Teach for America’s big night out
Teach for America’s annual Benefit Dinner may have swapped locations, from Washington Heights’ edgy Silver Street Studios to the Royal Sonesta, but the switcheroo didn’t affect this year’s bottom line. In fact, the Uptown hotel might be a good-luck charm.
Thursday’s crowd raised $1.3 million in support of high-performing educators charged with leading Houston’s lowestincome students — with a promising catch.
One local family and longtime TFA donor offered to match all financial contributions up to $150,000 through May; the organization stands to garner an additional $300,000 toward its banner message: “One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.”
“My mom had an eighth-grade formal education,” CEO Elisa Villanueva Beard said during her opening remarks. “She decided that if she were going to get married, she would marry a man with a college degree. That is literally how she chose my father; they’ve been married for 42 years.”
Beard followed a panel discussion among TFA alums on how to equalize their students’ education.
Colleen Dippel, Families Empowered founder and executive director, contrasted how her stance has evolved. When Dippel’s career began, she focused more on the student and less on parental involvement; now, she recognizes parents as the main stakeholder invested in the duration of the child’s education.
“Where you happen to be born literally directs your life trajectory,” Beard said. “I realized that not all of our educators believe that they’re educating the future generations of leaders.”
To remedy that discrepancy, TFA-Houston has recruited top talent — would-be tech, finance and law professionals — to battle what the nonprofit deems to be nation’s greatest inequity: education.
According to Beard, “more than 67 percent remain in education past the required two-year commitment.” After presenters Adeeb Barqawi and Phoebe Tudor recognized honorees Anne and John Mendelsohn, “career” educators Marcus Ceniceros, Trisha
Cornwell and Lyric Flood read “Alumni Diaries,” anecdotes from their respective classrooms, aloud.
Their poignant testimony segued into an impassioned round of giving totaling $1.3 million — and, fingers crossed, six figures more.