What Is Urban Teacher Preparation?

November 19, 2009 - Preparing teachers to work in urban public schools — and to remain there — is a daunting challenge. Urban schools are some of the most challenged, under-resourced schools in the nation. Preparing new teachers for these schools is one of the most important tasks we take on as a faculty at Penn GSE.

Nearly ten years ago, GSE's faculty in teacher education took a long hard look at the program and decided that it needed to be focused more directly on urban teacher preparation.

Professors Kathy Schultz and Janine Remillard, with their faculty colleagues at that time, designed a brand new structure for the elementary teacher education program at GSE — one that insured that every prospective teacher spent at least a semester (if not a full year) as a student teacher in a Philadelphia public schools and an intensive summer session designed to introduce students to the neighborhoods adjacent to these schools. (To hear a GSE podcast about the summer semester, click here.)

In designing the program, Schultz and company were also careful to think about life after graduate school. The program also includes a hiring pipeline into the Philadelphia district and a support system designed to encourage the newly minted teachers to stay in the district.

As a result, an already-impressive number of GSE graduates has grown over the past years, and in some years more than 60 percent opt to stay in the School District of Philadelphia, with many others choosing to teach in urban districts across the country.

That achievement hasn't gone unnoticed. Today, with help from several outside funders, GSE is able to provide substantial financial support for its aspiring urban teachers.

Recently, GSE has launched two programs to carefully prepare urban teachers and support them to stay for several years in local public schools. The Leonore Annenberg Teaching Fellows program, funded by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, provides tuition for Penn undergraduates to obtain certification in a secondary education and earn GSE master’s degrees through Penn's ten-month program.

One of only four schools of education chosen for the Annenberg program, GSE has created a distinctive program that prioritizes the development of prospective teachers' pedagogical skill and subject matter knowledge. In the program, GSE collaborates with Penn's Urban Studies program, School of Arts and Sciences, and the Netter Center for Community Partnerships.

"What we're doing is closely tying deep content knowledge — leveraging Penn’s strength as an undergraduate institution — with GSE's strengths as a graduate school and Penn’s close connections with schools in West Philadelphia," Schultz explains.

When Penn undergraduates are accepted into the program, they get at least three mentors — one from GSE, another from Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences in the subject areas they plan to teach, and a third from their school site. What's more, their mentors stay with them through the first two years of teaching, and additional funding goes to support school-based professional development as well.

Last year, GSE partnered with the Philadelphia Education Fund, the School District of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers to create the Philadelphia Teacher Residency Program. This fall, GSE also received news that it would be receiving federal stimulus funding to support 10 teachers each year in this program during their master's year and their first four years of teaching. This program is singularly focused on the preparation of math and science teachers for Philadelphia's high-need public schools and is designed to attract working professionals in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) areas to teach in Philadelphia schools.

For a full school year, program participants will learn at the elbow of veteran teachers in high school classrooms — while taking master's-level coursework at Penn GSE. In return, Residents teach in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) for at least three years after the residency training year and obtain a hiring commitment from the SDP to do so. For the graduated Resident's first three years as a full-time teacher of record, PTR provides ongoing professional development activities.

The first year of teaching can be intimidating for any teacher. However, by the time PTR residents begin a school year in their own classroom, they will already have a year of experience, a thorough understanding of the challenges that lie ahead, and an ongoing support network.