Teachers for Chicago: Ensuring Urban Teachers with Class.

Mr. Gallegos describes a program designed to select, train, and retain talented and dedicated teachers for the Chicago Public Schools. The pathway to a teaching career in a large urban school system is usually a straight road. Beginning with some student teaching, graduation from an institution that provides courses in education, and brief stops to pick up certification credentials and an employment application, a prospective teacher's journey ends with his or her arrival in a school for assignment to a classroom. However, for many novice teachers a teaching career in an urban school system is itself just a way station. Faced with such day-to-day challenges as motivating students with a daunting range of academic skills, language abilities, and talents; maintaining student discipline and enforcing school rules; ensuring student safety; providing cultural and social experiences to compensate for deficits in some students' backgrounds; coping with the frustrations of record-keeping, progress reports, and paperwork; and struggling to obtain the necessary resources and supplies, many new teachers in urban schools begin to plan their escape - to nonteaching careers or to teaching or administrative positions in suburban school systems. Teachers for Chicago is a program created to address the need to select, train, and retain talented and dedicated newcomers for urban schools. The program was conceived as a teacher preparation program that would combine robust academic preparation, an internship, the support of experienced mentors, and employment incentives. Teachers for Chicago was designed by a collaborative group made up of representatives of the Chicago Public Schools, the Chicago Teachers Union, the Council of Chicago Area Deans of Education (including staff members of nine public and private colleges and universities in the Chicago metropolitan area), and the Golden Apple Foundation for Excellence in Teaching. The goal was to develop a plan to increase the pool of effective, professionally oriented teachers available to the Chicago schools through a program of recruitment, education, and on-site training. The goals of the program are: * to attract teacher candidates of high quality and culturally diverse backgrounds to the Chicago Public Schools, especially in areas of teacher shortage, such as mathematics, science, and bilingual and special education; * to ensure that teacher candidates gain the knowledge, skills, experience, and credentials needed to be successful career teachers in an urban public school setting; and * to provide incentives and support that will encourage these teacher candidates to remain in the Chicago Public Schools. Teachers for Chicago is a graduate-level teacher preparation program. Candidates must hold at least a bachelor's degree, must complete an application, and must undergo a rigorous interview process to demonstrate their strong commitment to teaching. Those applicants who are selected by a review committee register in a graduate education program at one of nine cooperating colleges and universities. They attend part-time classes during their first summer in the program. After a summer of coursework, they begin a two-year internship in the Chicago Public Schools, where they work under the guidance of experienced teachers who serve as mentors. The interns fill vacant teaching positions in the schools (including their mentor's usual classroom assignment), and they are fully responsible for the academic progress of the students assigned to them. During the first two years of internship and three consecutive summers, the interns complete coursework to meet the state requirements for teacher certification and to earn a master's degree in education. They receive a salary and health benefits for their teaching, as well as a stipend to cover tuition for their university coursework. Moreover, upon completion of the program, they are guaranteed a full-time teaching position in the Chicago Public Schools for at least two years. …