The University of San
Francisco’s School of Education and its partners in the San Francisco Teacher
Residency (SFTR) program recently received $2.2 million to prepare San
Francisco teachers for hard-to-staff schools and high-needs subjects —
including math, science, and bilingual education.
The U.S. Department of
Education grant, to be spread over five years, will pay for mentor teachers,
help cover the SFTR program’s administrative costs, and fund research on the
program’s effectiveness and best practices. The aim of the SFTR program is to offer professionals
pursuing a career change and recent college graduates who do not have a
teaching credential a faster, less-expensive
road to becoming educators through a combination of classroom experience and
coursework.
In the first year of the
program, SFTR students, known as residents, take part in a yearlong classroom
apprenticeship with an “expert” teacher and enroll in evening master’s
degree-level classes. In the second and third years, residents work full time
in the classroom with a mentor teacher and an SFTR faculty adviser.
San Francisco Teacher
Residency Information Session
What: Hear about the
program from Peter Williamson, USF assistant professor of teacher education and
SFTR program faculty adviser, and Debbie Faigenbaum, SFTR director. Meet
current and past program residents and ask them questions.
Where: Lone Mountain 216
When: 6 p.m., Dec. 6
A requirement of the
program is that residents work in San Francisco’s urban
schools for at least three years. On average, 50 percent of new teachers in the
city’s urban schools leave the profession after three years, as compared with
about 20 percent nationwide.
“As students receive
instruction from less experienced teachers and see wave after wave of new
teachers come through, we know that it impacts their level of achievement,”
said USF’s Peter Williamson, assistant professor of teacher education, an SFTR
program faculty adviser, and the recipient of the grant. ”The goal of SFTR is to graduate highly qualified
educators with the skills, classroom training, and enough mentoring support to
make teaching their long-term career.”
Essential to the program
is the link between residents’ coursework and their real-life practice in the
classroom. “As a result, they are better prepared to deal with the challenges
of teaching and more likely to stay in the classroom,” said Debbie Faigenbaum,
SFTR director at the San Francisco Education Fund.
Among the
benefits that SFTR residents receive are a tuition discount, a stipend for
living expenses, and, upon graduation, a California Teaching Credential and a
master’s degree. Graduates are also guaranteed jobs with the San Francisco
Unified School District (SFUSD), if they commit to work in the district for at
least three years.
Established in 2010 with an initial grant from AmeriCorps,
the SFTR program is an innovative partnership
between the University of San Francisco, Stanford University, AmeriCorps, the
San Francisco Education Fund, SFUSD, and the United Educators of San Francisco.
For Kayla Shaw MA ’12, one
of 19 USF SFTR residents, the program has fostered confidences in the classroom
that likely would have taken longer to develop in a more conventional teaching
credential program.
“After only one semester,
I feel like I am getting a very comprehensive experience that combines theory
and direct practice to help me better understand how I can be an effective
teacher,” said Shaw, who’s a bilingual teacher resident at San Francisco’s
Buena Vista/Horace Mann K-8 school. “I am excited to still have one more
semester to build upon my experience and add to my knowledge.”
