Why Talented Educators Go to New Orleans

Posted by Carol Coletta on September 17, 2008

Today I had a chance to speak to a couple of people at TeachNola, the New Teacher Project in New Orleans whose job it is to recruit seasoned people -- not necessarily those with teacing background -- to the city post-Katrina.  Clearly, it is the strong sense of mission and what appears to be the opportunity to "make a difference" (change the world, might be a better way to put it, or more modestly, make a mark) that is attracting so many good young people to the city.  But I asked my guests whether they believed a similar sense of purpose and urgency could be created in a city that is suffering from quiet devastation rather than a TV event called Katrina.  They said, yes, absolutely.  But, Lindsay Enters, a former community organizer who now teaches 2nd grad in NOLA, told me, "The problem is the devastation is quiet.  People don't know there is a problem."  You can't put money and people around a problem if you don't know it exists and you don't create a sense of urgency and purpose.  That would be an interesting experiment to try.