BAY AREA TEACHER TRAINING INSTITUTE | 2017–2018 | ANNUAL REPORT in residency, we trust n i OUR MISSION BATTI’s mission is to provide the comprehensive preparation of aspiring independent and public school teachers and leaders. BATTI graduates educators with the capacity and the determination to: • foster joyous, purposeful, and engaging learning for the full diversity of students • build ever more inclusive, innovative, and inspiring classrooms and schools • contribute to more just, equitable, and sustainable communities Key BATTI features include: • two-year combined MA and credential program designed for full-time working professionals • personalized experiential learning in outstanding public, charter, and independent schools • opportunities to pilot cutting-edge pedagogy and spark school change THE UNIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC BENERD SCHOOL OF EDUCATION The mission of the Gladys L. Benerd School of Education is to prepare thoughtful, reflective, caring, and collaborative professionals for service to diverse populations. The School of Education directs its efforts toward researching the present and future needs of schools and the community, fostering intellectual and ethical growth, and developing compassion and collegiality through personalized learning experiences. Undergraduate, graduate, and professional preparation programs are developed in accordance with state and national accreditation standards and guidelines to ensure that students who complete these programs will represent the best professional practice in their positions of future leadership in schools and the community. Please visit our website, www.ba-tti.org, to see our introductory videos produced by Portal A Interactive and Youth Beat LITERACY INSTRUCTOR ANA ZAMOST LEADING HER FIRST-YEAR EAST BAY SECTION AT ST. PAUL’S EPISCOPAL SCHOOL real learning environments RESIDENCE, RESONANCE, AND RETENTION This has been another good year for BATTI. We are immensely proud of the 41 new teachers and 11 new leaders who graduated in May 2018 and jumped into their work with gusto this fall. For this Annual Report we want to take a deeper look at residency, since this immersive training process is what makes BATTI so successful. What is residency, exactly? It must have something to do with living in, or residing. After medical school, doctors-in-training spend three to seven years IN a teaching hospital as “residents.” This exhausting but thorough, hands-on way of learning a craft is spreading to the teaching profession. University schools of education, school districts, and state departments of education are turning to this “learning by doing” from the executive director executive the from model for teacher preparation. Hello?? This is exactly what BATTI has been doing for 17 years. We have trained over 400 teachers, and 80 percent of them are still in the classroom. In our slow-roast model, with a balance of theory and practice, our teacher candidates RESIDE in a well-resourced independent or charter school for two years, receiving great mentoring, while also gaining experience in public school classrooms. We are happy to see the residency model catch on in districts as diverse as San Francisco and Bakersfield, and in many charter schools such as the successful Aspire Public Charter network, now the residency-based Alder Graduate School of Education. n 1 Our program has grown in good new ways this year, with 3 new schools join- ing our coalition. We welcome Charles Armstrong School, which specializes in helping students with learning differences; Marin Preparatory, a SF-based school that focuses on Spanish bilingual education; and the Shu Ren International School, a Berkeley Mandarin immersion program. We are very fortunate to welcome five new members to the BATTI board. (See article inside.) We thank Annie Fujimoto, Chanda Guerin, and Jonathan Mayer for their service on the board these last years. This year we accepted a class of 35 diverse teachers into Cohort 17. Our third group in the Educational Leadership Master’s program will be completing the pro- gram in May. We’ll be putting the program on hiatus for this coming year while we find a new university partner, but we are proud of the accomplishments of our three cohorts of leadership graduates. Today’s view from our tenth floor office building in downtown Oakland shows four new office and residential towers under construction. Similarly, it is exciting to see the change and growth in our program and to watch our students and graduates take on new challenges. Bob Houghteling Bob Houghteling BATTI Executive Director BATTI Executive Director THE RESIDENCY MODEL Emulating Excellence Resident Teacher Whole Group What’s in a name? We used to call our students BATTI interns, but our thirty member schools use the terms support teacher, apprentice, AT, TA, Associate (newly popular), Assistant, and co-teacher. The term we have settled on now is Resident Teacher, reflecting a national 2 movement that is gaining steam. A teaching residency, like