization did it. One sees the confidence, the wisdom (and some of the missteps) it took to move from individually driving an organization to leading and managing a diverse team of people.
People (and organizations) need goals, and those goals need to be aspirational. Whether it is Teach for America's management or it is the teachers they place (or teachers anywhere), Wendy makes the point -- very clearly and powerfully, I think -- that people rarely (if ever) achieve more than they set out to achieve. Teachers who set out to achieve grade-level for their students might make it, but they will not be successful in taking their students beyond grade-level. Teachers, on the other-hand, who seek to achieve something beyond grade-level (Wendy tells the story of one Teach for America teacher in North Carolina who aimed to prepare all of her students for college), succeed in achieving improvements dramatically beyond raising the percentage of students performing at grade-level. So it is with Teach for America itself -- it didn't set out to place teachers, it set out to start a movement which will culminate one day, when all children would have an equal opportunity at an excellent education.
Beyond simply insights into management, leadership and teaching, though, the story is a great read. Following the roller-coaster of early success, funding challenges, changing focus and reaching the point where the impact becomes clear and unmistakable, is inspiring. Enjoy it.