Many times each day, Carrie Garber ’05 climbs the five flights of stairs to her fifth-grade classroom at Public School 79 in the Bronx. The trek is wearying, with the potential for stumbles — much like the challenges she’s facing as a Teach For America corps member.

But after two years of working in this very poor, very crowded public school, where rats snatch snacks from teacher’s bags and the bustling daily routine of a typical elementary school can teeter toward chaos, she knows what she’s accomplished.

“Sticking it out despite nightmarish conditions,” she replies. “Becoming so close to children and parents who were complete strangers. Learning how to lead, how to cross cultural and socioeconomic boundaries.”

Founded in 1990 by Princeton grad Wendy Kopp, Teach For America seeks high-achieving college grads to teach in poor rural and urban public schools. The program is a big blip on the radar of today’s best and brightest college grads. In 2006, TFA attracted 19,000 applicants — including around 8 to 12 percent of the senior classes at places like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton — and accepted just 2,400.

An interdisciplinary studies major with an education concentration, Garber spotted a TFA flyer one day during her first year at Bates. It read, “You want to change things. Start here.” “That’s what brought me to the table,” she remembers.

And into the classroom, where the real work began. One night early in her initial year, Garber returned to her Harlem apartment in tears. She didn’t know if she had the stamina to continue in the classroom. (In any given year, 10 to 15 percent of TFA corps members drop out of the program.) That night, she reread Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities and was stunned to read Kozol’s description of her own school — Public School 79 in the southeast Bronx. “We work under difficult circumstances,” the school’s principal told Kozol.

Garber stayed. In a school where about 15 percent of fifth-graders aren’t promoted to sixth grade, all of Garber’s 28 students, except one who joined her class midyear, earned promotion last year.

While tending to her usual after-hours work — preparing lessons and visiting homes of students, some of whose parents have drug problems or are away in prison — Garber attends a master’s program in general childhood education at the Bank Street Graduate School of Education four nights a week. Applying to law school for next fall, she wants to concentrate on human rights law. “The experience of teaching is invaluable, but what you do with the rest of your life as a result of TFA is even more important — changing the system, helping to break the cycle of poverty, creating social reform,” she says.

That’s what TFA alumnus Peter Kannam ’93 wants to hear. The former executive director of Teach For America–Baltimore, Kannam is now executive director of the Baltimore office of New Leaders, New Schools, a program that identifies and supports aspiring principals and other school leaders.

“TFA has thousands of advocates for equity in education, and we charge our alumni to think about that,” says Kannam, one of 42 Bates TFA alums. “Some may stay in teaching and be phenomenal teachers and principals. Some are advocates in the law profession. We have doctors who help through health. After you’ve completed your two years, you need to ask, ‘Where do I fit it in?’”