New Jersey is the first East Coast state to launch the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship, a teaching program aimed at recruiting and training recent grads and career changers with backgrounds in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) into secondary science and math classrooms.
NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider sat down with Dr. Arthur Levine, President of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, to discuss the program’s mission and strategy in New Jersey.
WATCH VIDEO:
According to Levine, 60 percent of their recruits are made up of career changers, motivated by idealism and changing priorities. “A lot of these people, they’ve begun paying of the mortgage their kids are either in college or out of college,” he said.
In New Jersey, five universities were selected to participate in the program: Rutgers-Camden, Rowan University, College of New Jersey, Montclair State University and William Paterson University.
Levine said, “All of those are universities of such quality that we really believe that they’re going to create what amount to world class STEM programs that we’re going to need to produce a new generation of teachers.”
One hundred eighty teachers will be recruited to fill vacancies in the 12 Abbott school district, says Levine. All the recruits will possess an undergraduate degree in a STEM field
“We’re offering them a one-year masters program which is very heavy on in-school teaching clinical experience and what we’re doing is saying ‘look, you got the content, we’re going to teach you how to teach it.'”
The program’s goal is to place the fellows in high-needs school districts like Newark, New Brunswick, Trenton, Camden, Orange, Paterson.
“We’re talking about districts in which achievement tends to be low and in which graduation rates tend to be low, in which poverty is high,” said Levine.
But he makes a clear distinction between a school that is high needs and one that is dysfunctional, saying the program will steer clear of the latter.
“There’s a difference between a dysfunctional school and a lower performing school,” he said. “We’re looking for a leader who can actually move a school forward and we’ll provide the teachers who can help that leader do it.”
One school district that may fit those qualifications is Newark. According to Levine, “Newark has a very strong leader right now and Newark’s one of those cities that the whole nation is looking at right now in terms of the problems and the performance.”
The ultimate measure of success, says Levine, is the rise of student achievement and when of the first 104 teachers placed, 103 are still teaching after three years.