Cara is currently in her third year of teaching Spanish to grades K-7 at LaSalle II Magnet School. During her time as a teacher, she has focused on creating integrated curriculum units that utilize both world language and other disciplines. To support these efforts, she has been the recipient of several grants from the Chicago Foundation for Education, the Oppenheimer Family Foundation, and the Kids in Need Foundation. She earned her initial certification through the Chicago Teaching Fellows program. Prior to teaching, she worked at High Jump in Chicago and at The Steppingstone Foundation in Boston, non-profit educational programs focused on preparing motivated, low-income and minority students for educational opportunities that can lead to college. She has also taught English as a Second Language and did a year of service with AmeriCorps as a literacy coordinator for Generations Incorporated in Boston. She has a B.A. in Spanish from Oberlin College, an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and an M.A.T. from Dominican University.

Chaniqua is a graduate of two CPS schools, John W. Cook Elementary and Chicago Vocational High School.  She received her Bachelor’s of Science in Education from Northern Illinois University in 2004, and taught first and second grade for three years Friedrich Von Schiller in Cabrini Green. This was a very challenging environment but it strengthened her classroom management skills immensely. In 2007, she received her Master’s of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction from Olivet Nazarene University. She currently teaches third grade at Granville T. Woods Elementary in Englewood. At Woods, she is actively involved as the grade level chair, a member of the Instructional Leadership Team, and on the Performance Management Committee and Career Day committee. She is also a professional development leader for Full Options Science Systems (FOSS) curriculum. She became a National Board Certified teacher in 2009.

Jillian was born in Los Angeles, California, and raised in Chicago, Illinois.  She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology with a focus in Mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2003.  While working toward her undergraduate degree, she was a Lead Program Assistant for the Don Moyer Boys and Girls Club, a tutor for the America Reads/America Counts Program, and was also accepted into Teach for America.  As a 2007 corps member, she taught third grade in the Las Vegas Valley and earned a Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction.  After finishing up her second year in Las Vegas, she moved back to Chicago with great hopes of making a difference in the lives of the youth in her community.  She is currently a Founding Algebra Teacher at Muchin College Prep, a campus of Noble Street Charter Schools.  She is also a member of the Hedgehog Team.  This team is composed of a diverse group of teachers in the network who meet quarterly to create, edit, and analyze their own interim assessments and data.  She has recently accepted a position with Teacher U at Hunter College in New York as a Math Instructional Advisor.  Having grown up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, she knows what it means to struggle.  As a result, her purpose is to motivate and inspire the youth to make positive, life-changing decisions.  Her passion is the youth; education is just the pathway.

Erin graduated from Cornell College in 2007 with degrees in Psychology and Art.  She was a 2007 Corps Member with Teach for America and taught summer school to kindergartners in Philadelphia.  Back in Chicago, she began her full-time position as the art teacher at Providence Englewood Charter School (PECS), a public K-8 charter in the Englewood neighborhood. The school was founded under the direction of administrators from Providence St. Mel, an extremely successful K-12 school on the west side that can boast 100 percent acceptance of graduates to college for the past 40 years. Her young charter has already raised Terra Nova scores from the 9th to 52nd percentile since opening four years ago. At PECS, she has worked to incorporate the state fine arts standards into an art curriculum that also engages students in math and literacy. Through the Peace Corps World Wise Schools partnership, her after-school group has connected with Eastern European middle school students. In the spring of 2009, she earned her M.A.T from Dominican University, and at the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year, in addition to her teaching position, she began serving as the Specials Area Team Lead at PECS. She now has the opportunity to observe music, guidance, and P.E. lessons; better collaborate with all teachers; and guide her team to more meaningful and challenging instruction.

Rachel was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and benefited from an excellent public education there through the magnet schools. Her passion for creating an equitable and positive learning environment for all children led her to join the Chicago Teaching Fellows to work in struggling urban school districts. She has been working with Chicago Public Schools for 5 years in both the traditional and charter systems. Currently she teaches third grade at LEARN Charter School's South Chicago campus. She has also been part of the mentoring and evaluation team for the Chicago Teaching Fellows incoming fellows. She has a Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from National-Louis University, and will soon finish her Master's Degree in Science Education from Illinois Institute of Technology. Her favorite subject to teach is reading, though she is endorsed in math, science, and social studies. In her free time Rachel likes to be part of educational policy discussions throughout Chicago, chair the social committee for her school, get her students motivated to exercise and eat healthy foods, and read.

