A New Pathway for Public Service Leaders

Christina Grant never intended to pursue a career in education. After college, the political science major landed a job working for an international law firm in downtown Manhattan with sights set on law school. During that time, Grant was assigned pro bono work, preparing New York City high school students for mock trials.  

While not exactly in line with her normal day-to-day responsibilities, she nevertheless became invested in their lives, and they in hers. She wrote college recommendations and helped them find prom dresses. “You should be a teacher,” they told her. Her initial scoff eventually led to researching alternate ways into teaching.  

The more her students encouraged her, the more she began to consider a different path for herself. Then, on the morning of September 11, 2001, she was on the subway headed to the office when the Twin Towers collapsed above her. Everything changed. With the country in mourning and her own disillusionment with corporate law growing, she began to reassess her career trajectory. Before the school year ended, Grant had applied to Teach For America (TFA) and was assigned to a middle school classroom in Harlem.  

Grant, now a Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty member and executive director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University (CEPR), will be reunited with mentors and peers at the Teach For America 35th anniversary summit in Las Vegas held the first weekend in October. She will serve as the moderator for a session titled “What Happens to Teachers Now?” with a focus on how AI will impact the classroom. More than 20 HGSE community members are slated to serve on the broad range of panels.

This week we spoke to Grant about what she gained from public service, what she would tell others who might be considering a similar path, and how HGSE continues to strengthen its connection with Teach For America, including through the newly launched Public Service Priority Pathway.

Why did you join Teach For America? 
For 23 years I’ve said it was because I had always wanted to teach. But that’s not the true story. The truth is I wanted to be a corporate lawyer. When I first got the assignment at the law firm to prepare students for mock trial, I didn't want it. But by that spring, we were kicking butt. I had partners, very senior partners, who were coming to help because we were going up against our true competitors in business and my kids were winning. September 11 was a Tuesday and I was headed to the office because we had planned to kick off the new season as school had just started. And then, all of it happened. It was an incredibly difficult time for the whole city. Despite everything that was happening, my kids were like, ‘When do we get to come back?’ They wanted to debate, engage, and continue learning. As a systems leader, I have always remembered that. The children expect us adults to have a plan and show up.

So education was never your long-term plan? 
I knew if I wasn’t going to law school, I had to tell my parents I was doing something because I had very strict parents. I figured I’d teach for two years, get my master’s degree, and that would give me time to figure it out. Maybe I would return to law school, but I knew my parents expected me to go further in my education.  

Where were you placed? 
I ended up teaching middle school English and social studies at IS172 in Harlem. That school was about a 25-minute drive from where I grew up on Long Island. They weren’t two completely different worlds, and yet they were. I was grounded very early in the reality of how much zip codes determine your destiny in this country, and I started to ask what role we play in disrupting that. After I completed my official commitment, I became a teacher at KIPP Academy in the Bronx.  I would say that's where I fell in love with teaching and the art of teaching. To me, seventh grade middle school is where it's at; I’d stake my career on it. If students fall in love with learning by the end of middle school, there is nothing they can’t do.  

It must have been challenging having never led a classroom before. 
I think I was fortunate that I had a lot of wraparound services from coaches and mentors by virtue of being in Teach For America, and I had 20 other first-years who locked hands and taught alongside me. I always joke now that I wasn't fully baked at the time. I was 23. You're only starting to understand your identity as a leader. I needed to find the balance between being warm and strict. I didn’t want the kids to not like me. And then you have to realize that if you're doing your job well, on certain days the kids are not going to like you — and that's OK. Over time, they will come to trust you, respect you, love you.  

How did the experience inform how you work today? 
I am someone who leads through the lens of asking a question central to the original mission of TFA: How do we make sure that all children in this country get access to a quality education? To me, it's akin to a national security risk. We've got to make sure our children have a quality education so that they can contribute to society and live the lives they've been called to live. It’s why I’m so passionate about the work we do at CEPR today, using research and evidence to answer the big questions shaping the future of education. We must make sure that all the resources that are in a school are being used in service of what adults need to teach kids. That was an eye-opening moment for me, one that I still carry to today. I don't think any teacher wakes up and says, ‘Hey, you know what I want to do today? I want to fail kids.’ They both want and need resources, tools, and support that continuously prepare them to meet their students’ ever-evolving needs.  

Do you keep in touch with fellow teachers? 
Yes, there are still people at TFA and in the alumni network that I consider my personal board of directors. Someone in TFA later told me about a leadership fellowship through Teach For America that matched me with the school district of Philadelphia, which is where I started as an assistant superintendent. Every place I've moved, one of the first people to reach out has always been the TFA executive director of that region.  

What would you say to people thinking about Teach For America? 
I am not the person who will say, “Do it, it’s going to be so great.” I’m more likely to say, “It’s going to be really, really hard.” But I also think it’s a privilege to teach, and I’m really grateful I chose Teach For America and that they chose me. I think it is one of the best pathways to become a teacher because a lot will be asked of you in terms of your growth and your development and even the way that you understand content. But a lot will be given to you in return.  

That sounds like an endorsement. 
One thing I’m not sure people realize is that when you join TFA, you're joining something that will be a part of you throughout your career. This is a network of tens of thousands of folks who have been at this work for some 35 years. Think of a path you want to travel and there is likely someone in Teach For America who has gone before you. You can be a part of that community, including the one that has been built and continues to grow at HGSE. It's been amazing to see how graduate schools of education like HGSE have come to embrace Teach For America and embrace what was once a non-traditional pathway, which now has become a very well-respected way to enter the profession of teaching. Instead, we are saying: “We want to welcome you to this most amazing and sacred profession and here are the many ways we can ensure that you are able to see yourself, grow, and fall in love with teaching.” It's exciting to hear that the Ed School is deepening their partnership with TFA through the new Public Service Priority Partnership because public service matters. I may be extreme, but I think that every citizen should be required to engage in a year or two of public service regardless of which side of the fence you land on.