urban education
From Left: Students from Camino Nuevo High School’s Young Life program.
2010-2011 cohort of residents in the Memphis Teacher Residency program.
“We know that education opens opportunities for youth, especially youth from urban settings. This theme carries throughout the program. We are seeing our graduates embody this mission as they choose where to live and work.” - Candice McQueen, Dean, College of Education Lipscomb University (TN)
we are to be preparing them to be in the city, encountering the messiness of the city,” Cook explained. Welcoming an Act Six cadre this fall is part of that transformation, which includes joining local efforts to address Portland’s enormous education challenges and adapting to serve the population of students now attending Warner Pacific. More than 45 percent of them are firstgeneration college students. In Memphis the high teacher turnover rate has meant that students regularly have teachers who are in their early years of teaching, which is when they are least effective as teachers. Memphis Teacher Residency hopes to grow from its current resident cohort of 27 residents to 200 residents per year, which would allow it to supply one third of Memphis City Schools’ new 30 CCCUAdvance FALL2010
teachers each year in a city that is at the forefront of urban education reform efforts. As teams of MTR’s well-prepared, Christ-committed graduates begin teaching together in schools with the support of MTR’s Christian community, real change is happening. This excites director David Montague: “You literally help change the academic culture of a school from the inside out through the teachers.” Lipscomb University (TN), which partners with TFA in Nashville to prepare TFA teachers for licensure and offer them a master’s degree in education program, sees growing numbers of its education graduates choosing to serve in Metro-Nashville public schools or other urban school districts rather than the private Christian schools they’ve historically gravitated toward. Lipscomb’s participation in a new transformational partnership for improving Nashville’s under-performing Cameron Middle School provides another opportunity for Lipscomb to impact urban education. “At Lipscomb in our initial teacher education retreat for new students, we have as our theme our mission as Christian educators to serve those in need and to help better the lives of those we serve,” said Candice McQueen, dean of Lipscomb’s College of Education. “We know that education opens opportunities for youth, especially youth from urban settings. This theme carries throughout the program. We are seeing our graduates embody this mission as they choose where to live and work.”
Find More on the Web: Act Six: www.actsix.org Memphis Teacher Residency: www.memphistr.org Teach for America: www.teachforamerica.org