Emily Berman

Emily Berman

Questrom & CAS 2009 | Lead English Teacher

Emily Berman started out in Questrom with her mind set on pursuing consulting, yet quickly discovered her passion for teaching through Teach for America. She was a leading advocate of the foundation during her time at BU and went on to accept a position with the program, loving the challenge of managing a classroom. Today, teaches 4th grade English Immersion

The Beginning

Emily Berman started her freshman year in Questrom, and her focus during the year was on staying open-minded. She remembers meeting with the former Dean Procopio, who encouraged her to pursue a dual degree. Emily followed this advice and, by the time she graduated, had earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the Questrom School of Business with a concentration in general management as well as a history degree from the College of Arts and Sciences.

Despite her vigorous study schedule, Emily’s real story began during her sophomore year. One day, in an Questrom bathroom, she saw a flier on the inside of the stall about becoming a teacher. She remembers thinking to herself, “That’s stupid, why would someone in Questrom become a teacher?”

That same day, her roommate convinced her to go to a meeting about Teach for America. Emily remembers tuning out the speaker, an Questrom alum who was coming in to speak about the program. Yet her ears perked up when she heard him mention Boston Consulting Group. At the time, she was extremely interested in consulting and loved the idea of solving problems. In fact, at the time, she was involved in founding the Management Consulting Association. Then the speaker started talking about how he was currently teaching eighth grade in New Orleans and how the students were four years behind, had fourth grade reading levels, and many had been pregnant or had babies already. Emily remembers sitting there and feeling as though her mind had been blown. Having grown up in a relatively affluent neighborhood, she had never considered that life could be like this for eighth graders.

A Growing Interest

She found out about an information session the next day for TFA and put it into her reminders, wanting to find out more about the program. Yet the meeting wasn’t a priority for her and she arrived late. “I remember stopping to get Jamba Juice along the way,” she recalled, noting her blasé attitude at the time. When Emily arrived, the tone in the room was “extremely different and had a very serious, solemn energy.” She realized quickly that it was because only five people had attended. Emily immediately learned about the “achievement gap” in education, hearing the term for the first time. She became angry that there were only five people at this information session. In her mind, she was thinking, “Wow, maybe only five people know about this or, even worse, only five people care.”

At the end of the information session, Emily decided to approach the speaker and introduce herself, after which point she was directed to speak to the recruitment director. She emphatically told the director that she needed to be involved. He told her about an on-campus undergraduate job and encouraged her to apply. At the time, Emily was taking SM411, Charting Your Career Path, and was able to use the cover letter and resume that she had created for class. She then started researching TFA for hours at a time. “It became an obsession,” she said. During her interview process, her interviewer, Pat, was very impressed with how much she had researched. The questions she asked during the interview were so detailed and impressive, mostly because she had never thought about non-profits before and was so enthusiastic about the possibilities.

Starting off with TFA

Emily ended up getting the job without fully understanding what TFA was, but she was determined that people needed to understand what the achievement gap was and that they could be a part of the amazing program that is TFA.

Emily ended up on a recruitment team to scout out new candidates and spread awareness. In that role she came up with ideas such as a TFA newsletter, placing fliers under doors, chalking sidewalks, emailing professors, and going into classes to make announcements. Her passion for TFA kept her motivated. What made Emily happiest during her time working on TFA recruitment at BU was the amount of people that became involved in Questrom. Personally, she believed that Questrom students were best equipped to do this extremely challenging job because they were trained to be leaders, and leaders make impacts.

By the time January rolled around, Emily realized that she didn’t want to spend any time not working for TFA. They had a summer internship that she had just missed a deadline for at their summer institute in the operations department. Her manager promised to write her a recommendation and, as life would have it, she ended up getting the job in Houston, Texas.

Around that same point, Emily had realized that she didn’t want to go into consulting anymore. She realized that, as a teacher with TFA, she would have the opportunity to solve problems every day and that, to her, was much more fulfilling than increasing the bottom line for a company. “You want to be a manager?” she asked. “The classroom is your company. You need to motivate students and figure out ways to impact that bottom line.”

“You want to be a manager? The classroom is your company. You need to motivate students and figure out ways to impact that bottom line.”

Connections and Becoming Immersed in a Passion

During her junior year, Questrom was the location for a TFA alumni summit. She volunteered to help out and was introduced to a few people that became crucial contacts in her time with TFA. Josh, the Harvard recruitment director for TFA, invited Emily to go see Wendy Kopp (the founder of TFA) speak at a Harvard event. Emily enthusiastically agreed, and after Kopp’s speech she decided to approach her. She told Kopp that she was looking for an internship in the Growth Strategy and Development apartment and asked her who to contact. To her utter surprise, Kopp responded by saying, “E-mail me, I’ll connect you with the right people.” Emily couldn’t believe that the CEO and founder of TFA had just agreed to help her with her job search.

Kopp even e-mailed her back, connecting her with the Vice President of Human Resources to set up interviews. Emily ended up finding a department that interested her and lined up an internship at the TFA national office in New York when she came back from studying abroad in Australia. During her internship she was given great responsibility because the company recognized her love for operations management. She was only twenty, and was in the midst of her third internship with TFA. Looking back on her success, Emily believes that “whatever you end up being passionate in, things just line up and work out.”

“Whatever you end up being passionate in, things just line up and work out.”

During her senior year, it was announced that Boston was going to be a TFA region, and Josh was going to be the executive director. She applied and, on November 17th, was sitting in front of her computer, refreshing the page incessantly as she waited for her results to come through. Finally, she found out that she had been accepted to teach elementary in the Boston region. She was so elated and quick to reply that she technically became the region’s first core member because her response was immediate.

Professional Career: Teaching and Succeeding

Since her professional career as a teacher began, Emily has had many accomplishments. She was placed in a middle school just a day and a half before school started and began teaching 6th grade ancient civilization. It was a very difficult year, but by the end of February the head of the history department in Boston Public Schools was watching her teach and hired her right away to right assessments of the curriculum.

During her second year, Emily had gained a lot of vision and much more confidence. She was getting noticed as an amazing lesson planner and her kids were doing phenomenally well. Later, she was hired on a grant to run a social studies team and was hired to evaluate lesson plans. She was giving presentations on professional development and being invited to dinner with historians, which complemented her interest in both worlds.

When she moved to an elementary school on a leadership team, she became “teacher leader,” which charged her with the task of improving the school’s culture. She moved on to write the 4th grade math curriculum at Lawrence Public Schools.

Today, Emily’s name is synonymous with rigorous and thoughtful planning along with a strong class culture. She focuses on building mindfulness and good habits rather than being academically successful. She is currently in the process of considering what she wants to do after the classroom, and thinks she would like a leadership position such as in a school or district.

Emily describes the big theme of her journey in one reflective statement: “I found something I was really passionate about because I was open-minded.”

“I found something I was really passionate about because I was open-minded.”

Aug 15, 2014