After graduating with a B.A. in Spanish from Illinois Wesleyan University, Katie earned her M.A.T. in Elementary Education during a year-long teaching residency with the Academy for Urban School Leadership, a Chicago organization which aims to improve student achievement in the city’s high-poverty, chronically failing schools. For the past seven years, she has worked relentlessly for this cause as a Kindergarten teacher in the Englewood neighborhood. As a founding teacher at Sherman School of Excellence, the city’s first turnaround school, she spearheaded the creation of a department-wide literacy assessment and data tracking system. Currently, she works to improve school culture and student achievement as a member of Sherman’s Instructional Leadership Team. She has actively sought resources for her classroom by earning grants from the Chicago Foundation for Education, Boundless Readers, and Donors Choose. In addition to her work at Sherman, she has designed and facilitated district-wide professional development focused on emergent literacy, family engagement, and effective implementation of Kindergarten curricula. As a member of the AUSL network math design team, she advocates for developmental appropriateness in assessment implementation and works to align formative assessment items with state standards and benchmarks. In 2007, she led a team of teachers on a trip to Ghana, where they collected resources to facilitate an appreciation of their students’ ethnic and cultural heritage.

Lillian has been dedicated to teaching students with special needs for 7 years; she is currently a Special Education Teacher as well as Case Manager and Department Chair at Austin Polytechnical Academy. She started her career as a New York City Teaching Fellow and earned her  M.S.Ed from Long Island University - Brooklyn; before that, she was an assistant teacher for four years while in college. She returned home to teach in Chicago in 2006. She pursues various opportunities for her students as well as for her own professional growth. Shehas received numerous grants from the Fund For Teachers and Donors Choose. She has studied at Columbia University's Teachers College, and at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

While attending the University of Chicago, Tracie became interested in education policy and passionate about the inequalities in the educational system. She decided to pursue a teaching career through the Urban Teacher Education Program. After graduating, she moved and taught Kindergarten and 1^st grade in Madison, WI, for two years. In 2009, she moved back to Chicago and now teaches 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd grades at Oscar Mayer Magnet School, one of 3 Montessori Chicago Public Schools.

Michelle teaches 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th grade Language Arts and Social Studies at a high-need elementary school on the South Side of Chicago. Michelle, who began her teaching career as a Chicago Teaching Fellow, has been teaching for five years. Michelle earned a B.S. in Political Science and Sociology from Birmingham-Southern College, a Master’s Degree in African-American Literature and Culture from Cornell University, and an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from National-Louis University. She is currently completing an M.S. in Written Communication at National-Louis University. Michelle has served in several leadership capacities at her school, including as chairperson of the Young Authors Committee and co-chair of the Intermediate and Middle Grades Literacy Cluster. She currently chairs the Literacy Committee and serves on the CPS University Core Team. Michelle has received three summer fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support her professional development; they were utilized to study the American Civil Rights movement at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, to study poetry at DePaul University, and to explore the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston at Rollins College. Michelle has received several grants to fund projects for her students, including a Jordan Fundamentals Grant, a Target Field Trip Grant, a Midwest Generation Field Trip Grant, two Illinois Biodiversity Field Trip Grants, a Chicago Arts Partnership in Education Design Seminar Grant, and a grant from the Chicago Foundation for Education. Michelle has also secured book donations to develop personal libraries for her students from the IAM Foundation and the First Book National Book Bank.

Laura teaches 6th, 7th, and 8th grade literacy at Mollison Elementary, a public school in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago’s south side. As an undergraduate, she spent three years facilitating writing and art workshops in prisons, jails, and alternative high schools through the University of Michigan’s Prison Creative Arts Project. This powerful work and the people she met through it ignited her passion for education as a means to break barriers and promote equity for every child. Laura was certified in 2006 through the Chicago Teaching Fellows, an alternative certification program through the New Teacher Project. At Mollison, she is the middle school coordinator, literacy lead teacher, and teacher chair of the Instructional Leadership Team. She is the student council advisor and has coached volleyball. She also coordinates Mollison’s service learning program, which was awarded a grant from the National Youth Leadership Council’s G-3 Service Learning Initiative. She has received other grants through Donors Choose, Boundless Readers, and Project: Books. In addition to her work in the classroom, Laura has provided professional development at her school for beginning teachers through the Chicago New Teacher Center, and at the district level for the cluster four Middle Grades Project as a member of their leadership team. She was a member of the Teaching Fellows’ selection committee and also a clinical instructor for the University of Chicago’s Urban Teacher Education Program. She was chosen as an Area 13 demonstration classroom and some of her work will be featured in an upcoming book about using literature to teach social responsibility. This spring, Laura will complete her M.Ed. in Literacy, Language, and Culture from the University of Illinois – Chicago. As a reading specialist, she is excited to continue working with public school students who deserve access to a high-quality education.

