QUAIL HOLLOW CHAMPIONSHIP -- Some of America’s future leaders were out at the Quail Hollow Championship on Sunday, trying to recruit others toward their goal of nation-wide educational equity.

Teach for America is an organization which enlists recent college graduates, trains them, and puts them to work for at least two years teaching in America’s urban and rural public schools. The goal is to ensure students are given a fair and equal education, no matter their race and socioeconomic status.

“We consider this a life-long commitment,” said Shawn Stover, who taught and was an assistant principal at Reedy Creek Elementary School. He is now a member of the Teach for America staff after seeing information about the organization in UNC-Chapel Hill’s school newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, when he was a student.

Citing a National Assessment of Education Progress from 2005, Teach for America officials say fourth graders who are growing up in low-income communities are already three grade levels behind their peers in high-income communities. About 50 percent of them won’t graduate from high school by the age of 18.

At a time when the current economic climate could make things worse for low-income students, Stover says it’s important that Teach for America keeps pushing their message and continues fundraising efforts.

“What people want to do is make sure that their money is going toward a cause that they can support and they feel passionate about,” he said. “Our message is important now more than ever, because some of our most fragile of folks are our kids that are in these low-income communities.”

“I think we’ve been really able to leverage a message that this is a great way to help, and help those people out of poverty and give them a chance to compete.”

And, according to recent application numbers, that message has been getting across to future teachers.

Bree Arsenault, who is the director of national corporate relations in New York, says Teach for America saw a peak in applications this year. While she believes part of that is an increased push of the organization’s message begging Americans to do their part in fighting education inequity, the economy could actually be helping drive up numbers as well.

With the job market looking iffy for some recent college grads, turning to Teach for America for a job could help both the future teachers and the organization.

“I’ve always been interested in being a teacher,” said Adam Lawrence, who is in his first year of the program after graduating from Ohio State. He spent time Sunday working the Quail Hollow fans along with Stover, Arsenault and Kim Cochran, who is a Spanish teacher at West Mecklenburg High School. “I just wanted to see how it worked out and it worked out and is going great so far.”

For graduates like Lawrence, Teach for America places the new teachers into a school that best matches the individual’s personality with what the school and community needs. The OSU grad says the system works out well for both the students, schools and teachers.

And while Teach for America’s intensive summer institute helps ensure teachers are ready for the real world of teaching in a rural or urban school, the organization has further goals in mind.

“We’re not only trying to close the achievement gaps, but we’re really trying to create advocates for educational equity, and that’s really what we try to set our members up to be, is future leaders,” said Stover. “So they see teaching as a leadership opportunity and also, as they move on, they will be advocates for education.

“We want to create people, who either in public policy or school leadership or other opportunities as they move out of teaching, will still help close the achievement gap and advocate education.”

And as Stover, Lawrence and others worked the crowd on Sunday, they hoped to add a few members to their team of future teachers and educational advocates.

“We’ve actually met some very, very supportive people out here,” said Lawrence. “When we tell them why we’re out here and what the Teach for America organization is all about, they seem to be really supportive in terms of not only the direction we want to go but also how we’re going to go about doing it.”