As college students, it's easy to see the importance of great teachers — students often choose or avoid courses based on the professor's reputation, no matter what the subject. It is for precisely this reason that, around the country, school officials have emphasized the urgency of recruiting strong teaching candidates. At Tufts, the need for more high-quality public-school teachers, specifically of mathematics and natural sciences, is being addressed with a budding scholarship program for graduate students of education.
The National Science Foundation has given Tufts a $2.1 million dollar grant to fund Tufts' participation in the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, which works with universities around the country to prepare Master of Arts in Teachers (MAT) candidates to teach math and science to middle and high school students.
The program is currently working with Tufts mathematics, natural science and education professors to train eight graduate students in 2011 who will go on to teach at public schools after earning their degrees. It plans to work with an additional eight students beginning in 2012. The program also provides mentoring and monetary support during participants' first four years of teaching subsequent to the completion of their education.
"The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program is for … MAT students who are interested in teaching math or science at the middle or high school levels in high-need urban districts," Todd Quinto, a professor of mathematics at Tufts and one of the scholarship program's investigators, said. "The scholarship … provides students, known as Noyce teaching fellows, with full tuition scholarships, more than $20,000 to cover living expenses and internships under the guidance of an experienced teacher. Upon completing the year-long MAT program, fellows commit to teach in a middle or high school in Boston or in a similar urban district for at least four years."
As an additional support system for the teachers-in-training, Boston Public Schools' (BPS) Human Resources office provides assistance for Noyce Fellows applying for teaching positions at local public schools.
"The Residency Model of the Noyce Teacher Fellows Program is highly regarded by BPS as an effective way to prepare teachers [for] urban classrooms," Quinto said. "During each of their four years of teaching, fellows will receive a stipend of $13,500 in addition to their annual salary and are eligible to take one class per year at Tufts University without any additional cost."
According to Linda Beardsley, director of teacher education in the Department of Education at Tufts' Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the new program is a response not just to a local insufficiency of teachers but a national one.
"It is well known that there is national crisis in terms of the need for math and science teachers," she said. "The fact that the National Science Foundation and the Noyce Foundation have released significant resources to teacher preparation programs to build a generation of well prepared, committed Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teachers is testimony to the commitment these organizations have to respond to the needs of school districts and youth all across the country."
The need for an increase of high-quality math and science teaching has become a hot political topic across the country, and on Sept. 27, President Barack Obama announced his goal of recruiting 10,000 STEM teachers over the next two years and 100,000 over the next decade, according to a statement released by the Office of the Press Secretary.
Beardsley explained that training teachers to educate middle and high school students is particularly important because those early stages in a students' educational development are often when their interests in specific subjects are sparked.
"The best engineers, chemists, bio-ethics specialists, surgeons and radiologists, not to mention stellar science teachers … have probably been inspired by wonderful teachers in middle and high schools," she said. "Students who have enjoyed learning math and science throughout their education [and] have found the disciplines exciting and creative should consider sharing their enthusiasm and understanding with future generations of students."
Hugh Gallagher, associate professor of physics at Tufts, agreed with Beardsley, explaining that middle and high school teachers shape students' educational foundations.
"I'm sure all of us remember particularly strong — even inspirational — teachers in high school or middle school," he said. "They knew the material inside and out, were passionate about it, and were able to explain even the most difficult concepts with clarity. … Hopefully, the students supported by this grant will go on to become those kind of inspirational teachers."
The choice to train teachers to work specifically with students attending urban public schools has been met with some negativity, Beardsley said, with some fearing the schools might be dangerous or unsupportive. But the classrooms Beardsley and the other project participants have in mind are anything but those stereotypes, she said.
"People have a host of misunderstandings about what it means to teach in urban schools," Beardsley said. "Well-run urban public schools, like the schools we are partnering with in our Noyce grant, are among the most vital examples of schools that work for students, professionals and families in the nation."
Gallagher believes that the grant will not only equip students with superb teaching skills but also provide them with the resources to find teaching jobs after they earn their degrees — a pressing concern for many students.
"I think that this grant, as well as the numerous other ongoing or upcoming STEM education initiatives, will impact Tufts in numerous ways. They will give science and math majors resources if they choose to pursue a career in teaching. These initiatives are making it possible for faculty like myself in research-oriented STEM departments to devote some of our time to helping to address the current crisis in STEM education in our nation's schools," Gallagher said.
Moreover, Beardsley said, the students selected to partake in the scholarship program will have the opportunity take their areas of expertise beyond the theoretical environment in which they are usually studied.
"The Noyce Project will support teachers to learn how to take their excitement about math and science and share that with students who have often not seen that math and science have much to do with their lives," Beardsley said. "The candidates who are selected to be part of this program will have the opportunity to work in excellent schools alongside master teachers and university faculty who are dedicated to improving math and science education for all students and, in the end, improving the national picture of math and science literacy for all of us."
