Capital Excellence: Recruiting, Preparing and Retaining Talented Urban Teachers - A U.S. Department of Education Transition to Teaching Grant

Capital Excellence is a partnership among key stakeholders in teacher education in the District of Columbia. The goal of Capital Excellece is to recruit, prepare and retain highly qualified teachers in high needs areas in the District of Columbia public and public charter schools. Through Capital Excellence we are able to provide new teachers with the opportunity to gain initial licensure while being supported by supervising clinical faculty and a peer-to-peer mentoring model – “Learning Circles.”

You will need Adobe Acobat Reader in order to download the application. If you do not have Adobe Acobat Reader on your computer, you may download it free of charge.

University Coursework

Currently we are recruiting DCPS & DC Public Charter School Teachers for the Spring 2009 Early Childhood Education program:

Graduate Certificate in Teaching: Early Childhood Education
Capital Excellence program participants will be required to satisfactorily complete eight three-credit graduate courses for standard licensure through the American University School of Education, Teaching & Health. The eight courses included in the Capital Excellence Early Childhood program of study have been approved by the DCPS Educational Credentialing and Standards Office for alternative certification. These courses include:

1. Foundations of Education
2. Effective Teaching for Diverse Learners
3. Theories of Educational Psychology and Human Development
4. Children’s Literature: A Critical Literacy Approach
5. Topics in Literacy Education: Theoretical Models and Methods for Early Childhood Education Across the Curriculum
6. Topics in Literacy Education: Literacy, Technology and the Arts in Early Childhood Education
7. Advocacy and Leadership in Early Childhood Education
8. Social Science Research: Teacher Research

The courses required for certification will be scheduled to accommodate the professional requirements of working teachers. Please see the financial support section for a breakdown of when courses will be held throughout the two-year program. Summer courses will be scheduled to conclude by the beginning of August.

Praxis I and Praxis II
In order to qualify for a standard license, Capital Excellence program participants will be required to pass both the Praxis I and Praxis II tests. Passing scores on the Praxis I tests are required for acceptance into the program. Passing scores on the Praxis II content area test are also required before acceptance into the program. For more information about which specific test to take, please to our website - www.american.edu/cas/seth/praxis.cfm or contact Karen DiGiovanni, Director of Teacher Education, at 202-885-3727 or by e-mail at digiovanni@american.edu. Passing scores on the Praxis II pedagogy test are required before completion of the program.

Learning Circles – Peer-to-Peer Mentoring
Teacher participants will be required to join learning circles as part of their methods coursework. The learning circles will create small, school-based communities of educators who collaborate regularly to improve their practice in order to improve student achievement. The learning circles will be guided by American University faculty, and members will include Capital Excellence new teacher participants as well as master teachers from the same schools. Members of the circles will have the opportunity to work together to study specific topics in related content areas and to bring student work, teacher work, and professional literature to meetings for focused analysis and feedback.

Teaching Portfolio
In addition to university coursework, teacher participants will develop a teaching portfolio through the School of Education, Teaching & Health’s electronic portfolio system. Beginning their first semester, teacher participants will collect work they do in their courses and classrooms in this electronic portfolio. These collected artifacts such as assignments, exemplary student work, summaries of standardized test scores, assessments they create, art, videotape, photographs, etc. will be used by teacher participants to document their increasing capabilities as teachers. The portfolio will represent their competency and provide evidence of their growth toward beginning teacher performance standards set forth by the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC). As a cumulating assignment and since teacher participants are teaching while preparing for initial licensure, Capital Excellence participants will create a showcase portfolio that will be used to assess their performance as teachers in lieu of “student teaching.”

Master’s Program
Teacher participants are eligible to transfer credits earned through their participation in the Capital Excellence program to the American University School of Education, Teaching & Health Master of Arts in Teaching: Secondary Education degree program. In order to enter the M.A.T program, Capital Excellence participants will be required to meet the university’s minimum requirements for graduate admission. Three additional courses will be required to complete the M.A.T.

Clinical Faculty Supervision

Capital Excellence program participants will be provided with on-site supervision by American University School of Education, Teaching & Health clinical faculty selected to observe, provide guidance, and assist participants in the development of teaching competencies. Clinical faculty members will work one-on-one with participants making on-site visits every month of the school year during the participants’ first year of the program. Clinical faculty will provide Capital Excellence participants with critical assessments of their teaching effectiveness and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their teaching strategies as well as present them with recommendations for improvement. Clinical faculty will begin the process of building portfolios with the participants and will review the participants’ progress as recorded in their portfolios.

Financial Support

A combination of grant funding, other program resources, and funding from American University is available to assist program participants in defraying the cost of graduate tuition. Program participants receive $5,000.00 over two years through a U.S. Department of Education grant, which will pay for approximately 20% of participants' tuition for graduate level courses at American University. In return for this financial support, the U.S. Department of Education requires that program participants commit to teach at least 3 years in a high needs school (as defined by the U.S. Department of Education). The two years that program participants spend in the AU licensure program count towards this 3-year commitment.

In addition to U.S. Department of Education funding, Capital Excellence program participants also receive generous tuition support from American University. As a result of this combination of financial support, the portion of the tuition that remains for participants to pay is generally no more than 33% of the total cost of graduate tuition. Participants will be eligible for financial aid to finance their portion of tuition. This financial burden may be minimized through the increases in pay steps that accompany advanced academic work in the DCPS pay structure. The following is the estimated student cost per semester for the Capital Excellence program.

Teaching Commitment

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION PROGRAM:

Spring 2009 - Courses begin January 12, 2009

This program was made possible by a generous grant from the United States Department of Education’s 2008 Transition to Teaching Grant Program - grant award # U350A070037