Standards for teacher 'residency' programs
By Stephen Sawchuk/Education Week
Urban Teacher Residency United, a group that provides technical assistance to a network of teacher-residency programs, released a detailed set of standards that flesh out the core aspects of the residency approach to teacher training. You'll recall that the teacher-residency model is a new kind of training model in which student-teachers have a year-long apprenticeship in an urban school setting alongside a trained mentor. There's coursework provided by a partner university, but that coursework takes a bit of a backseat compared to the field experience. Think of it a bit like the inverse of the typical ed. school program, which has a lot of coursework and a student-teaching experience of perhaps 10-14 weeks. Reading over these standards, it's clear that this is serious stuff. There are over 70 pages, and they are quite detailed about all the aspects of a residency, e.g., how a partnership with a school district or university looks, how mentors are selected, how the programs are evaluated, and so forth. (more…)