Teacher and Principal Residencies

How can new teachers and principals start their jobs prepared for educational excellence, and how can the schools that hire them know they’re ready to excel? In today’s preparation systems, no one is fully getting what they need—not aspiring teachers and principals, not schools, not students. There is a better way.

In Opportunity Culture schools, Multi-Classroom Leadership creates the potential for aspiring teachers to experience paid, full-time, yearlong residencies led by excellent teachers who lead small instructional teams, offered in collaboration with participating educator preparation providers. Similarly, Multi-School Leadership, in which excellent principals lead two or more schools, creates the potential for paid, full-time residencies for aspiring principals—particularly ones who have already led instructional teams as multi-classroom leaders. New school models allow both teacher and principal residents to be paid for a year within existing budgets.

Public Impact explains how to create Opportunity Culture teacher residencies in these publications:

In Opportunity Culture Teaching Residencies: Summary, Public Impact explains how educator preparation providers and school districts can use five residency paths to open up possibilities for students at various stages of their education:

• a bachelor’s degree in four years
• a bachelor’s degree though an extended program for students who must work full time throughout college
• a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree
• a master’s degree in about 14 months
• or a certification residency for students who hold a bachelor’s degree

Many more details about these residencies are spelled out in the Teacher Residencies in an Opportunity Culture: Introduction slide deck.

Job descriptions detail the duties of the two types of residents:

• Teacher Resident
• Reach Associate Resident

Read the white paper that kicked off Public Impact’s research and writing on these residencies: Paid Educator Residencies, Within Budget: How New School Models Can Radically Improve Teacher and Principal Preparation

 

Videos

Hear from a teacher resident, a first-year teacher, and a multi-classroom leader in these short videos about the power of putting their teaching educations into practice under the intensive, yearlong leadership of a multi-classroom leader.

More Than A Student Teacher: Alyssa Cool served as a teacher resident for a year in a pilot program for residents at Lew Wallace Elementary in Indianapolis. She gradually took on more responsibilities over the year, ultimately taking over a classroom for a teacher on leave, under the full supervision of her multi-classroom leader. Cool then accepted the offer of a regular, full-time teaching position on an MCL team at the school for the following year.

I Want to be Like Karen: Emily Angles, a first-year teacher working on a multi-classroom leader’s team, explains her enthusiasm about teaching based on the leadership, guidance, and support she received from her MCL, saying “I feel like I’ve gone from a first-year teacher to a third-year teacher in six months.”

Paying It Forward By Supporting New Teachers: Multi-Classroom Leader Lara Harris remembers how lucky she felt at the start of her own career to have a mentor who provided deep support—something Harris is thrilled to provide as an MCL at a high-poverty, high-needs school.

More than a Student Teacher

I Want To Be Like Karen

Paying it Forward by Supporting New Teachers