This project sounds really good!  Building on the expertise of practicing teachers is an excellent plan, for all teachers, not just those working with urban schools.  I look forward to hearing more about the project's progress.

Larry, Thank you! Although we are in our first year, our Master Teaching Fellows have had many experiences. This summer, they will engage in research labs at SDSU, and the MTFs are excited about this next experience!

Thanks Anne, 

Our partnerships really allow us to offer many opportunities to our Fellows.  -Donna

Thanks, Katie! We are excited about the opportunity to spend 4 more years with them! They are an incredible group!

Agreed! Learning how to support colleagues can be tricky, and so we are grateful to the National Center for Urban School Transformation for supporting the work.

Yes, the National Center for Urban School Transformation has been a valuable partner in the work! Our project is a Noyce Fellow (rather than scholars) so these teachers were selected as having some expertise and significant experience in the classroom which allows for interesting conversations across the K-12 trajectory.  I suspect it would be different (and more difficult) if they were preservice teachers! 

Thank you for clarifying the fellows versus scholars aspect -- that makes much more sense as you describe the difference.  

I agree with Meredith's comment that the expertise of all of the Master Teaching Fellows has likely influenced the kinds of participation and discussion among the MTFs. Because our Fellows recognize the strengths and contributions of one another, the differing grade levels of the teachers has not been as prominent an issue as we might have expected. If these were novice teachers, I agree that we would have to think differently about the different grade levels. Great question. Thank you!

Yes!! It makes for some really interesting conversations that might not happen if we did not have teachers working across the grade spans! 

I am also interested to hear more about this--how you are defining and supporting leadership capacity.

Hi Catherine and Caroline, 

Thank you so much for your interest in our project.  We strive to define leadership broadly.  Although some of our Fellows may move into administration, we hope to retain many of them in the classrooms to serve the needs of our local children.  To that aim, we provide as many opportunities as possible for them to consider how to be leaders while still teaching.  The list is too long to include everything, but here are a few of the opportunities which include shadowing an educational leader for 45 hours to identify effective leadership traits, analyzing the components of effective PD, developing and presenting professional development workshops, mentoring new teachers, leading PLCs at their own sites, networking with other educators across the state, sharing current research with fellow teachers, etc... They are already doing amazing things!

Lance, great question! We are fortunate to begin our work with experienced and effective K-12 teachers of mathematics and science, and so although our Master Teaching Fellows are always focused on improving their own practice, our project is designed to prepare them to support their colleagues, especially at their school site. For this kind of work, our work with NCUST (and their related research (see Johnson, Uline, and Perez, 2017 and 2019) has grounded the support provided, by providing lenses for school-wide improvement.

Hi Jill, Thanks for your question! Our collaboration with the National Center for Urban School Transformation (and its related research, see Johnson, Uline, and Perez, 2017 and 2019) has grounded the support we have provided, by providing lenses for school-wide improvement. In addition, our external evaluators, West Ed, have provided STEM leadership instruments that we are using to help us gauge our success and improve our support for our MTFs. We are also finding that work on Professional Noticing of Students' Content-Specific Ideas (e.g., Jacobs, Lamb & Phillip, 2010; LaRochelle, Nickerson, Lamb, Hawthorne, Philipp, & Ross, D.L., 2019) supports STEM leaders to support their teachers, because professional noticing is grounded in STEM teachers' classroom practices. We are hopeful that the integration of the research from NCUST and our focus on STEM practices will extend the knowledge base around STEM leadership. Thank you again for your comment!

Stephen, we are delighted that you were willing to share your experiences about your work in the Noyce Master Teaching Fellowship with the community! Looking forward to learning alongside you!

While they are all working and learning together, the fellows each applied to the program with a focus on math or science and are expected to focus on their particular grade band (so middle school science, for example). All of the fellows are full-time classroom teachers.  Some fellows hold additional leadership responsibilities such as leading a department or professional learning community.

Hi Jonee, Many thanks for your question! We agree that we need to have a shared lens beforehand, and we have really appreciated the focus from the National Center for Urban School Transformation (NCUST) on helping our Master Teaching Fellows to understand eight teaching (and related leadership) practices that they found especially support students' learning. Before visiting classrooms, NCUST leaders engage teachers in professional learning by discussing those practices from Johnson, Uline, & Perez (2017 & 2019) in Teaching Practices from America's Best Urban Schools, and Leadership in America's Best Urban Schools. Then, during visits, they hone in just one or two of the practices, and use the visits to identify what the practices are as well as what they are not. We are fortunate, too, that in this project we are working with committed, experienced, and effective teachers of mathematics and science, so our starting point is different than it is when we work with our preservice teachers. Thank you again for the question and for your sharing!

Sonia, Thank you so much! Great idea to consider a library of material and how we might share with others. We will make that a topic of one of our next leadership meetings. Thank you for the suggestion!

Yay! :)))