Teaching residency program helps revitalize Richmond public schools

Sterling Giles
Matt Leonard
Contributing Writer
Online Content Editor

VCU President Michael Rao and U.S. Senator Tim Kaine visited T.C. Boushall Middle School to observe the Richmond Teachers Residence graduate program on Friday.

RTR is a four-year residency program that provides aspiring teachers with training and field experience in the classroom while awarding university credit. The program requires enrollment in a one-year residency and obligation to teach a minimum of three years in a difficult area within the Richmond Public School system in an effort to revitalize system’s chronically low performance.

The visit to T.C. Boushall began in Samantha Martin’s eighth grade physical science class. Students were working on a lab where they observed the rate of diffusion for food coloring in beakers containing hot and cold water.

Martin is a clinical residence coach (CRC) for the program. This means she mentors a graduate student who is in the residency program.

The graduate student Martin is mentoring is Christal Corey. Kaine spoke with Corey briefly about how she became involved with the program before she took over the class and began talking to the students about molecules and their movement through water.

Kaine and Rao walked back to the “We the People” room at T.C. Boushall where they had a discussion about RTR with people involved in the program including Dana Bedden, superintendent of Richmond Public Schools; Christine Walther-Thomas, the dean of VCU’s school of education; and Wildad Abed, the principal of T.C. Boushall.

The day before this meeting the RTR program learned they had received a $7.5 million Teacher Quality Enhancement Program grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Walther-Thomas said this would fund the program for 5 years. A $5.8 million grant started and has maintained the program for the last five years.

Residents have the ability to choose from either the SE (special/exceptional education) or secondary track. The secondary track is designed to teach core subjects such as biology, English and math. The program was developed in 2010 in response to the needs of the RPS.

“There was a need for strong, dedicated core teachers,” said Kristi Harris, an SE-track resident. “That’s how the program started.”

The SE track was introduced this year and was developed in response to the growing desire for special education teachers in the Richmond metro area. Residents complete specialized three-month training courses led by the CRCs over the summer. When the school year begins, the residents typically teach four days a week and participate in seminars on Fridays.

In the classroom, the CRCs take the lead during lessons, but the residents gradually receive more teaching time as the year continues under observation and critique by their mentor.

“I have been provided with a little bit of extra breathing room for me to try out new, engaging and innovative lessons and teaching practices with the students,” said Gregory Palmer, a secondary track math resident.

Palmer was enthusiastic about this structural aspect of the program, because he said it allows him to incorporate creative methods in his lessons.

“It’s a safety net,” Harris said regarding the convenience the program provides. “It’s great to have someone there so everything doesn’t fall on you.”

Harris and Palmer both agreed the residency program is far more effective than the prior training they received as substitute and volunteer teachers. These programs would only consist of a six to eight week training period after which participants were immediately thrust into the school system with no further assistance.

The SE mentor coordinator, Cecilia Batalo, Ph.D., said she thinks the secondary tract has had much success among its residents and school system and is similarly enthusiastic about the future of the newer SE path.

“The program is evolving nicely and the students are all doing well in their placements,” Batalo said. “This is showing the same with our SE residents even though they are just beginning their year of residency,” she added.

A recurring theme within the RTR program is establishing residents as effective and accessible resources for their students. Harris stressed the importance of building relationships with the students. An example of this is when last week, the residents visited some of the low-income neighborhoods their students inhabit to better understanding their home environment.

“I think it’s the same whether you’re teaching general education or special education but the key is you have to learn your kids,” Harris said. “Meet them where they are to bring them where they need to be.”

RTR is not the only VCU program dedicated to better serving the city’s education system.

The Institute for Education Sciences, IES, a sect of the U.S. Department of Education, offered a different grant to VCU professors Bryce McLeod and Kevin Sutherland to research behavioral problems in local preschool children. The four-year grant totaled up to $1.6 million.

For the last seven years, Sutherland, a professor in VCU’s School of Education, has been working on developing early intervention programs for preschools in the Richmond area after finding that there is a correlation between poverty and behavioral problems.

“We know that 18 to 25 percent of students that show up from preschool show problem behaviors,” he said.

The objective of the programs was to develop measures to assess the practices teachers were using in the classroom to deal with children with behavioral problems.

Sutherland’s programs differ from prior research because his work explores methods of intervention executed by the teachers in the classroom opposed to focusing solely on emotionally supportive classrooms and teachers.

He stressed that the key to implementing effective intervention programs is to detect the signs sooner than later. Examples of early signs of behavioral problems in students include having difficulty sitting still in the classroom and being incompatible with their classmates and teachers.

“You have a young child that has a problem behavior and when we don’t help that child to be more successful in school, over time those things get magnified,” Sutherland said.

As he delved further into his research, however, Sutherland realized he would require more funding. He teamed up with VCU psychology professor Bryce McLeod and developed a grant proposal that would be sent to IES.

The process of being accepted proved to be incredibly competitive for the duo because of the depleted available funds resulting from federal budget cuts. With much persistence, the team was awarded the grant money with their third attempted proposal submission.

Presently, the two are planning to continue developing intervention programs for schools in the Richmond area. Despite the relativity of the RTR program and the duo’s study, the two are not working in unison. However, Sutherland was involved in the RTR program over the summer where he served as a CRC for SE residents. Harris was one of Sutherland’s trainees during the summer.

“The (residents) are bright, they are motivated, and they are enthusiastic,” Sutherland said. “They have all these traits you would hope for teachers that I would like to have teach my own children.”