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Stacey Arthur arrives at Bonner Elementary School in Houston, Texas at 6:30 a.m. every weekday to make photocopies, fill out paperwork, and set up her classroom.

Unlike most teachers, Arthur prepares for a special group of students: students with moderate to severe mental disabilities.

“It’s an adventure,” she said of teaching necessary life skills to her seven students, most of whom cannot speak and have Down Syndrome.

Having gained hands-on experience in special education classrooms while working for the Developmental Disability Immersion Program at UCLA, Arthur knew working with disabled children was something she wanted to continue beyond her undergraduate studies at UCLA.

She applied for Teach For America last year, and by summertime was beginning her transition to Houston.

Though every region is different in terms of program resources and training, Arthur said the support TFA offered new corps members in her area was “great.” TFA held a transition fair to provide information on bank services, car registration, cell phone providers and even an apartment locator to incoming teachers in Houston.

“They made the transition so easy; they absolutely held your hand,” Arthur, a California native, said. “They organize it for you. You are guaranteed to have a job when the school year starts.”

As for her new hometown, Arthur is ecstatic.

“Houston is awesome. There is so much going on here. The traffic isn’t bad, the cost of living is so much lower. I can be a teacher and live very comfortably,” she said, adding that she plans to stay in Texas after her two-year commitment with TFA comes to an end.

Before beginning her teaching endeavors at Bonner Elementary School, Arthur, along with 900 other TFA teachers, participated in an intensive five-week training program at the organization’s Houston institute. They learned to create lesson plans and mastered effective classroom strategies.

Even though after two weeks of attending workshops, TFA teachers begin teaching summer school courses in subjects that may differ from their assigned positions, Arthur said the experience is still beneficial.

“It takes a lifetime to become an effective teacher, but it gave me a solid foundation,” said Arthur, who taught eighth-grade math over the summer – a far stretch from teaching students with disabilities. “It’s a continual learning process.”

From working on literacy skills to teaching cooking lessons, Arthur said that dealing with her students’ behavioral issues and instilling appropriate social skills in them can be challenging.

But it is her students’ growth that motivates her every day.

Arthur remembers one student in the beginning of the year couldn’t repeat his name or phone number.

“(So) I taught him his phone number in the form of a song. Now he knows his phone number. Now he can do it on command,” she said.

“In the beginning of the year, we were at zero. Now they have reached almost all their goals,” she said.

Finding what strategies work for each individual is one of the most demanding parts of the job, Arthur said.

Though she has felt stressed at times in the classroom, Arthur praises the support TFA offers its teachers. After training over the summer with teachers outside of the program, Arthur said TFA teachers are better prepared than other students in the Alternative Certification Program.

“It was overwhelming and scary, but I feel that I had more support because I was with TFA,” she said. “They were super-supportive for my needs.”

With only a few weeks of school left, Arthur plans to use her summer to improve her curriculum by utilizing the resources TFA provided during training.

She is already looking forward to next year.

“It’s been an incredible experience,” she said.