LEARN. LEAD. TEACH. The Brown University Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program is a 12-month (June to May) graduate program for students wishing to pursue careers as teachers. Leading to teacher certification in elementary (grades 1-6) or secondary English, History/Social Studies, or Biology/Science (grades 7-12) education, the program combines practice and theory through coursework and student teaching placements. Multiple student teaching placements provide a variety of learning contexts for each MAT student. The program is intentionally small in size, ensuring that students receive personal guidance from professors and mentor teachers. Financial aid is available in the form of tuition scholarships and is awarded on the basis of financial need, past performance and evidence of potential success in the program. The strongest applicants may apply to the Urban Education Fellows program, which provides tuition forgiveness in exchange for a commitment to teach in Providence-area urban public schools for three years following graduation.
My name is Stany Leblanc and I a Breakthrough Teacher Alumni. I taught in the summers of ’06, ’07, and ’08 in the Breakthrough Manchester program and was part of the Administrative Committee for the last two summers. I now am a Teach for America corps member in New York City teaching 6th grade English at a new public school in the South Bronx.
If you haven’t already, please visit the TFA application page. The next deadline is January 8, 2010.
Breakthrough provided me a great foundation on how to create interactive lesson plans and in knowing how to relate with students. It was great to connect to my students immediately because of my Breakthrough experience and it made the start of the school year much easier for me than other teachers. Also having an idea of how to construct a lesson plan made creating lesson plans each week a simpler task and less of a hurdle for me to overcome.
Though Breakthrough provided me with valuable skills and experiences, teaching in the New York City public schools is a struggle that I did not anticipate. It is difficult to work with different students and their divergent learning styles and problems, engage a whole class of students, and create my own plans each day while at the same time trying to improve as a teacher. Everyday brings a new problem and every lesson has its own pitfalls. Each day is a learning experience and it is difficult to assess my impact on my students.
Despite the difficulties I am starting to see early successes in my classroom. First, classroom management has become less of a problem each day. While before I was frustrated by my inability to get my class to quiet down and listen to my instructions, it is now a much easier task. My class now follows the classroom norms each day and respects my authority. It is a great feeling to walk into such a wonderful learning environment each day and this definitely has been one of my major successes.
My other major success is in creating connections with individual students. I have been involved in tutoring students after school as well as running the book club each week. Through these interactions I have been able to foster meaningful relationships with a few students that have enhanced their learning and has translated to better efforts from those students in the classroom. I am happy to have that experience with the students because that is what I believe will help me push them to success.
Teach for America is an incredible experience that has both challenged me and given me hope for my future in education. Though I know I am nowhere near being a perfect teacher, I believe that I am learning and reflecting from my experiences each day and using them to influence my growth. As my experience continues I will be glad to continue talking about it through this blog and documenting my growth as an educator in our struggling urban schools.
Dear Breakthrough students, teacher, friends and supporters!
We’ve already gotten three donations today! Let’s keep the momentum going! Spread the word and donate to Breakthrough starting at Noon, PST/ 3p.m. EST. Click here to DONATE! Breakthrough Collaborative is participating in America’s Giving Challenge through Facebook Causes. 100% of your donation will go directly to providing program support for our students and teachers across the country. Thank you for making breakthroughs happen! Feel free to forward this along to friends! Learn more about our Cause here. Spread the word!
Sincerely,
The Breakthrough Team
Below are a few friends of Breakthrough who have already donated today!
As we begin harnessing our collective energy for this recruiting season I wanted to reach out to you and share the timeline for the Campus Recruiter Application Process and the overall Teacher Recruitment Schedule across the Collaborative. Please apply to recruit with us! We need your voice inspiring next summer’s teacher cohort.
By recruiting with Breakthrough you will be able to:
Share your inspiring Breakthrough experience with others on your campus
Connect with college recruiters from across the country
Build professional campaigning and networking skills
Support Breakthrough programming by increasing the quality of Breakthrough Teachers one at a time
Take on a leadership role at your campus in advocating for educational access and reform
Earn a $tipend and other awesome Breakthrough swag…Mmm, sweatshirts…
By following this link to the 2009-2010 Campus Recruiter Application you will be able to view, download and complete the Campus Recruiter Application. (If for some reason the link does not work, please email me immediately). The application is short but concise. You will be able to complete it quickly but make sure it is quality. The Campus Recruiter selection process is equally competitive to the teacher selection process. Applications are due October 26th 2009 5:00 PST. I know it’s fast approaching; I also know that anyone who taught at a Breakthrough site this summer thrives under deadline.