a medical residency, implies in-house specialized train- Follow-up Individual Instruction ing. In medicine it lasts 3 to 7 years; a growing majority of the BATTI school coalition asks residents to commit to two years of training. To continue the analogy, our school mentor teachers are the hospital “attendings”, watch- ing over their residents as they learn their craft, giving them gentle suggestions when necessary, and sterner do’s and don’ts when that is called for. There may be a parallel in the teaching hospital, but teacher training has always included another layer of coach; our Small Group Work BATTI supervisors visit 8 times a year and give feedback on the resident’s growing practice. MODEL PROGRAM SPECIFICS OPTION SNAPSHOT PROOF TRADITIONAL CREDENTIAL 15-22 weeks of student Lots of theory, little practice 5 years after training, PROGRAM teaching; 2–5 days a week about half of these program graduates are still teaching FAST-TRACK URBAN 7 weeks of summer school, Lots of practice, little theory 5 years after this intense INTERNSHIPS then start the school year and support year, 20-25% of these gradu- e.g., Teach for America as the lead teacher in ates are still in the classroom charge of your classroom BATTI, ASPIRE, AND OTHER One or two years of full-time Lots of practice, lots of 5 years post-residency, 80% MENTORED RESIDENCY classroom teaching, but as an theory, and daily mentoring of BATTI graduates are still in PROGRAMS apprentice being mentored the classroom! by a veteran teacher applying theory to direct experience direct to BATTI MENTORS: Tori Ulrich (Cohort 16) is a BATTI Resident at Brandeis Marin School. BATTI Supervisor, Hillery Jaffe-Urell, • Set aside an hour each week for an in-depth offers feedback and suggestions for progress meeting with their resident improvement; Assistant Director , Raleigh Zwerin, provides additional • Use a weekly log to track the ongoing discus- support; On-site Mentor, Jeff Krieger, shares his wisdom. sion: included are “areas of growth”, areas for improvement, research and resources, and next steps • Attend two BATTI mentor trainings, to share Supervisor best practices with other school mentors • Write 4 evaluations and lesson observations a year BATTI SUPERVISORS: • Visit once a month, and observe the resident teaching a lesson One-on-One Coaching • Enrich the conversation with a pre- and post-observation conference • Follow up with a written summary, with next steps • Residents write a reflection back to the Director supervisor after the visit Supervisor Feedback Mentor Post-Observation Conference THE RESIDENCY MODEL (CONT’D) THE NATIONAL RESIDENCY MOVEMENT BATTI traces its independent school residency back to the Shady Hill School Intern program, (Cambridge, MA), begun in 1926, and Denver’s Stanley British Primary program, begun in the 1990s. Urban school districts have supported residency fellows since the ’90s, and now over 1,000 new teachers nationwide are trained annually. While programs vary, the core of a successful program includes: • Growth comes in spurts. Many quiet, less confident new teachers emerge two years • A powerful mentoring relationship later with the strong presence required to • An opportunity to step back and reflect on “hold” a classroom. practice, at least once a week in a seminar • Oftentimes, the summer public school teach- setting with other residents ing experience accelerates growth rapidly. • Extra support from a dedicated administra- Residents find their voice of firmness in the tor at the school new environment, often out of necessity. 4 • Meaningful teaching experience • A mentor must be willing to let go and allow • An opportunity to take on more and more her resident to make mistakes, to face plant responsibility as the program progresses but help her get back up and figure out how Over the years, we have observed some to do it better the next time. patterns and learned these lessons in BATTI’s • Contrary to the old adage about new extended residency training: teachers—“No smiles before Christmas”— residents need to open up and share their background and interests with their students to truly engage and flourish. • A prepared teacher is a more successful teacher. Just as the mantra for a day’s suc- cessful lesson plan is preparation, prepa- ration, preparation, the secret of BATTI learning by doing 5 residents’ future success is the practical BATTI graduates tell us frequently that experience they receive while residing, from as hard as their first few years of teaching content delivery to classroom management are, they can’t imagine facing that challenge to working with the parent community. without the deep preparation that our resi- dency training provided. We are proud to be part of a growing movement nationwide of teacher residencies. St. Elsewhere Cohort 1 ANNE DINKLAGE I am back to teaching full time and am can find me on Twitter and Facebook, and you can super excited to be reunited with one of my mentor support my work on Patreon. teachers from BATTI, Sarah Schroeder.