Detroit's Teach For America Recruits Stuck In Middle Of Broader Battle:

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Detroit's Teach For America Recruits Stuck In Middle Of Broader Battle

Posted: 11/16/11 10:32 PM ET

When Brenda Belcher, principal of the new Benjamin Carson High School of Science and Medicine, interviewed Mo Torres this past summer for a position teaching Spanish, he seemed like a good fit.

"It was a match," Belcher recalled in a phone interview on a recent busy Friday. "I just felt it."

What Belcher found out only later is that Torres is no ordinary teacher. He's a corps member with Teach for America, a nationwide alternate certification program that has drawn 200 young teachers with mostly no experience and little training to Detroit over the past year and a half as part of the organization's second shot at success in the Motor City.

TFA Detroit members teach both in traditional public schools and in charter schools. They are the