2016 News

USF College of Education Urban Teacher Residency Program Featured on ‘WEDU Quest’

(Tampa, Fla. — July 15, 2016) The USF College of Education's Urban Teacher Residency Program, an award-winning teacher preparation program that helps students get real-world teaching experience before having a classroom of their own, was featured on WEDU's Quest program Thursday evening.

The Urban Teacher Residency Program is a partnership between the Hillsborough County Public School district and the College of Education that was created for undergraduate students within the elementary education program of the department of Teaching and Learning. Students in the program learn to teach by taking courses that are highly embedded in elementary classrooms and schools, and that are often co-taught by elementary school faculty.

"We are so fortunate that this program is a partnership between Hillsborough County and USF," said Sarah van Ingen, PhD, co-director of the Urban Teacher Residency Program. "It's the power of that synergy between us that really allows our teacher preparation program to be so unique and innovative."

Instead of the traditional 15-week internship program that teachers-in-training are often exposed to, the Urban Teacher Residency Program has students become teachers on day one. Students receive more than 2,000 hours of instructional time in the classroom, as compared to 700 hours in a traditional internship program.

The program has been nationally recognized for the hands-on experience that it provides to teachers-in-training. In partnership with the Hillsborough County Public School district, the Urban Teacher Residency Program was previously honored to receive a prestigious i3 Federal Grant from the U.S. Department of Education to support the program's innovative model of teacher preparation. As a recipient of this grant, the residency is seen as a national model for what is possible in teacher preparation.

"When students are in their coursework, we have really redesigned that coursework to be explicitly linked to their teaching," van Ingen said. "So when they're in their university classes — which we actually teach in an elementary school building — they're learning about techniques that are shown to be very effective with children who are diverse linguistically, socioeconomically and culturally. We're teaching them strategies, and then they have that same day to go and apply those strategies."

To view the full segment on the Urban Teacher Residency Program, please view the clip from WEDU Quest in the video below.