Educators Highlight Anti-Racist Teaching Techniques at Cutting-Edge Panel, Workshop
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, February 4, 2019 Contact: Wende Gozan Brown, wbrown@ehtp.org Event Opens Professional Development Sessions for National Center for Teaching Residencies; East Harlem Teaching Residency Selected to Host (New York, NY) -- Educators, community leaders and the public will have the opportunity to engage with teachers trained in racial equity and learn to use anti-bias language at an upcoming panel and workshop. East Harlem Teaching Residency (EHTR) will host the event, “Building a Pipeline of Anti-Racist Teachers,” at East Harlem Scholars Academy on Tuesday, February 12 at 8:30 a.m.
“We are honored to have the opportunity to showcase our racial equity work, which provides the foundation for our successful educational model,” said Jeff Ginsburg, Executive Director of East Harlem Tutorial Program, the 60-year-old nonprofit that launched EHTR in 2015 in partnership with Hunter College’s School of Education and AmeriCorps. “All students need to feel valued and supported to become confident learners. At a time when inflammatory rhetoric has become a frightening norm and our country feels more divided than ever, it is essential to ensure educators are grounded in best practices to support students.” The panel and workshop will serve as a kick-off for the National Center for Teaching Residencies’ (NCTR’s) Instructional Rounds, a time when NCTR and its partner programs collaborate to provide professional development and support to residencies.
NCTR selected EHTR to host one set of 2019 Instructional Rounds that will focus on the assessment process, and help programs nationwide evaluate the quality, clarity, and consistency of the feedback that residents receive. Established in 2015, EHTR seeks to connect the students of East Harlem with highly motivated educators who are invested in the neighborhood and prepared to meet the needs of the community. Rather than training teachers to have an awareness of racism, East Harlem Teaching Residency is designed to shape transformative educators who actively work to dismantle racism. These anti-racist practices prepare graduates to support the young people of East Harlem as they realize their best possible selves.
Recent data shows that East Harlem Teaching Residency graduates are prepared to make their mark: 100 percent of graduates from its most recent cohort are teaching, having graduated from Hunter School of Education with a GPA of 3.8 or higher. During their residencies, each spent a minimum of 22 hours a week serving our Scholars, and each was able to prove student academic growth. Importantly, 100 percent of hiring principals said they would hire EHTR graduates again, according to the American Institutes for Research. “Students of color are 39 percent more likely to matriculate to college if they have just one teacher of color in elementary school -- but nationally, only 16 percent of teachers are people of color,” said Susan Gonzowitz, founding managing director of EHTR. “We recruit a diverse pool of teaching residents and make sure they are all trained in anti-racist practices.
In doing so, EHTR graduates help affect educational outcomes in East Harlem and beyond, and promote an equitable society in which students succeed in and outside of their classrooms. “Our Instructional Rounds bring together residency programs from around the country in collaboration to improve the residency model,” added Sudipti Kumar, associate program director for NCTR. “The East Harlem Teaching Residency has established itself as an exemplary program, and we are excited to collaborate with them to provide our partners with this unique opportunity for thoughtful observations and professional feedback that will help push the residency movement forward.”
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About East Harlem Teaching Residency: A component of East Harlem Tutorial Program, the East Harlem Teaching Residency -- in partnership with Hunter College School of Education and AmeriCorps -- is a selective 14-month cohort-based teacher-training and certification program that develops, supports, and certifies aspiring educators to become highly effective first through sixth grade teachers for East Harlem Scholars Academies and the greater East Harlem community. About National Center for Teaching Residencies: The National Center for Teacher Residencies is a not-for-profit organization created to improve student achievement through the preparation of excellent new teachers for high-need school districts. Headquartered in Chicago, NCTR’s mission is to advance a network of high-performing teacher residency programs dedicated to preparing highly effective teachers that will transform educational practices nationwide.