{"id":5002,"date":"2009-10-08T07:00:30","date_gmt":"2009-10-08T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=5002"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:40:38","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:40:38","slug":"neag-school-helps-hartford-area-high-school-students-prepare-for-future-teaching-careers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2009\/10\/neag-school-helps-hartford-area-high-school-students-prepare-for-future-teaching-careers\/","title":{"rendered":"Neag School Helps Hartford-Area High School Students Prepare for Future Teaching Careers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Veteran<\/a>
Veteran teacher Kerry Swistro, right, speaks with other teachers at Hartford's Bulkeley High School about the school's new Teacher Preparatory Academy, as Rene Roselle, second from right, an assistant clinical professor in the Neag School of Education, listens. Photo by Robert A. Frahm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The path to a teaching career usually begins in college, but the University of Connecticut is helping to design an unusual teacher training program aimed at high school students.<\/p>\n

UConn\u2019s Neag School of Education is developing coursework at Hartford\u2019s Bulkeley High School for a new Teacher Preparatory Academy that officials hope will encourage more students, especially those from minority groups, to become teachers.<\/p>\n

The academy, believed to be one of the only programs of its kind in the nation, will open this fall at Bulkeley, where more than 90 percent of the students are black or Hispanic.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re modeling this after UConn\u2019s teacher preparation program, \u2026 modifying it to fit a high school academy,\u201d says Rene Roselle, a clinical professor in Neag\u2019s Department of Teacher Education and a liaison to Bulkeley.<\/p>\n

UConn helped design the new academy along with other higher education partners, including Eastern Connecticut State University, the University of Hartford, Saint Joseph College, and Capital Community College.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen school administrators approached us to help with the design of the new academy, we jumped at the chance,\u201d says Marijke Kehrhahn, associate dean of the Neag School, who has been director of Neag\u2019s teacher education programs for five years.<\/p>\n

Officials hope to attract more students into a profession that has had difficulty recruiting minority applicants.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my biggest frustrations is there is a huge shortage of minority teachers,\u201d says Kerry Swistro, a veteran Bulkeley teacher who will help run the new academy. \u201cOur goal here is to grow our own. \u2026 It would be great to have them come back to teach here in Hartford.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Connecticut, members of minority groups make up more than one-third of public school students but only 7 percent of public school teachers, state figures show. The figure for teachers is closer to 25 percent in urban districts such as Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven, but it is still well below the proportion of minority students in those districts.<\/p>\n

Despite these shortages, minority students account for only about 10 percent of the enrollment in teacher preparation programs across Connecticut \u2013 a figure that has remained unchanged for the past decade, according to a report presented to the legislature last year by the state\u2019s regional education service centers.<\/p>\n

In addition to a shortage of minority teachers, schools in Connecticut also face shortages of teachers in specific subject areas such as mathematics, science, and special education, according to state reports.<\/p>\n

The new academy at Bulkeley \u201cis a cutting-edge, novel way to address local, national, and state shortages,\u201d says Roselle.<\/p>\n

As more students from underrepresented groups such as African-Americans and Hispanics enter careers in education, she says, \u201cthe end result is it will change the face of teaching so that more students can identify with the teachers they have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seventeen-year-old Jonathan Reyes, a Bulkeley junior, is one of about 75 students in the academy\u2019s first class. Reyes, who is Puerto Rican, says he became enthused about a teaching career after spending a week at a summer orientation program for the academy.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, I thought teaching was an OK job, but I learned teaching was more than that \u2013 a way to reach out to people, inspire them,\u201d says Reyes, who mentioned English and art as subjects he\u2019d like to teach. \u201cI deeply love English. I love poetry, all that stuff. It\u2019s a passion for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds, \u201cI want to mold people into believing they can go to college.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Teacher Preparatory Academy is one of several academies already under way or in planning as part of the Hartford Public Schools \u201cAll Choice\u201d program. The academies focus on career themes such as engineering, nursing, law, journalism, and culinary arts. They are designed to offer rigorous coursework and prepare students for college.<\/p>\n

At Bulkeley, students in the teacher preparatory academy will take academically challenging courses, take part in teaching experiences such as tutoring and mentoring, and be able to earn college credits or attend seminars at area colleges and universities, Roselle says.<\/p>\n

Along with standard academic courses such as English, history, and math, students will take education courses such as \u201cTechnology in the Classroom\u201d and \u201cHuman Growth and Development.\u201d In addition, teachers at the academy will design specialized elective courses modeling exemplary teaching approaches around themes such as public speaking, science fairs, or art.<\/p>\n

Roselle says the academy eventually will expand to enroll about 200 high school juniors and seniors, increasing the pool of prospective applicants for college-level teacher training programs. In its mission statement, the academy pledges to make students \u201ccompetitive candidates for seats and scholarships at high-ranking colleges and universities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think these students from Bulkeley are going to be highly sought after,\u201d Roselle says, adding that colleges and universities that are looking to enroll aspiring teachers, \u201care going to know about Bulkeley.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UConn educators are helping establish a teacher preparatory academy at Bulkeley High School.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-5002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 04:37:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5002"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37262,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002\/revisions\/37262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5002"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=5002"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}