About MSU Teacher Residency

The MSU Teacher Residency is designed to meet the demand for highly competent teachers in critical districts in Mississippi and western Alabama. While all individuals with a completed bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited college or university are invited to apply, we particularly encourage diverse applicants such as people of color, men, and veterans from the Armed Forces that are traditionally underrepresented in the education field, as well as teacher assistants to an intensive yearlong preservice clinical graduate program alongside strong mentoring by an accomplished teacher in the K-6 classroom setting resulting in elementary (K-6) certification.

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Academics

The primary goal of the MSU Teacher Residency is to eliminate opportunity gaps for students in partner school districts by providing an intensive residency experience with rigorous graduate-level teacher preparation and closely tied clinical practice to produce day-one highly effective elementary and special education teachers. Our collective theory of change is that this intensive residency experience based on a Learning Cycle Model will result in accomplishing this goal of mitigating these opportunity gaps.

All residents will complete an induction camp followed by three semesters of placement-and-evidence-based teaching methodologies developed around the Learning Cycle model that connects learning about teaching with classroom experiences (Teacher Education by Design, 2014). The following illustrates the course progression within the residency:

MAT-Elementary and Special Education

Leading to K-6 Licensure with Special Education K-12 and Reading Supplemental Endorsements

For more information email mblackwell@meridian.msstate.edu.
 

Field experiences for residency block I will take place in summer programs operated by the partner school districts and early childhood programs identified by the partner districts. During subsequent residency, residents will complete all field experiences in an assigned elementary classroom with guided visits to additional settings such as special education classrooms, classrooms serving English Language Learners, and specific content classrooms.

The curriculum is designed so that a resident may be issued a three- year non-renewable resident teaching license after completing the initial licensure courses (Early Literacy I, and Teaching Elementary STEM). This will allow the district to use the resident as an elementary teacher while completing the residency curriculum if they so choose. An alternative to this is for the resident to be employed as either a teacher assistant or other paraprofessional in an elementary classroom within the partner school district while completing the residency curriculum. The resident license is converted to a regular teaching license after completing all program requirements and passing licensure exams.