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NORTON - Wheaton College seniors Sarah Mielbye and Kristine Vilagie will teach in low-income elementary schools for two years through a national teacher training corps.

The Teach For America program will place Mielbye, of Attleboro, in Connecticut. Vilagie, of Pembroke, will work in Phoenix, Ariz.

The school districts will fund their salaries, Mielbye said.

"I'm really excited about it. I've always liked kids and always gotten along with kids," she said. "I like being creative, and kids like doing creative things."

The teaching corps defines its mission as working toward eliminating "educational inequity by enlisting our nation's most promising future leaders in the effort." "We do this by building a corps of outstanding recent college graduates of all academic majors who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong leaders in ensuring educational equity and excellence for all children," according to the group's Web site.

Mielbye, a former Sun Chronicle intern, said Teach For America will prepare her for her assignment through a five-week summer institute during which, for example, they will practice planning lessons for her new school.

The group also helps its recruits get teacher certification in the state where they will be assigned, she said.

A Teach For America recruiter told her this fall that the group was looking more for leadership skills than teaching experience, she said.

"It's not what you get out of it. It's what you give," said Mielbye, an international relations major who is minoring in development studies.

"This is my two years of service to my country."

Mielbye said "teaching wasn't really anything I was interested in" until she heard about Teach For America.

She spent all of last year studying in Argentina and Uganda.

Working in Uganda, where "a pen to them was a gift," helped her understand the importance of educating every child, she said.

Education is important to "the development not only of children but also an entire country," she said.