A day in the life
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A Typical Day
Mornings
During the first year of the Urban Teacher Center (UTC) program, residents work alongside a host teacher at a UTC partner school almost every school day. Residents are fully integrated into the school’s staff and culture, developing strong relationships with teachers and students throughout the school and especially with their host teacher and students in their classroom. A cohort of three to six other UTC residents also work at each school and act as school-based support and a built-in learning community for each resident. Residents spend time in each other’s classrooms so they can experience different content areas and grade levels. Adjunct professors regularly visit residents in their classrooms to provide mentoring and coaching. UTC provides real-time support opportunities, such as “bug in the ear” technology, to encourage residents to use new teaching strategies and see immediate impact on student engagement and achievement. UTC provides residents with a flip camera, laptop and printer with scanner capabilities to collect student work and document student learning.
Afternoons
After lunch, residents continue their graduate coursework with twenty of their resident peers. Most of their Masters in Education coursework is completed in the first year of the program. A typical course will regularly teach residents new classroom skills, assign them to practice the skills in the classroom and report back to the class on their execution using student work as evidence of learning.
Evenings and Weekends
While residents grade student work, write lesson plans and do graduate course reading and assignments during evenings and weekends, UTC emphasizes the need for residents to balance their life—to save time for friends, family, loved ones and passions outside of the classroom.
In general, each day is characterized by intense classroom practice and learning encouraged by the satisfaction of improving student academic achievement as a direct result of skillful teaching.
