To build a better teacher, Harvard launches program aimed at quality
As the country debates the best way to improve the quality of teachers in struggling public schools, Harvard University is launching a training program it hopes will serve as a national model.
Starting in January, about two dozen Harvard seniors will begin a three-year fellowship designed to combine pedagogy — learning the methods of teaching from experts — with lengthy practice in the classroom under mentor supervision.
Thanks to $18 million from private donors who wish to remain anonymous, the program is free to fellows.
James E. Ryan, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said the university has three goals: improve the quality of classroom teachers in urban schools, create a model that can be copied elsewhere, and present teaching as a viable career to Harvard students and their peers who do not typically think of K-12 teaching in the same vein as law, medicine or business.
“We really want to get Harvard students to think about teaching as a career,” Ryan said. To that end, Harvard is asking its fellows to commit to teaching for five to seven years.
In the spring of their senior year, the fellows will take courses in teaching methods and continue through the summer, with some time spent instructing under supervision in a public school.
“You can talk all you want about teaching, but when you are teaching is when the growth curve is the greatest,” said Katherine K. Merseth, a senior lecturer at the education school who first conceived of the fellowship program more than a decade ago.
During the first full year, Harvard fellows will be placed in schools to teach part time, responsible for two or three classes a day, while working with an on-site mentor, having long-distance coaching sessions with a Harvard faculty adviser and taking an online Harvard class.
“That is a whole lot better than sprinting through the day, teaching five classes, maybe going to the bathroom during lunch, then going home and grading the work of 100 to 150 students,” said Steve Mahoney, associate director of the Harvard Teaching Fellows. “It’s still hard. But it’s doable-hard as opposed to superhuman-hard for a 23-year-old in their first job.”
During the second summer, Harvard fellows will return to the university for more course work and to finish requirements for a teaching certificate. In the second and third years, fellows teach full time but go back to Harvard for retreats, conferences and summer courses. They can take six more credits to earn a master’s degree for about $10,000, compared with about $45,000 for Harvard’s traditional master’s program, Ryan said.
In its design and goals, the fellowship clearly differs from Teach for America, the 25-year-old highly selective program that recruits college seniors on elite campuses such as Harvard, gives them five weeks of training and places them To build a better teacher, Harvard launches program aimed at quality - The Washington Post:
