Teaching scholarships help bright students become excellent teachers

Ever since she watched an inner-city teacher change the lives of his calculus students in the movie "Stand and Deliver", Rita Soledad Fernandez knew she wanted to be a math teacher. "I see education as a way of social change," Fernandez said in an interview with WalletPop. "I wanted to teach low-income students and provide them with the same high-quality education that the students that come from money usually receive."

Deciding to become a teacher was a no-brainer. Paying for the education she needed to teach her students? Well, that was a tougher problem to solve, until Fernandez found Math For America, a nonprofit that recruits and trains excellent math students to be teachers in the New York City public schools and offers teaching scholarships.