Giving Compass' Take:

• In Illinois, the Golden Apple Foundation designed a teacher training program for undergraduate students that provides time to experience classroom teaching.

• How is this training program different from others? How will the classroom component help foster teacher resilience?

• Read about other methods of teacher training programs that have seen success. 


Just two years out of high school, Leo Sanchez can easily recall the drowsy feeling of sitting in a Chicago classroom on a warm day.

So he recognized the moment this month at Julian High School when he needed to rouse his 12 students and had them stand up to work in small groups on presentations on Reconstruction, slave revolts and other Civil War topics.

Sanchez and 120 fellow undergrads are spending four weeks this summer student teaching, guided by mentors from the Golden Apple Foundation in a program designed to give prospective teachers hands-on experience. The program invests in a key part of the teacher training pipeline — providing experience in an actual classroom, to foster more resilient teachers.

Combating teacher burnout has taken on new significance with a dire teacher shortage facing the state. Chicago’s hardest-to-staff schools experience twice as much teacher turnover as the average district school. The newer the teacher the more likely they are to be placed in a troubled school with many vacancies, and the more likely they are to leave, research shows.

Across the U.S, high-poverty schools have higher rates of teacher turnover and more inexperienced teachers, on average.

To build skills essential to success in high-needs schools, the Illinois-based Golden Apple Scholars Institute has trained more than 800 would-be teachers like Sanchez in the past year.

Practical classroom experience could make all the difference for the newest crop of teachers, especially those entering the profession as their first job. Studies show that teachers are more ready for challenging environments if they have had in-classroom teaching experience, and less likely to leave the job altogether.

Both the teachers union and other advocates agree that prospective teachers should train in schools similar to those where they’ll eventually teach.

Read the full article about teacher-training programs by Yana Kunichoff at Chalkbeat.