Campus Recuiter Training will happen during the first week of November and the first week of December. The application will launch in the first week of December. While the bulk of our recruitment efforts take place in January and Feburary (with a Teacher Application deadline of March 1, 2010), it is necessary to prepare for that time with fall trainings and groundwork setting.
As you will see in the 2009-2010 Campus Recruiter Application, we have chosen 28 colleges and universities at which to pay and support Campus Recruiters. This is due to a limited amount of human and financial resources; there’s also more information/explanation inside the Campus Recruiter Application. However, we would like nothing more than to provide entreprenurial Breakthrough Ambassadors to run recruiting campaigns at your schools to deepen the Breakthrough Teacher community at your school. To that end, we will gladly provide you with recruiting resources and Breakthorugh swag. Who knows!? Perhaps, your successes will move your school into a paid recruiting school. If you are interested in this opportunity and your school is not listed on the application, please, please, PLEASE reach out to me ASAP.
All of the information you need to apply should be in the Application. Please don’t hesitate to email or call me with any questions. I sincerely look forward to your application and working with you to recruit incredible candidates to inspire and lead our students next year.
Great times for hanging out with the NYTimes Mag this weekend!
Paul Tough’s article on learning self-control through imaginary play. Benoit Denizet-Lewis’s piece on “Openarms” a non-profit in Oklahoma supporting young students wrestling with their sexual identities. And David Leonhardt’s article on the value of a college degree: does the college make the student or the student make the college?
But my favorite was Maggie Jones’s essay on the SEED School in D.C., a five day boarding school for low-income, high-potential D.C. youth. In so many ways this school lives out the core values of Breakthrough’s program: mission driven toward college readiness, high academic expectations, needs-responsive supports, intentional co-curricular programming. Reading about how the students learned to navigate two distinct worlds (one focused on college and one not) without dismissing either was a powerful testament of the deep intellectual and emotional potential of our young people.
Just to follow up on the post this morning. EdWeek released an article documenting the major overhaul of their teacher training program that has gone on over the past several years. The major move is from “teacher satisfaction” to “teacher efficacy.” I think Breakthrough is poised for that move…
The role of the program directors has changed dramatically over the past five years, even as the organization has boomed in size, to about 7,000 corps members.
At one time, program directors had more of a support role—“to keep corps members satisfied,” in Ms. Stone’s words. Now, they are charged with enabling the members to develop into highly effective teachers.
TFA’s shift over the past decade toward measuring and promoting its teachers’ ability to boost student performance has caused the organization to reconfigure not just program directors’ roles, but nearly all its other support components.
Remember when I posted that article about the growing tiff between the NYC Dept. of Education the Teacher’s Union…Here’s the other side to that:
And now, in yet another example of unlikely alliances in education, the New York City Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers have joined to participate in a $2.6 million two-year study paid for by the Gates Foundation to try to figure out just how teachers should be evaluated.
In the project entitled “Measures of Effective Teaching” researchers will measure teachers (who sign up for the program and are compensdated) through a variety of lenses–test scores, observations, teacher mentor and support, resource allocation and school culture.
By now, most serious studies on education reform have concluded that the critical variable when it comes to kids succeeding in school isn’t money spent on buildings or books but, rather, the quality of their teachers. A study of the Los Angeles public schools published in 2006 by the Brookings Institution concluded that “having a top-quartile teacher rather than a bottom-quartile teacher four years in a row would be enough to close the black-white test score gap.”
LEARN. LEAD. TEACH. The Brown University Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program is a 12-month (June to May) graduate program for students wishing to pursue careers as teachers. Leading to teacher certification in elementary (grades 1-6) or secondary English, History/Social Studies, or Biology/Science (grades 7-12) education, the program combines practice and theory through coursework and student teaching placements. Multiple student teaching placements provide a variety of learning contexts for each MAT student. The program is intentionally small in size, ensuring that students receive personal guidance from professors and mentor teachers. Financial aid is available in the form of tuition scholarships and is awarded on the basis of financial need, past performance and evidence of potential success in the program. The strongest applicants may apply to the Urban Education Fellows program, which provides tuition forgiveness in exchange for a commitment to teach in Providence-area urban public schools for three years following graduation.
Posted by Dave Bryson 
Posted by Dave Bryson 
Posted by imckinzie 
