LOS ANGELES - Camino Nuevo Charter Academy is pleased to announce that it has received a Teacher Residency Capacity Grant of $140,000 from California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC). The grant is intended to support the collaborative partnership between a Consortium of Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) that includes STEM Prep and Para Los Niños, partnering with a Commission approved teacher preparation program offered by an accredited institution of higher education (IHE) in Loyola Marymount University, to expand, strengthen, improve access to, or create teacher residency programs.
According to Adriana Abich, CEO of Camino Nuevo Charter Academy,
“This grant will make it possible to connect more teachers of color with students who can see themselves in their educators, leading to positive academic outcomes.”
Through this grant, Camino Nuevo Charter Academy will be part of a collaborative process to create new pipelines to teacher diversity. This is an investment towards preparing diverse teachers of color for career pathways to in-demand fields, including special education, STEM, and bilingual education programs. United by common missions and a vision of a world where all students are prepared to lead their communities, Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, STEM Prep Schools, Para Los Niños, and Loyola Marymount University are partnering together to expand, diversify, and strengthen a pipeline of teacher development in Los Angeles to ensure that students have access to classrooms led by teachers who represent their own backgrounds and experiences.
About the Residency Project
This grant will be used towards a residency project that infuses a high-quality, teacher residency program led by LMU with community-driven and culturally responsive pedagogy strategies led by our consortium, with the end goal of preparing a cohort of teachers to lead classrooms in high-need, urban classrooms in Central Los Angeles.
This residency is designed to recruit classified staff from our three networks who have the desire to move into the classroom, but for whatever reason have lacked the resources or support to do so in the past. These are staff who represent the students we serve and have spent time embedded within our networks, giving them a deeper understanding of the context our classrooms are situated in. In many cases, these staff even come from the very communities we serve or are alumni of our networks themselves. Our vision is that this program embodies what each of our networks are committed to teaching our students: that our schools are dedicated to preparing our students not just to be successful academically, but to be social justice leaders who are prepared to return to their communities to create sustainable change.
In addition to creating a new pool of qualified, diverse teacher candidates through this program, our project also creates a new retention and growth opportunity for existing teachers by giving them the chance to serve as Mentor Teachers for future residents. Mentor Teachers have the opportunity to serve as experts in their content area or grade level as they coach, support, and prepare new teachers to serve in our classrooms. In doing this work, they will also benefit from additional professional development and coaching that prepares them to take that next step as a Mentor Teacher. We see our project, then, as serving as both a recruitment and a retention mechanism for our consortium and a strong answer for the teacher workforce needs that our networks and schools across the country are currently facing.
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To learn more, contact [email protected]