Getting religion

Education: Secular groups like Teach for America are finding fruitful partnerships with faith communities | Alisa Harris

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When Tiffany Moore's parents moved from Los Angeles for better schools and a safer community, Moore left her cousins in the schools she left behind. As she grew up and saw her own family's education gap widen—she looked ahead to college while her cousins struggled with reading and writing—she decided one day she would go back to Los Angeles and right this wrong.

So she chose her profession at the age of 11—a teacher. In 10th grade, she set her sights on principal, so she shadowed her school principal and sat with him at lunch, telling him she wanted to teach in an inner-city school where she could give students like her cousins the education she had.

He told her about Teach for America, an organization that chooses an elite group of graduates and trains them to close the achievement gap in inner-city schools. Moore knew it was exactly what she wanted to do. She went to Azusa Pacific University, studied history and elementary middle-school education, and applied to just one program after graduation—Teach for America. Now she has moved back to Los Angeles as a TFA corps member teaching at Johnnie Cochran Middle School.