Perspective | Inside summer at Teach For America North Carolina: Community at the center
The summer at Teach For America North Carolina (TFA NC) wasn’t quiet. While many people think of summer as a break from school, inside TFA NC, it is one of our most active seasons.
Proven leaders who will become new teachers are stepping into classrooms for the first time. Early-career educators are deciding to stay, lead, and grow in the communities they’ve come to call home. Volunteers are showing up in hallways and cafeterias. And across the state, school, and district partners are opening their doors to welcome us back.
Summer is a season of reflection, transition, and, more than anything, a reaffirmation of community.
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Summer practicum: Learning in real classrooms
Every summer, TFA NC prepares a new class of incoming teachers. Rather than training behind closed doors, our corps members are immersed in real summer school classrooms with students, alongside our district and school partners. Coaches, peers, and school leaders are in the room giving feedback in real time.
By the time they step into a practicum classroom, our corps members have already put in months of preparation. Before the summer begins, they complete extensive online coursework — both live sessions with instructors and self-paced work they fit around their own lives.
Every corps member also enrolls in an approved educator preparation program, the same state-approved pathway required of any new North Carolina teacher. The six-week summer practicum builds on that foundation, and it’s just one step in a two-year coaching model that supports our teachers through their first years. Since 1990, TFA NC has recruited, trained, and supported more than 4,300 first-year teachers across the state.
Outside of the classroom, local communities also help prepare TFA NC corps members by inviting them into their lives.
In Charlotte, new corps members are moving to the city for the first time, finding apartments with roommates they’ve just met, and figuring out what it means to build a life in a big new place. Further north, in Greensboro, they are finding their footing in a city where four college students once sat down at a lunch counter and helped change the country. Across the state in Edgecombe County, others are settling into smaller, tighter-knit communities — like Tarboro, Battleboro and Princeville — running into their new coworkers at the grocery store and learning the history that shapes daily life.
In these places, joining the school means joining the community.
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Community in action: Volunteers and partners
This summer, the TFA NC team also hosted Back to School Community Engagement days with partner schools. Even before students returned, we invited our staff, board members, alumni, donors, and broader network to help us get buildings ready.
At Harding University High School in Charlotte, volunteers from Equitable spent the day serving lunch to staff, stapling more than 1,000 student schedules, and moving desks and chairs so classrooms would be ready on day one. The school is led by Kevin Poirier, a TFA NC alum now in his first year as principal, still in the district where his own path began. These are not glamorous tasks, but they are the quiet work that helps a school feel calm and prepared when students walk through the doors.
In the Piedmont Triad, we teamed up with Procter & Gamble (P&G) for a volunteer day at Mendenhall Middle School in Greensboro, tackling projects that would otherwise have stretched school staff thin.
“We’re proud to serve the community we operate in and where our employees live,” said Wanda Lea of P&G.
“Important projects were completed before the school year began, helping us create a safe, welcoming, and organized environment for our students,” said Mendenhall Assistant Principal Nikki Garren.
In each of these moments, what stands out isn’t TFA NC alone. It’s the web of people who show up to help schools thrive: teachers, alumni, corporate partners, neighbors, and district leaders.
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A season of change, rooted in community
When I think about what it will take to give every child in North Carolina an excellent education, I think about this season.
I think about first-year teachers taking a brave, bold step. I think about school and district partners who, for 35 years, have not only welcomed our teachers but continuously invited them into the deeper life of their communities. I think about volunteers sweating through a day of moving furniture so teachers can focus on students instead of logistics.
Teaching asks people to bring their whole selves to the work every day, their minds, their hearts, and their energy. It is, at its core, human-centered work, and this summer at TFA NC has reminded me that no one can sustain it alone.
It takes a community. Here’s to the impact ahead in the 2026-27 school year.