Education First recently organized a Residency Sustainability Webinar Series to spotlight successful approaches teacher preparation programs and districts have used to develop and implement high-quality, sustainable and affordable teacher residencies. They identified promising innovative staffing strategies from both the series and the broader field in their latest paper, Innovative Staffing Models to Sustain Teacher Residencies. These innovative staffing strategies can improve accessibility to high quality teacher preparation. Four popular approaches are outlined in the paper, including:
Approach #1: Teacher Vacancy Reallocation, in which teacher vacancy funds are used to support stipends for residents and mentor teachers.
Approach #2 Substitute Reallocation, in which residents spend part of the week in the classroom with their mentor teacher and part of their week serving as a substitute teacher in a separate classroom on their own. Schools reallocate funds set aside to hire long- and short-term substitutes.
Approach #3: Paraprofessional Reallocation, in which schools reallocate funds set aside for paraprofessionals to fund residents and mentor teachers. In this staffing model, multiple residents can fill the need for a full-time paraprofessional hire. Residents spend part of the week serving as a paraprofessional and spend the remaining time with their mentor teachers.
Approach #4: Tutoring Reallocation, in which schools allocate funds to pay residents to serve as tutors, under the guidance of a mentor teacher.
For more, see https://education-first.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Innovative-Staffing-Models-to-Sustain-Teacher-Residencies-2.pdf
