Residency Design Academy
With NCTR's help, you'll understand and work towards implementing a high-quality teacher residency in your community.
Teacher residencies are the most comprehensive model of teacher preparation in the nation. New teacher residencies play a critical role in recruiting candidates of color to the profession and in improving district and university goals around teacher diversity, impact, and innovation.
Nationally Known Program for Developing Teacher Residencies
The Residency Design Academy (RDA, formerly known as New Site Development) is NCTR’s nationally known program to build, scale, and sustain a high-quality teacher residency program, “soup to nuts.” It’s the national technical assistance program for developing highly effective residency programs. NCTR partners are among the most recognized in the nation.
Residency Design Academy members gain access to the NCTR RDA curriculum and programming designed to:
- Build shared vision: Programs will identify the needs of their local community and design the teacher residency to address teacher shortages, diversity, quality, and retention.
- Build efficacy: NCTR research curriculum, technical assistance, consulting, and evaluation provides scaffolds to ensure that design teams achieve their vision.
- Build a movement: As RDA programs pivot from design to launch, new teacher residencies will join a Network of NCTR partner residencies committed to advancing the teacher residency model.
Programming Overview
Consulting (Monthly)
NCTR consultants meet monthly with program leadership to provide framing for upcoming sessions and gather understanding of program context. Participants will surface challenges, collaboratively address dilemmas with input from expert and experienced consultants, and leverage the teacher residency model and wealth of NCTR data to apply learning in service of impact goals.
Technical Assistance (Monthly institutes with related consulting)
Programs will receive NCTR’s curated curriculum, which includes readings, promising practices from NCTR Network partners, informational videos, collaborative exercises, and more. The curriculum is delivered via consulting and during monthly learning institutes facilitated by NCTR consultants.
The customized learning progression of institutes includes consulting on foundational elements of the teacher residency model:
- Partnering and Designing for Equity
- Residency Leadership
- Residency Year Experience
- Financial Sustainability
- Resident Recruitment and Selection
- Mentor Recruitment, Selection and Support
- Training Site Recruitment, Selection and Support
- Graduate Support
Site Visit
The Site Visit is an annual, facilitated visit to a Network residency in which partners observe and reflect on promising practices and implementation of the teacher residency model.
Evaluation Suite
NCTR collects:
- Annual data as an ongoing record of program growth. NCTR provides access to visualization and analytics from survey data, including comparisons to Network averages, which can be used to show programs’ collective and individual impact.
- Annual surveys of programs’ stakeholders, including mentors, residents, principals, and graduates, then collects the data, presents visualizations, and supports goal-setting related to program effectiveness and teacher resident preparedness.
- NCTR’s policy and advocacy team engages lawmakers, foundations, and other education policymakers with a focus on advocacy efforts to sustain and scale the teacher residency model.
Community Learning Experiences
Virtual professional working groups facilitated by NCTR staff with the goal of deepening and sustaining the complex work of all teacher residency staff. These groups will culminate in webinars, which are workshops focused on application of knowledge from working group experiences.
Tailored Consulting
NCTR offers tailored consulting to teacher residencies to meet the unique needs of the program and partnership. Partners can engage in tailored consulting along with their RDA, Network Foundations, or Network membership depending on their needs. Tailored consulting offerings include but are not limited to: recruitment and selection strategy, curricular equity audits, financial sustainability and modeling, coursework innovation and revision, program evaluation and residency inventory, data system support, and the development of a scope and sequence for the teacher resident clinical experience or mentor professional development. NCTR works closely with partners to collaboratively develop a tailored and context-driven consulting package that directly meets the needs of the teacher residency program.
