Urban Teachers
Model & Strategy
Built on a foundation of accountability, rigor and practical application, Urban Teachers seeks to close the achievement gap by preparing and placing highly effective teachers in our nation’s neediest urban classrooms. Candidates chosen through a competitive selection process commit to a 4-year training program developed by education experts from across the nation. They emerge with hands-on classroom experience, certification, and a dual masters degree in general and special education.
Coursework and practicums mentored by partner classroom teachers are relevant and highly applicable. There is emphasis on effective delivery of literacy and math curriculum. Training also covers assessment and diagnosis of learning challenges and methods to address them. Urban Teachers maintains its high standards through detailed achievement metrics and bases teacher success on measurable student progress. By cultivating dedicated, expert teachers, Urban Teachers is transforming learning and expanding possibilities for America’s most underserved students.
Christina Hall started her work as an advocate for disadvantaged youth as an attorney in the Boston Juvenile Court and at the Department of Social Services for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Motivated by a desire to intervene earlier in the lives of the youth she advocated for, Christina earned a masters degree in education and began to focus her practice on inequities in urban public schools. Christina has served as a public high school teacher and as a program officer in Boston and Baltimore. Prior to launching Urban Teachers, Christina focused on policy and practice inequities and improving instructional practice in the Baltimore City Public Schools as the chief of staff for the Chief Academic Officer. In this role she oversaw 200 schools and an $800M operating budget.
Prior to launching Urban Teachers, Jennifer Green was the Director of Curriculum and Instruction for Baltimore City’s public high schools; in this role she observed first-hand the disparity in the quality of teaching from classroom to classroom. Jennifer served as the Director for High School Reform for the Fund for Educational Excellence, where she managed a $21 million budget financed by The Gates Foundation and other local foundations. In 2004 Jennifer was named by the Baltimore Business Journal as one of Baltimore City’s “Top 40 under 40.”
IMPACT
Since 2009, Urban Teachers has welcomed nearly 1,550 residents to Baltimore City, Washington, DC, and Dallas/Fort Worth, reaching 175,000 students in those cities.
Urban Teachers is now the single largest provider in Washington, DC, and Baltimore of novice elementary, secondary math, and secondary English teachers. In those sites, their resident class for 2019 is more than double the size of the 2016 cohort.
Urban Teachers is bringing much-needed diversity to urban classrooms— 67% of their most recent cohort identifies as people of color. Through the recently launched $25M Black Educators Initiative, Urban Teachers will place 1,000 Black educators in high-need schools in our partnering school districts by 2023.
Urban Teachers News
-
Hospitals Want to Reduce Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in HealthThe COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic crisis have shed light on the enormous disparities in health and social well-being in this country, particularly those…Aug 2020 -
Urban Teachers Gets $1.5 Million GrantUrban Teachers recently received a $1.5 million grant from the Caruth Foundation, the largest amount it has received from a single donor in the Dallas area.…Jan 2017 -
Urban Teachers Featured in The Atlantic for Their Innovative Teacher Residency ProgramThe Urban Teachers residency program in D.C. is one of many new alternative routes to becoming a teacher that have sprung up as education schools…Apr 2016 -
Urban Teachers and Blue Engine in WSJ Supporting Coalition of Teacher-Preparation GroupsUrban Teachers and Blue Engine joined Teach for America and six additional alternative-certification programs to propose rules by the U.S. Education Department, intended to weed…Feb 2015
