The Oakland Urban Teacher Residency program (OUTR) is a partnership among Mills College's Division of Natural Science and Mathematics and its School of Education, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), the Lawrence Hall of Science, and KQED Public Media for Northern California. The project is recruiting, preparing, mentoring and sustaining a cadre of 20 STEM teachers based on a medical residency model in which new Teaching Fellows are mentored by experienced master teachers---a model which complements the instructional rounds model that OUSD has implemented in each of their secondary schools. A key component of OUTR is engaging the Teaching Fellows, the Fellows' mentors, and the program's partners in a research project to study this teacher residency model in order to determine how the skills and knowledge of STEM pre-service teachers develop over time within connected, coherent learning communities.
OUTR partners and participants produce research that adds to the knowledge base about effective STEM residency models of teacher preparation and retention in high-needs urban school districts. In addition, the project supports cadres of new teachers to enter and remain for at least four years in OUSD after their initial preparation year, providing strong content knowledge, effective pedagogies that are designed for teaching Oakland students, and knowledge of observing, monitoring and increasing student learning. Thus, the project increases the number, diversity, and mastery of secondary STEM teachers in OUSD, while improving student learning, and faculty learning about learning, for others similarly situated.
