Students at Rise Kohyang Middle School often do schoolwork in small groups. Photo courtsey Rise Kohyang Middle School.

It’s 8a.m. on a Monday. The first of LAUSD’s more than 660,000 students are beginning their day. But as sleepy-eyed high schoolers stare at the front of the room, they might not know that many of the teachers staring back at them are part of a national network serving thousands of students nationwide--Teach for America.

The organization, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, places college graduates to serve as teachers in low-income communities throughout the country. TFA serves 500,000 students in 52 regions, with more than 8,600 corps members nationwide.

“We want to cultivate a generation of leaders in our country who will ask themselves ‘how can I make the greatest possible difference?’” said Teach for America Founder Wendy Kopp, who today serves as CEO of Teach for All, the global offshoot of Teach for America.

One of those leaders was Marisol Leal-Avalos. The Orange County native said she has always been passionate about education and nonprofit work. After receiving her undergraduate degree from UCLA, she worked at the Boys and Girls Club in Garden Grove, California but decided she wanted to pursue her teaching credential. That’s where TFA came in.

The program requires corps members to teach while simultaneously enrolled in a graduate school and credentialing program. Corps members undergo a rigorous summer training process and interview with different schools for teaching placement.

When Leal-Avalos began teaching at Rise Kohyang Middle School in 2013, the school--which is part of the Bright Star charter network--was in its second year. She came in as the school’s first and only special education resource teacher.

The first year her caseload was 15 students but by the time her second year started in 2014, the number of students enrolled at Rise had doubled, as had the number of special education students. The school practices an inclusive model, meaning that special education students learn in a classroom alongside standard learners rather than being pulled into a separate resource classroom.

“The word got out about how safe and loving and caring our teachers are,” said Rise Kohyang founding principal Eliza Kim. “Specifically for students with special needs it’s great because they feel included. There is no them and us. They are a part of this community.”

But Leal-Avalos was suddenly dealing with 35 cases, eight more than the legal limit. The school was able to hire an assistant resource teacher and Leal-Avalos said administrators at both the school and TFA were understanding of her new responsibility but balance was difficult.

“It was very taxing in terms of how much is demanded,” Leal-Avalos said “It’s almost like you have three full-time jobs: full-time teaching, full-time grad school, full-time for the reflective piece of TFA. You have to have the right energy and the right attitude because if not you could easily burn out.”

Applications and enrollment in TFA nationwide have decreased significantly in the past five years. The organization reports it had roughly 44,000 applicants in 2015 compared to 50,000 in 2014 and 57,000 in 2013.

Lida Jennings, executive director of TFA Los Angeles, said the decrease in applications is likely due at least in part to the economic recovery. She said applications reached a high point following the 2008 economic crisis. Currently there are 180 corps members serving as teachers in Los Angeles, which is home to the nation’s second-largest school district.

“I have requests for, and I could place 2.5 times as many teachers as we have right now,” Jennings said.

Teach For America accepts approximately 15 percent of applicants each year, aiming to create a corps that is as diverse as the communities it serves.

In 2015, 85 percent of TFA’s Los Angeles corps members identified themselves as people of color including 14 percent black, 51 percent Latino and 11 percent asian/pacific islander.

“Coming into the corps I didn’t have an understanding of what that philosophy really meant but I think that it definitely makes a difference when you have educators that reflect the demographics of the school,” Leal-Avalos said.

At Rise Kohyang, Kim said more than 40 percent of the students are Latino, roughly 40 percent are Asian American and the rest are African American or biracial. Because of the limited number of schools in surrounding areas such as Little Tokyo, charter schools like Rise Kohyang are often an appealing option.

Rise Kohyang Middle School occupys the second floor of this Koreatown resturant and office complex. Finding space for charter schools in Los Angeles is difficult. Click the playheads to learn more.

The school no longer has a contract with TFA. As enrollment increased, officials chose to hire an administrator who deals specifically with recruiting and hiring new teachers. Still there are two corps members serving in other Brightstar Charter Schools and four TFA alumni in leadership positions, two of whom Kim said she hired personally during her time at other Bright Star schools.

She said overall her experience with TFA teachers has met with mixed results and she remains unsure if she would reinstate the contract if given the chance.

"There are some that per their TFA mission and vision are completely gung-ho about urban education, who are resilient, who show leadership and advocacy but after two years being in a school setting they don’t always come back or they need a break,” Kim said. “Some of the candidates have been awesome— maybe some of the best—but a good 20 percent are the ones that really end up lasting a long time. As a principal, I personally take it to heart every time we lose someone in education so even if I had a TFA teacher decide not to come back after their two year contract, if they weren’t going into education in some capacity I felt like it was a loss."

According to a recent survey conducted by TFA, about 61 percent of 2010 corps members have continued to teach for three or four years compared to 38 percent of 2009 corps members. 23 percent of 2009 corps members continued to teach for five or six years compared to 34 percent of 2008 corps members. The percentage of corps members who have taught for seven or more years has continued to decline since 2005.

In Los Angeles, TFA is piloting a program, the One Day Fellowship, which allows 13 corps members to engage in a third year of teaching with TFA support.

Leal-Avalos is part of the program though she chose to leave Rise Kohyang and teach at a public school in Santa Ana, Calif. because the daily commute from Orange County to downtown Los Angeles was difficult. She said she plans to stay in education for at least the next five years.

“That network I’ve created with corps members that I started with, we are all very tight-knit and it might not be officially TFA sponsored but we definitely all share that same vision,” Leal-Avalos said.