Teacher Academies and Other Strategies

One idea rapidly catching on here and abroad is the teacher academy. Often described as an exemplary approach to mentoring and induction for new teachers, teacher academies also provide high-quality professional development for currently practicing teachers. And, at a number of locations across the nation, the teacher academy concept has come to include programs to encourage high school students to prepare themselves for teaching careers.

Successful teacher academies include partnerships between schools and higher education institutions, a strong program framework that includes content knowledge and teaching skills, established times for LEA and IHE teachers and administrators for program planning and implementation, and regular evaluation of program outcomes.

For new teachers, teacher academies offer workshops to induct them into the school system and to promote their professional growth and provide support from experienced teacher mentors. For veteran teachers, an academy might provide training in how to use technology effectively in the classroom or forums that assist teachers in working with the particular challenges posed in teaching in urban schools or in preparing for leadership positions. Academies are also helping to redesign teacher education training programs by working with partner school districts and charter schools to develop new course models, especially for reading and writing, math, and science. Title II grants the Department has made to the Teacher Academy of South Texas, the Milwaukee Partnership Academy for Teacher Quality, and Saginaw Valley State University are supporting development of such programs. Another Title II grant to Miami-Dade public schools and partner institutions is designed to help address the problem of the teacher shortage by providing high school students training and experience in teaching.

Many programs are experimenting with new ideas. Some have been doing it for years. Several schools have long provided Master of Arts in Teaching programs. These allow college graduates with strong backgrounds in academic disciplines to learn teaching skills and pedagogical theory in one year. To encourage pursuit of teaching careers, one school takes 82 undergraduates per year and puts them on track to graduate in 4.5 years with a teaching certificate—and $20,000 in cash, half to be spent at the school where the graduate teaches, half to be spent as the teacher sees fit.

Across the Atlantic, the Open University of the United Kingdom has an innovative program that enables working adults to train for new careers in teaching. The principles underpinning the program include: supported open learning; partnership with schools and the University; tight integration of academic study and school placements; strong focus on professional competencies as standards; assessment and training positioned in schools; emphasis on the use of the Web for delivery; and a close match between directed units of study for trainees based on an individual needs assessment. This model taps a new market for teachers—working adults—which is too seldom tapped in the U.S. If a clerk from Liverpool can stay in her hometown, keep her day job, study at night via distance learning, student-teach in a local school and be placed in one when she is licensed, why can’t we do that here in the U.S.?

In sum, there are approaches that offer innovative strategies to improve teacher skills, build school-college partnerships and attract more people into the teaching profession. It would also help if the well-known colleges and universities across this country that have dropped teacher certification programs in the last decade would reverse their decisions. This would be a very practical step, as well as a symbolic one that would signal the value of teaching to prospective candidates.

But more needs to be done.

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