热点大瓜

The next generation of educators not only needs to believe in racial equity but also to teach and advocate through an anti-racist lens.

A program at the University at Buffalo is equipping future K-12 teachers with the necessary tools to do so. , now in its second year, aims to be part of the solution in three key ways, by:

• Providing a stream of aspiring teachers from underrepresented minority groups to the Buffalo Public Schools, a district with an extremely diverse group of students and families.
• Equipping graduate students with the skills they need to succeed in the classroom, including learning how to educate students in a virtual learning environment and teaching through the lens of racial equity.
• Helping to ensure that teachers who start their careers in Buffalo remain in Buffalo Public Schools.

UB’s Teacher Residency Program offers a different route to the teaching profession. Traditionally, students earn their degree and spend a few months student teaching before taking a full-time job.

“The residency program works in this dynamic way that allows future teachers to be in the classroom while finishing their coursework and their requirements for becoming a teacher,” says Cristina Mata, a member of the inaugural group.

Program participants take classes in the summer, at night and online while working toward their master’s degree at UB.

The first cohort saw 12 future teachers placed within five Buffalo Public Schools, where they worked full time alongside veteran BPS teachers during the 2019-20 school year. BPS has since hired all of them as full-time teachers.

There are 15 students in the second cohort and, as in the first, 60% are people of color. By the end of its five-year partnership with the Buffalo Public Schools, UB’s Teacher Residency Program is expected to have trained 70 future teachers, the majority of whom will be people of color.

The program was designed from the outset to “better attract and retain a linguistically, racially, economically and ethnically diverse group of teachers who are learner-ready and who will stay in the profession,” says Suzanne Rosenblith, dean of UB’s Graduate School of Education, which runs the program. “Never has a program like the UB Teacher Residency Program been more important.”