In a recent Education Week article, Stephen Sawchuk turns to teacher residency programs. These programs apprentice teacher-candidates to a mentor teacher in a high-need school for one year. Funded in part by the USDE’s Teacher Quality Partnership grants, residents receive stipends for their on-the-job training and take coursework concurrently. The goal is to better align coursework with practical experience, and to move teachers through the training and certification process much faster than traditional teacher-training programs.
So far, the residency programs have celebrated such successes as more engaged teacher-candidates, stronger relationships with the local school districts, and being able to better meet the particular needs of each district. However, these strides have not been without their obstacles.
Finding high-quality mentors has been challenging, mainly due to the fact that high-needs schools have high turnover rates, so very experienced teachers are hard to come by. Additionally, the stipend paid to mentors may be insufficient in the eyes of many for taking on the extra duties of training a new teacher and sharing classroom space for a year.
But the biggest obstacle by far is creating effective and successful residency programs while working within the traditional certification model set up in most states. “It has been a nightmare trying to make everything align,” Therese Dozier, the director of the Richmond Teacher Residency program at VCU, said. “This is a new approach to training teachers, but we’re functioning within the traditional structure of how programs get changed and approved.”
The drawn-out debates in Congress about the U.S. budget have essentially stopped funding to the Teacher Quality Partnership program for the past two years, and even the Obama administration has proposed combining the program into a new funding stream. This has led many residency programs to turn to private grants for funding, a process that many foresee continuing even if federal funding is restored.
To read the full article and learn more about existing residency programs, visit http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/07/08/36residency_ep.h30.html?tkn=ORQFDRDbDTmpyHjZJXk9aazI5SZdBuyqVrEd&intc=es
*Core Education is pleased to offer consultation to programs considering the implementation of a residency model. For more information about our services related to teacher preparation program design, see www.CoreEducationLLC.com/PD.php
