In May 2009, Kalyn Gigot was sitting in the audience at Marquette University’s commencement ceremony as a no-doubt proud graduate. But it was a year later, at Marquette’s commencement Sunday, when Gigot was individually singled out for attention and praise in the graduation address.

What did she do in between? She joined Teach for America, the nationwide organization that puts thousands of high-caliber college graduates into high-needs classrooms for the first two years after graduation. Gigot has been teaching this year at Northwest Secondary School, a Milwaukee Public Schools middle and high school program near North 72nd Street and West Silver Spring Drive.

Wendy Kopp, the founder and CEO of Teach for America, received an honorary degree at the commencement and, in her strongly localized speech, described how much Gigot had accomplished in her year teaching math to sixth and seventh graders.  Students who were generally three years behind in their math skills have made substantial progress, the learning atmosphere in Gigot’s classroom has improved sharply as the year has gone on, and Gigot has gone to lengths to get to know her students and their families, including home visits of seventy-two of them, Kopp said. 

“She holds office hours at McDonald’s every Saturday morning,” Kopp said, and Gigot works regularly with dozens of students after school. Now, “visitors would wonder if it was the same set of students as she had at the beginning of the year.”

Kopp said seventy-five Marquette graduates have joined Teach for America in recent years, including fifteen from this year’s class who are set to begin teaching in the fall.

Kopp praised Milwaukee College Prep, a kindergarten through eighth grade charter school on North 36th Street north of North Avenue, which has recorded test scores above the state average year after year with students who are almost all from low-income homes.

Kopp said recent test results showed Milwaukee Public Schools students scoring near the bottom among eighteen urban districts that took part in a federal testing program. The Milwaukee scores were so low that some experts wondered whether eighth graders in MPS had been in school in the previous four years.    

“In the face of what Milwaukee College Prep shows is possible, this is unconscionable,” Kopp said. “Milwaukee College Prep shows us it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Kopp said the prevailing view among policy makers nationwide has changed for the better in the light of the success of schools such as Milwaukee College Prep. Five years ago, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C., were each regarded as among the worst school districts in the U.S., and each is now making major progress, she said.

“The question is no longer whether it is possible to put children growing up in poverty on a level playing field, but rather how to achieve such success on a significant scale, and that is a very different question,” Kopp said. She said there is increasing evidence that the answer to the latter question is yes.

Kopp challenged the graduates to do things in their first years out of college that aim to make differences in improving the problems that the world faces. That’s what she did by launching Teach for America two decades ago as a graduate from Princeton.  Next year, there will 7,500 TFA teachers at work in urban and rural schools from coast to coast.

But Kopp’s second challenge was also important: If Kalyn Gigot can progress, if Milwaukee College Prep can make progress, why can’t progress be more widespread in Milwaukee?

Kopp’s speech can be viewed between minutes forty-four and seventy of the video of the commencement ceremony.