MTR's mission is to create unusually effective rookie teachers. To do this, we provide one year of incredibly intense teacher training for recent college graduates, alongside the MatchCorps experience. We then help our "residents" to find teaching positions, primarily in high-need urban charter schools. As residents begin their first year in their own classrooms, MTR provides support and coaching.
What sets MTR apart from other teacher prep programs?
We are preparing teachers specifically for high-poverty charter schools with a track record of academic success.
We have a very particular approach to teaching, which includes: building one-on-one relationships with kids and parents, leveraging relationships to get high effort and low misbehavior from students, maintaining a disciplined class environment, enforcing rules consistently, holding students to high academic expectations, and planning straight-forward lessons that put lots of work on students without a lot of flash.
We do practice-based training, like sports coaches and piano teachers. We'll show you a discrete set of "teacher moves" and then have you practice them over and over until you get them right.
We are prescriptive. There are thousands of ways to run a class. We teach you just a few that we think are right for rookie teachers.
MTR is no different from the MATCH Corps (our full-time tutoring program) from Monday to Thursday. However, unlike MATCH Corps, MTRs want to go on to become full-time teachers in high-poverty, "No Excuses" charter schools. So on Fridays and Saturdays, MTRs learn about the nuts and bolts of teaching, get hundreds of hours of practice, and receive high doses of expert coaching.
The MATCH Corps tutoring experience is the foundation of learning for the teacher training. MTR builds on the several hundred hours of 1-on-1 tutoring that each trainee does as part of MATCH Corps. We believe this allows trainees to develop some intuitive understanding of "how kids learn" by separating out all of the complexities introduced when teaching 20 or more students at once. In particular, experiencing hard-won success with challenging students allows each trainee to "conclude" that all kids can learn to high levels, rather than simply being asked to repeat that notion as a mantra.
We obsess over data and accountability. Our trainees evaluate every hour of training all year, providing the coaching team with a feedback loop that allows us to constantly improve. Ultimately, we evaluate our training by measuring the success of teachers in their first year on the job (i.e., the gain over baseline of all their students in math and English exams).
MTR graduates are responsible for paying $4,000 of tuition retroactively if and only if they successfully graduate from the program with a first-year teaching position waiting. We collect tuition on an installment plan, once graduates start receiving their paychecks as first year teachers (4 total payments of $1,000 each, spread out across two years of teaching).If a Resident doesn't complete MTR, or if we fail to land them a teaching job before they graduate, they owe us no tuition. (The other $16,000 per person cost of training each resident is paid for by donors and the schools which hire our alums).
How does MTR fit into the MATCH Corps experience?
From Monday through Thursday, MTR residents are full-time tutors in the MATCH Corps, with no extra responsibilities. The MATCH Corps tutoring experience is the foundation of learning for MTR residents; we believe it allows residents to develop intuitive understanding of "how kids learn" by separating out all the complexities introduced when teaching a full classroom of students. Experiencing hard-won success with challenging students also allows each resident to see firsthand that all kids can learn at high levels.
On Fridays and Saturdays, MTR residents participate in teacher training all day, separate from their MATCH Corps colleagues (about half the MATCH Corps is in MTR; the other half is not).
What is the year of training like?
There are Six Phases of our program.
Phase 1, in September and October, is a series of college-like classes. The curriculum includes classes on classroom management, building relationships with students and parents, instructional methods, subject-specific methods (ie How to Teach Math or How to Teach English), and working with data. These classes are taught by full-time MTR staff and by outstanding teachers and leaders in the Boston charter community.
In the clip below, Will Austin, Managing Director of Uncommon Schools – Boston, teaches a Math Teaching Methods class. He demonstrates a mini-lesson on probability and then leads the residents through a debrief of why and how he taught the way he did.
Phase 2, in November, December, and early January, is simulated classroom teaching. A group of residents take turns teaching short lessons to one another, with a coach watching. As one resident teaches, the others act as students. They answer questions (sometimes correctly, sometimes not), try to pay attention (but sometimes fail), sometimes misbehave intentionally, and do other things that students tend to do. The coach in the room then gives the teacher feedback on the lesson and how the teacher handled various student situations that arose.
In the clip below, resident Veronica Gentile works with her coach on improving her ability to "scan" for student misbehaviors.
Sometimes coaches also run "teaching drills" to help residents focus on a specific aspect of their teaching, much like a basketball coach might running a dribbling drill or a passing drill. In the video below, resident Madhulikha Muppidi runs through a drill designed to increase the speed and accuracy with which she can identify and respond to student misbehavior. The other voices you hear in the video are Madhulikha's 2 instructional coaches, exceptional teachers in their own right with significant experience in No Excuses teaching.
Phase 3 of the program, which runs from late January through May, is spring student teaching. In this phase, residents teach small groups of students on Fridays and Saturdays at MCD, MATCH Middle School, MATCH High School, and other charter schools in the area who partner with us. Each day, residents are observed by a coach and given feedback on their teaching.
Phase 4 runs in the month of June, and focuses on long-term and unit planning, specifically for summer school classes that residents teach in the month of July.
Phase 5 is summer school student teaching, and runs Monday-Friday throughout the month of July. In this phase, residents teach larger classes of students at MATCH or at a partner site. As in spring student teaching, residents are observed each day of teaching and given feedback on their performance.
In the clip below, Rhiannon Riley coaches resident Maura Mathieu on how to improve student participation in her summer school lessons.
Phase 6 is the resident's first year of teaching in his or her own classroom. Here MTR is able to offer varying levels of support, based on what each resident needs.
Does MTR work?
Yes-- check out this study to see how MTR trained teachers tend to outperform other rookie (and second year) teachers: Evaluation of MTR
We seek a diverse workforce. MATCH is an Equal Opportunity Employer. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, MATCH is committed to equal opportunity to staff and applicants in all areas of employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status, or any other area protected by federal, state or local law. MATCH is committed to making any reasonable accommodation necessary to support an individual's employment and service.
