Adding power to our ability to develop outstanding new teachers

Abstract

The difficult challenge of learning to teach compels schools of education to experiment with new and more powerful training models. This paper reports on one such experiment.

Project Promise, a licensure and masters degree program for career change professionals at Colorado State University, using a rigorous selection process, assembles a full‐time ten‐month cohort, and provides them with extensive coaching, systems to ensure accountability, and four student teaching opportunities interspersed with theory and methods classes. Once these candidates are employed as first year teachers, the same faculty who taught and modeled the theoretical aspects of the program also systematically coach and mentor these new teachers to create a seamless web of training. Results after five years indicate that teachers trained in this program achieve high rates of employment and are more likely to stay in teaching than the norm. There are substantial costs in implementing a program of this intensity.