Boston Teacher Residency (BTR)

More about Boston Teacher Residency (BTR)

The mission of BTR is to recruit, prepare and sustain excellent teachers in and for Boston Public Schools (BPS). Highly selective, BTR recruits talented and committed people from diverse backgrounds — recent college graduates, career changers, community leaders — who want to be urban teachers. These aspiring teachers spend a full school year working with a trained, supported mentor teacher in a BPS classroom four days per week and take courses one night per week, on Fridays, and in the summer. Upon graduation, they earn a Massachusetts Initial Teacher License in their primary academic content area, partial credit toward dual licensure in special education or ESL (completed in their post-graduate year) and a master’s degree in elementary or secondary education from the University of Massachusetts Boston. As AmeriCorps members, BTR Residents receive a modest living stipend to help defray living expenses, and they incur low costs for the degree and licensure; in return, they commit to teach for at least three years in the BPS. BTR continues to support its graduates for at least their first three years as a teacher of record, helping them develop from novice teacher to teacher-leader, with the goal of building a critical mass of like-minded, effective teachers equipped to bolster school and district improvement efforts. BTR has retained almost 90% of its graduates in the BPS, and principals rate 88% of BTR graduates as well prepared or as better prepared than their counterparts. BTR ensures that over half of its Residents are people of color and over half of the middle and high school Residents are in the areas of math and science. Since its launch in 2003, BTR has prepared over 250 BPS teachers.

BTR is a founding network partner and helped define the Residency for Residencies Program. As a founding network partner, BTR contributes important learnings and other support to emerging partner programs.