After babysitting for a little boy who struggled with reading and seeing how it affected his outlook on school, Kristin volunteered to be a teacher's aide for remedial summer school programs, and over the course of four summers as a teenager, saw firsthand how early experiences with school shape choices and opportunities. She decided to study journalism in college because she felt that bringing communities and individuals to light was critical in creating change around education and other societal issues that impact it. However, in her senior year, she heard about a program called Teach for America that would allow her to teach in high-need schools and to more deeply understand the issues in education. Her placement was a school only about thirty miles from where she grew up, but a world away in terms of opportunity for students. She taught fourth grade for her two years in the program, after which she felt she was just beginning to learn the craft of teaching. She decided to stay in the profession, and found a placement teaching middle school in Park Manor, a south side Chicago community. She was successful at moving the majority of her students at least 1.5 years ahead by holding high standards and designing her own curriculum. She decided to pursue National Board Certification so that her work could be viewed through a critical lens. In 2009, she earned the certification as well as an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction. During this process, she was able to find a more supportive teaching environment at a school in Chicago's West Garfield Park neighborhood. She greatly enjoyed her role as an eighth grade teacher and lead writing teacher.

Marilyn Rhames is the middle school science teacher at Namaste Charter School in Chicago, Illinois. Her sense of passion, however, has guided her along a bumpy, winding career path.  

Marilyn set out as a pre-med major at Dominican University with aspirations of becoming a dentist. But two years into the program, she joined the college newspaper and fell in love with journalism.  With an intense sense of purpose (and to her mother’s dismay), she dropped out of the pre-med program and became an English major.  A year later, she gained a summer internship at PEOPLE magazine in New York City; she was then hired immediately upon graduation.  During her four-year stint with Time Inc., Marilyn also worked on special projects at TIME and LIFE magazines.  She earned her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and subsequently worked as an award-winning reporter for Newsday and The Journal News, two daily newspapers in New York.  Married and seven months pregnant, Marilyn was assigned to cover the horrific aftermath of World Trade Center terrorist attacks. Seven months later, Marilyn decided to return to her native Chicago, where she worked for a year as a freelance writer and stay-at-home mom. 

In 2003, Marilyn decided to change careers again by becoming an educator. She joined the highly selective Academy of Urban School Leadership teacher training program and completed her year-long teaching residency a schools on the West and Northwest Sides of Chicago. She also earned a master’s degree in teaching from National-Louis University in 2004.  She spent the following four years teaching 3^rd grade at two Chicago public schools on the South Side.  Both experiences left her disillusioned and ready to quit the teaching professional.  Fortunately, she accepted a 4^th grade teaching position at Namaste Charter School in the McKinley Park neighborhood. She had finally found her “right fit” school—a place in which she was respected a professional and challenged to take her practice to a higher level. Marilyn’s current position as the middle school science is her “dream job.” It allows her merge her love for science with her passion to teaching inner-city youth.  

Ellen teaches sophomore World History and AP World History at Rauner College Prep, a campus of Noble Street Charter School in Chicago. At Rauner, she initiated and expanded the offering of AP World History at the sophomore level and currently teaches the course to 58 students. Ellen has led her peers as sophomore grade level team leader for four years, during which time the six teachers on her team have achieved record results on the PLAN and Scholastic Reading Inventory. She has sponsored various student organizations at Rauner, including the Diversity Coalition, Student Council, and 2011 Senior Council. In 2008, Ellen earned her National Board Certification in secondary English and Language Arts. Ellen was awarded the Elliot and Frances Lehman Chicago Alumni Distinguished Teacher Award by Teach for America in 2010. Ellen began her career as a Teach for America corps member in the Mississippi Delta. She taught three years at Carver Upper Elementary School in Indianola, Mississippi, and earned certification in elementary education from Mississippi Valley State University. She has held various roles within Teach for America’s teacher training and development continuum in Houston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Before joining Rauner, Ellen served as a program director for Teach for America in Chicago, where she coached and managed novice teachers to improve their instructional practices and their students' achievement using data-based problem solving. Ellen graduated from Grinnell College in 2001 with a degree in Africana Studies.

