Kevin Huffman is your typical Swarthmore alumnus. He was an English major. He went to law school. And, of course, he wants to change the world. But the amazing thing is that he’s actually doing it!

Huffman is the vice president of development and general counsel at Teach for America (TFA), the nonprofit organization that, since its inception in 1990, has placed approximately 10,000 recent college grads in teaching positions throughout the country’s underserved school districts.

Huffman, like many college seniors, longed “to make an impact right out of college.” Having spent a semester in Chile, he initially thought that he might like to teach English abroad. However, he was accepted by TFA—at that point a fledgling 3-year-old organization—and found himself teaching a bilingual first-grade class in inner-city Houston.

“It was fantastic,” says Huffman. “There was an enormous sense of both pressure and possibility,” referring to the importance of quality elementary education in a system that often fails students later down the line. He says that despite a preservice training program that, back then, included little hands-on teaching experience, he dealt with these pressures thanks to “a great support network—people who were living and breathing the academic achievement of their kids.”

Huffman ended up staying in Houston past his two-year commitment, after connecting with the people and neighborhood he had come to know so well. Throughout his years at New York University Law School and later with the Washington, D.C., firm of Hogan & Hartson, where he practiced education law, his time with TFA was not forgotten, and, in 2000, he returned there in his current capacity.

As the vice president of development, Huffman has ambitious plans for the program, now in its 12th year. He is attempting to triple recruitment within three years by borrowing tactics from corporate recruiters to go after “the campus superstars.” However, he still bemoans society’s priorities in this area: “It seems crazy that if you want to be an investment banker and make a lot of money, then people will fly you around and take you out to dinner; if you want to be a teacher, you have to invest an incredible amount of time and energy jumping through a whole lot of hoops just to figure out what you have to do.”

The program is hoping to capitalize on its alumni network of 7,000 people currently. Although 60 percent of TFA alums are still involved in education, Huffman sees the other 40 percent as equally vital in producing social change. Ultimately, he hopes that alumni are both teachers and politicians, principals and chief executive officers, so that the organization can spread its message throughout society.

Despite TFA’s broad ambitions, it still faces much criticism from established teacher-training programs as well as respected education writers. The program’s opponents say that it doesn’t prepare its corps members well enough and “de-professionalizes” teaching, thereby doing a disservice to the children it aims to help. In response, Huffman cites several studies, showing sponsoring principals’ satisfaction with TFA teachers compared with other beginning teachers, a high retention rate within the program, and the strong performance of children taught by TFA staff. He also is quick to point out that though his training experience a decade ago was insufficient for his needs in the classroom, the pedagogy behind the training has been revamped since then, and the five-week orientation now includes much more real-world experience.

Huffman thinks that Swarthmore’s philosophy meshes well with that of TFA: “When I left Swarthmore,” he says,”I re-member thinking, ‘Will I ever be around a group of people with the same values and the same drive?’ I felt exactly that way at TFA, too...;. I also don’t know that anything else has ever given me such a tangible sense that I made a difference.”

—Jeremy Schifeling ’03