Each day we see the realities of educational inequity juxtaposed against the concrete evidencethat when students in low-income communitiesare given opportunities they deserve, they excel.

The founder's book

One Day, All Children...

A diary of a social entrepreneur, an inspiring how-to guide for young people with big dreams, a thoughtful tale of the ups and downs of a decade at the stunningly successful nonprofit organization, Teach For America.

- New York Times

In 1988, from her dorm room at Princeton University, college senior Wendy Kopp developed a plan to call upon the most talented members of her generation to teach for two years in the nations neediest urban and rural public schools. She envisioned a new national service corps called Teach For America that would heighten our country's commitment to its most disadvantaged children. In One Day, All Children, she shares the remarkable story of Teach For America, from its start as a one-person startup operating in a borrowed office to a full-scale social movement, with 3,000 corps members teaching during the 2003-04 school year, and more than 9,000 alumni working from all professional sectors to expand educational opportunities for children.

One Day, All Children is not just a memoir of a successful organization. It's a blueprint for the new civil rights movement, a movement that demands educational access and opportunity for all children in America.

Here's an excerpt from One Day, All Children...

"At Princeton, after another student expressed an interest in teaching, I had an idea: Why didn't this country have a national teacher corps of recent college graduates who would commit two years to teach in urban and rural schools? A teacher corps would provide another option to the two-year corporate training programs and grad schools. It would speak to all of us college seniors who were searching for something meaningful to do with our lives.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that this simple idea was potentially powerful. If top recent college graduates devoted two years to teaching in public schools, they could have a real impact on the lives of disadvantaged kids. Because they had themselves excelled academically, they would be relentless in their efforts to ensure their students achieved. They would question the way things are and fight to do what was right for children.

A national teacher corps could be huge, I thought. This could be the Peace Corps of the 1990s. Thousands would join, and we would fundamentally impact our country."

To learn more about the initial steps Wendy took to transform this idea into a powerful movement, read Chapter 2: Suspending the Laws of the Universe.