a very different kind of student teacher: Participants in Boston Teacher Residency. They spend four days a week in the classroom, paired with a veteran teacher, while pursuing a master's degree and/or teacher licensure at the same time.
Glossen, 24, works with sixth-grade math teacher Steve Lee at Edwards Middle School in Boston's Charlestown neighborhood. A year ago, Josie had graduated from Simmons College. She was working for a Boston public-relations firm when she felt a new calling.
"So I just Googled the different ways to teach in Boston, and the Boston Teachers Residency came up'' at www.bpe.org/btr . "And there were just no questions about it. I didn't think about it, I didn't ponder, I didn't ask anyone. I was just, like, I'm going to apply this week ... I just knew that for me to teach, I just needed to be thrown into it. Like, that's the way I would learn best. I needed to be there full-time with the kids, live and breathe the teaching, to know if that's what I wanted to do for 50 years.''
With Boston Teacher Residency, she's getting easily 100 times as much classroom experience as a typical teaching student, and with a mentor -- Lee -- whom she considers a giant. "He is just so natural in the classroom,'' Glossen says, "like it just flows beautifully, and I just sit there in awe ... His relationship with the kids is just great. He's so dedicated. His life is these kids.''
Jesse Solomon founded BTR in 2004, backed by Boston school officials and civic groups looking for a very different way of training teachers. "One of the things that happens often to new teachers is they're just not ready for the realities of teaching in an urban school,'' Solomon says. "The core of our program is really based on the medical-residency model, and the notion is that our folks will spend a full year -- from day 1 to day 180 -- in a school working closely with one mentor teacher, but really with a team of mentor teachers, so we put cohorts of folks in schools, so they're really learning to teach at the elbow of people who really know their craft.''
The reality of Boston schools can be a world away from the ivory tower of academia, Solomon adds. "Your university professor would tell you how it should be done, and you'd go in for your practicum in a school, and the person, the teacher you're working with would say, 'Don't listen to the professor. They don't know what they're talking about.' And the professor would say, 'Don't pay attention' [to what teachers are saying]. So what we try to do is think about how do theory and practice link together? And really try to force that conversation.
BTR is a 13-month program that includes an $11,000 stipend and an AmeriCorps award that can pay for the cost of a master's degree at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. It charges $10,000 in tuition -- but one-third of that is forgiven for every year that graduates stay teaching in the Boston public school system. So after three years, it's a free program. BTR's economics have helped Boston recruit a more racially and socioeconomically diverse group than many education schools graduate.
It also gives aspiring teachers incredibly close relationships with veterans, like Danielle Simonini, a Boston native and BPS graduate (Boston Latin Academy before college) who's paired with Karolyn McNeil at the Mason Elementary School in Roxbury. McNeil, who's been teaching for 12 years, says it's a two-way street as a mentor. "What has worked in terms of bettering myself as a teacher, first, is that I have to explain at the beginning of the year why I'm doing what I'm doing to the resident who is coming in, which is great, because they'll ask a lot of questions, and I'll have to reflect or think about why I've chosen this lesson, why I've chosen this behavior management plan.''
Maura O. Banta, chairwoman of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, is a big BTR fan. "They have a full year of really understanding what it's like to teach in Boston, and working under the auspices of another teacher,'' Banta says. "It's a model I hope the state can expand.''
Back at the Edwards School in Charlestown, former resident Amelia Lopes is now on staff teaching. Looking back on her year as a BTR resident, she says, "It also brings you to know that you're either going to make it by the end of the year as a teacher -- or you won't be teaching at the end of the 13 months. I think that's the best experience to have. If you're going to teach for a long time, then you should definitely be experiencing the 13 months in a school before you decide. Two months will not cut it.''
Lopes is just one of several BTR residents whom Edwards principal Jeff Riley wound up hiring. "As a building principal, I'm always looking for talented teachers. This is a great program for me,'' Riley says. "We actually hired two of the residents [from last year] because we were so confident in their abilities, and that's a lot different than when you go into an interview and you try to hire someone, when you have to base it on letters of recommendation, and the typical education major comes in with only two days of practical field experience. This is a much more rigorous program ... BTR's a model of something that's going to grow nationally. I just see it as really important change in the way we develop teachers.''
(With videographer Mike Bellwin.)
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