It is not news that the country is facing drastic teacher shortages, given the well-documented decrease in teachers entering the workforce and increase in teachers leaving the profession. School leaders and educators everywhere have been grappling with how to reverse this trend and create accessible and affordable teacher education opportunities that attract aspiring teachers and equip them with the skills to stay and thrive in education.
At the University Child Development School (WA), we believe that successful, sustainable teacher training is based on immersive practicum experiences, building reflective practice skills, and understanding how school culture impacts student success, and we are uniquely committed to teaching children and training teachers.
For the past 30 years, our school leaders have been thinking earnestly about teacher education, specifically about how we might lean into our unique roots as a nursery school on the University of Washington campus. In 1996, we created a Resident Teacher Immersion program. To date, more than 300 early career teachers have completed our yearlong immersion program, and in 2020, we expanded our teacher training and opened the University Child Development School (UCDS) Graduate School of Education (GSE). In 2023, we added a Teaching Fellowship Program.
We want children beyond our walls to be at the center of excellent teaching. We want to help restore the pipeline of excellent teachers. At UCDS, through our robust training, academic, and fellowship offerings, we're helping to prepare educators who can teach the next generation.
Resident Teacher Immersion
Resident teachers come to UCDS with a range of experiences—from teachers with a few years of classroom teaching to individuals who are just starting to think about exploring classroom teaching as a profession. They typically spend one school year at UCDS and experience the “full teaching life” of an educator. Resident teachers collaboratively plan curriculum with their grade-level team, work one-on-one with students, and lead small groups, such as literature circles or math groups. They also facilitate whole-class discussions and develop skills to communicate with families.
Their “beginner’s mind” questions challenge our model, and we find that as we teach new teachers, we more deeply understand our practices. The program has solidified professional reflection and inquiry as core teaching values at our school.
GSE and Teaching Fellowship Program
Building the graduate school was years in the making: the board’s strategic planning, an iterative program and course development process involving multiple educational leaders, and obtaining authorization from Washington state. We reversed the traditional lab school model—instead of placing a child development center within a university, as was our origin, we embedded a university within our practicing schools for children. The GSE emphasizes the teacher’s role as a designer and leader, the child’s individuality as a learner, and the vital importance of a shared learning culture in effective schools.
In two years, students can earn an M.Ed. through in-person, cohort-based courses, with each class including a practicum component that connects theory to practice. In these courses, we make the ways teachers are actively learning about students and their learning processes visible. Through dialogue and reflection, we model for our graduate students how we are figuring it out, how we are making each lesson more engaging than the last. Graduate students practice at UCDS and other independent schools in the Seattle area, and faculty includes experienced teachers and administrators from both public and independent schools in the Puget Sound area. This mixing of school cultures and varied approaches to curriculum design and instruction results in incredible opportunities to learn from one another.
In another milestone for teacher training, in 2023, UCDS launched the Teaching Fellowship Program to provide graduate students the chance to serve a school community while enhancing their knowledge and skills. Participants receive wages, benefits, and full tuition for the graduate program. The Teaching Fellowship has made teacher training and graduate study more accessible and effective, helping to train more teacher leaders.
Impact and Outcomes
Feedback through periodic surveys of alum of our programs is overwhelmingly positive, and many share that the experience allowed them to gain skills in collaborative teaching, culturally responsive teaching, classroom management, and curriculum design. A recent survey of previous resident teachers showed that 82% have remained in the education field. We continue to measure the impact of our programs through ongoing course, program, and postgraduate surveys.
One of the most impactful experiences during the graduate program is the yearlong capstone action research project. For example, one of our first graduate students, Mackenzie Hasenauer, a first and second grade teacher, designed a curriculum to provide students’ targeted practice in oracy (communication and discourse skills). She integrated these skills throughout her teaching: using sentence stems to foster social-emotional awareness as well as communication and growth; providing color-coded “talking chips” to help students track their participation in discussions; and facilitating conversations that highlighted the many ways students can engage in discourse.
Her students paid attention to when and how often they asked questions, expressed agreement or respectful disagreement, built upon ideas, or contributed as idea generators. They also discussed listening, sharing space, what to do if they are introverted or shy, and how body language influences participation. In later years, the entire first and second grade UCDS teaching team adopted, expanded, and enriched this curriculum. “Teachers took what I’d tried and found, adjusted it, individualized, and just got creative,” Hasenauer recalls. “It’s exciting! We’re a learning school.”
Fostering a Culture of Learning
Hosting a GSE on our campus helps facilitate a culture of inquiry for children in our schools. When teachers are learning, students are learning. We find that our resident teachers and teaching fellows stimulate professional inquiry and strengthen curricula within their schools. When our experienced teachers lead a course for our graduate program, they are also learning new pedagogy and staying current in educational research.
Every year, the school leaders at UCDS meet educators and visit schools of various shapes and sizes that are taking similar bold approaches to the future of teaching. The commonality we have found is their embrace of learning as part of the work of great teaching.
We believe that the future success of teaching, learning, and schools is interconnected and in constant dialogue with one another. Our mission is not simply to teach children or teachers, but to design a culture of inquiry. We hook new teachers into the dynamic practice of great teaching by nurturing a school that stays curious about what quality teaching looks like, what it can become, and how we can attract and retain more professionals in education.