A Residency Program that Fits the Needs of the District

Program Features

The bilingual residency program was launched as a small pilot in 2018, with a cohort of 11 residents working towards their elementary education license and bilingual endorsement. In 2019, the program was expanded to include new tracks for bilingual early childhood education and early childhood special education. Currently, all of the bilingual residents are being prepared to work in Spanish-English bilingual programs, as that is the greatest area of need in CPS.

The program is designed to provide a one-year residency working alongside mentor teachers while participants simultaneously take courses at NLU to earn their master of arts in teaching (MAT) in either early childhood education (birth to grade 2) or elementary education (grades 1–6), as well as their Professional Educator License (PEL) which is necessary to teach in the state. Upon successful completion of the first residency year, candidates are eligible to work as full-time teachers in CPS as they continue to take the classes necessary to receive an ESL and bilingual endorsement. All teacher residents are required to have a bachelor's degree to be eligible for the program, a 3.0 undergraduate GPA average, a passing grade on a Spanish language proficiency exam, and until recently, pass a basic skills test.¹

During the first year of the program, candidates take summer courses five days a week at NLU’s downtown Loop campus as they wait for a final school site placement and CPS mentor teacher. Once the school year starts, residents work in their CPS classrooms four days a week (M–Th) and take classes at NLU on Friday. They also receive ongoing professional development from CPS and work closely with a university faculty supervisor from NLU who teaches the graduate courses and also observes residents in the field. Each resident receives discounted tuition at NLU and a $35,000 salary from CPS to help cover their cost of living. Of this, $15,000 is provided as a zero-interest loan which will be paid back to the district incrementally over the course of three years. “At the very basic level, it's just a part of us trying to build some sustainability for the program model,” said Butts, who added, “and we can then reinvest those dollars to support residents who come in the future.”

In the second year, program graduates take five additional courses with their cohort with the goal of earning their ESL/bilingual endorsement before the start of the next school year. However, two of these courses are offered online and three of these courses follow a blended model that combines in-person meetings with online components. This blended design is due in part to the preferences of the residents, who stated emphatically that they preferred face-to-face instruction. As one resident reflected, a key strength of the courses were in-class discussions that helped enhance learning. “Even though we are all part of the bilingual residency, we all come from different perspectives and different points of view [based] on our own experiences,” she said. “And so I learned from their perspective and I was able to share mine. I wasn’t afraid to ask questions. I wasn’t afraid to share my opinion because I knew it was going to be respected and open a dialogue. Our professors allowed that to happen and we were able to learn from each other.”² This type of dialogue is simply not possible through an online format, said another resident.

The program design was the result of a collaboration between CPS, NLU, and NCTR, which received a $300,000, 18-month grant from the Chicago Community Trust for consulting services and technical assistance for the design and launch of the program. NCTR Program Director Christine Brennan Davis said NCTR assisted in three key areas:³

• Partnership and program sustainability, which included clearly defining roles and responsibilities of each partner, helping to formalize the partnership through the creation of a memorandum of understanding, providing financial modeling, and helping to map out a theory of change for the residency.
• Recruitment and selection, which included revamping a school training site and mentor recruitment and selection. NCTR helped CPS create an application process for sites, which included conducting visits to those schools to observe prospective mentor teachers and interview principals.
• Aligning coursework with clinical experience by supporting NLU and CPS to ensure that coursework is aligned with what residents are experiencing in the classroom. This included helping CPS and NLU map out co-teaching models that allow for a gradual increase of teaching responsibilities for residents and mid- and end-of-year surveys to provide implementation feedback.

Resident Recruitment, Selection, and Support

When the pilot residency program launched in 2018, a majority of the cohort was made up of current employees of CPS (as are a majority of residents in the 2019 cohort). Many worked as paraeducators with experience supporting classroom instruction and so were ideal candidates. As Felton explained, “We think that the person who has been an excellent classroom assistant for the past six years is a really good bet to be an effective teacher.” Since the residency program is housed in the talent division at CPS, program recruiters have access to a wealth of data that allows them to target prospective candidates. For example, they can pull together a list of current non-certified staff who have a bachelor's degree and reach out with information about the program.

When it came to recruiting prospective participants to this program, Butts and her team were attentive to the question of how to build an equitable and accessible selection process. She said, “We put a lot of thought and design into the interview process for residents, [as well as] how to build a budget that is both sustainable and also helps to break down [financial] barriers for program entry.” To that end, the program has built-in funding support for testing, licensure, and registration costs and emergency funds to help residents who may need support purchasing books or paying their tuition.

The teacher residency program in CPS offers candidates a high level of guidance and assistance navigating a very bureaucratic system. “I think one of the key levers … is the relationship between the recruiter and the resident. We are supporting them through everything. First, you give us your transcripts, and then we support you to take all the tests that you need. And then we support you with matriculation into the university,” said Felton. One bilingual teacher resident told us that the support offered by CPS was part of what made the program attractive. She compared the residency program with an online master’s in education program and realized that she would get more benefit from “partnering up with CPS” than doing it on her own. She noted that the residency would allow her to earn her degree in a year and put her on a faster track to increasing her salary than if she went through a traditional program that would take more time to complete.⁴