Vibha is a second grade teacher at the University of Chicago Charter Schools- Donoghue Elementary. Prior to teaching at Donoghue, Vibha was a 2006 Teach for America corps member in Chicago where she taught third grade for the Chicago International Charter Schools. What began as a desire to support the efforts to close the achievement gap and understand educational equity has evolved into a passion. She remains committed to building her craft as a teacher and making long-lasting positive changes in urban education. She earned a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin- Madison and completed her Master’s in Teaching at Dominican University in River Forest, IL.

Emily grew up in a rural area of western Washington state. She attended Ohio Wesleyan University and received her B.A. in history in 2004. She first became involved in education as a corps member with Teach for America in Chicago. After her second year of teaching, she received a Master’s in Teaching from Dominican University. She spent her first year of teaching at a Chicago Public School on the west side of the city. Following this she taught for three years at CICS Wrightwood on the south side of the city. She is currently in her seventh year of teaching and teaches second grade at Galapagos Charter School on the west side. In 2009, she was honored to be a Teachers Network Leadership Institute (TNLI) Fellowship winner. Through this fellowship she spent a year conducting action research in her classroom on using the workshop model with math. While implementing this project, she constantly reflected on her practice and adjusted her teaching to meet the needs of her students. As a result, she has grown and developed as a teacher and continues to reflect and fine-tune her practice. She is committed to teaching in the inner city and working to close the achievement gap. She is excited about this opportunity to be a Teaching Policy Fellow in order to increase and expand her impact on Chicago's students.

Alex Seeskin is a National Board Certified English teacher at Lake View High School where he is also the English Department Chair. Over the past two years, he has led the department through a realignment of the reading, grammar, and writing curriclum. In September, 2010, Alex and the Lake View English Department received a $10,000 grant from Donors Choose to order more than five hundred new novels for English classes. Prior to teaching at Lake View, Alex taught English for one year at Drew College Prep in San Francisco and for two years Walter Payton College Prep in Chicago. Alex has a B.S. from Northwestern University and an M.A.T. from National Louis University.

Monica Sims is a 5th grade teacher at Pershing West Middle School. She has been teaching for seven years. Monica is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she received a B.A. in Communications. It was after leaving corporate America that Monica followed her passion and joined the profession of teaching as she graduated with a M.A.T. from National Louis University through the AUSL (Academy for Urban School Leadership) in 2004. Monica is a founding faculty member of Pershing West where she currently serves as the union delegate, pension fund representative and data team member. Monica is a National Board Certified Teacher who contributes to the profession as she facilitates teachers seeking National Board Certification through the Quest Center at the Chicago Teacher’s Union. Monica has also demonstrated her leadership as a Study Group Coach with Chicago Foundation for Education and Boundless Readers. Monica was the recipient of a FFT (Fund for Teachers) grant that guided her love of writing to Chania, Greece. This journey further inspired her to engage in additional writing opportunities through a NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) grant at Amherst College. Monica has taught overseas through a Fulbright Hays Fellowship in Jamaica where she taught students at Moneague Middle School and Pineapple Place Primary School. Monica was a 2009-2010 DRIVE award winner. In fall of 2010, Monica was selected to attend Education Nation, the first annual educational summit sponsored by NBC, to speak about issues related to the state of education in our country. Her passion for teaching and working with other teachers has been published in The Power of Teacher Networks reflecting her experience while engaging in action research through TNLI (Teachers Network Leadership Institute).

Gin is a Chicago native and proud alum of the Chicago Public School system (elementary – high school). Having benefitted greatly from being raised and educated by incredibly resourceful parents, extended family, and other members of the Grand Boulevard and Bronzeville communities, she developed a very early interest in becoming a Librarian. She earned a B.A. in English from Bradley University, the highlight of which was conducting an Independent Study of Impacts of Geography on Oral Traditions of Folklore in Ghana, West Africa via a partnership between the School for International Training (Battleboro, Vermont) and the University of Ghana at Legon. She earned a Masters of Library Information Science from Dominican University and a Masters of Educational Leadership from the American College of Education. Along the path to her current position as the Librarian and Resource Coordinator at Austin Business and Entrepreneurship Academy, some of her previous professional incarnations have included: Grant Writer, Program Creator, Education Specialist, Agency/School Coordinator and Scholarship Coordinator. Among her most recent achievements, she is thrilled to have been accepted as part of the inaugural cohort of the Teach Plus Chicago Teaching Policy Fellowship. The central-most focus of her professional path is to promote informed decision making efforts. She is especially interested in providing the communities she serves with resources that offer an expanded scope of lifestyle choice, through exposure opportunities, interest driven research, and most importantly information access.