Post-graduate Planning and Transition Year
20 Kearsarge Ave. Roxbury, MA 02119
Teachers for Tomorrow
June 2015 graduate Ché Ashley is the first of three recent alumni in BDEA's new teaching assistant pilot program to deliver a complete lesson plan. The topic, Propaganda, was delivered through a combination of conversation, reflective writing, instruction, and analysis of two clips from the documentary, Triumph of the Will as part of the class lesson in Advanced Literature. Teaching Assistant Armando Martinez taught his first class, The Anatomy of the Eye, later that same afternoon. Math TA, Shania Cassey will teach the first of her three lessons within the next week. All three recent graduates are thinking about pursuing a career in teaching as a result of their experience as students here at BDEA. The program pilot was funded by The State Street Foundation, with ongoing support from The Cummings Foundation $100,000 for 100 grant, which has also supported the program's growth. Math and Lead Teacher Adrianne Level is supervising the program and checks in weekly with both TAs and mentor teachers Joe Boulanger (Humanities), Sarah Houlihan (Science), and Janet Platt (Math).
Teaching Assistants are in classrooms with their mentor teachers for 20 hours/week, and attend department meetings on Fridays, along with other staff events and professional development. Ché, Armando, and Shania meet with each other, too, and sit in on each other’s classes to learn and to give feedback on practice. Through the grant funding, TAs are paid for their teaching, prep, and PD time, and also keep journals to reflect on their growth over the course of the trimester. The idea is that students who were able to make progress and graduate in a competency-based system after not succeeding in traditional classrooms are now learning how to teach in a competency-based system. When our TAs begin their college careers in pursuit of a degree in education, they will have a well-rounded resume enhanced by on-the-job experience, and a critical and practical perspective on education reform. The program is currently funded for one year, and TAs can complete one, two or a maximum of three trimesters before having to move on to college and make space for a new round of recent BDEA graduates. The example that these three alumni are setting is so impressive that we already have a list of students eager to apply for the next open TA positions.
