Hello and welcome. I'm Dr. Sarah Fine, director of the teaching apprenticeship program at the High Tech High, Graduate School of Education. I'm so thrilled that you found your way here, and I hope that by the end of this session, you'll have a clear sense of both, the why, and the what of the Teaching Apprenticeship Program. Also, from here onward I'm going to refer to the program as TAP, which is what our students and faculty usually call it. 

To start I want to tell you a little bit about why TAP exists and how it's different from other teacher preparation programs out there. So from 2010 to 2016, while I was conducting the research for my recent book, I spent more than 800 hours in more than 30 different public high schools around the country. While there are a number of bright spots, I'm not going to lie, the reality of what happens in American high school classrooms is pretty bleak. 

Kids spend most of their time doing low level tasks which were asked only for recall and memorization. Biology students take quizzes on the parts of the cell, history students race through centuries of history in a week, English students write their 97th five paragraph essay. They had very few opportunities to engage in sustained dialogue, to collaboratively solve problems, or to make connections across disciplines. 

Opportunities to engage in more intellectually complex, and personally meaningful work, are few and far between, and often accessible only to the most privileged students. These realities are tragically misaligned to the complexities and uncertainties of 21st century life. What we're trying to do at the High Tech, High Graduate school of education is to prepare teachers for the schools that we need, not for the schools that we already have. 

We're seeking to prepare teachers, who can prepare students, to successfully navigate the complex and uncertain world that we share. It's not easy work, but we have a significant advantage over many other programs, which is that our students spend their preparation year embedded within the High Tech High community. High Tech High's 16 K12, schools collectively represent one of the most innovative and disruptive K12 contexts that has emerged in the past decades. 

High Tech High schools are racially, linguistically, and socio-economically diverse, and they do not track students by perceived ability. All of our schools follow a project-based model of instruction, that strives to integrate head, heart, and hands, and to engage students in authentic work. Our schools and our graduate school have been featured in magazines, newspapers, books, research reports, white papers, and most recently a feature length film titled Most Likely to Succeed. 

We received more than 5,000 visitors a year from around the globe. Our graduate school, which was the first ever accredited school of education to emerge out of a K12 context, has several degree programs. A new school creation fellowship, a research center on equity and innovation, and most recently the TAP program. 

Building on the strengths, which exist within our schools and in the graduate school, the Teaching Apprenticeship Program aspires to produce novice teachers who can equip students for the complexities and uncertainties of 21st century life, and who help to disrupt the patterns of oppression and marginalization, which so often play out in schools. 

To that end, TAP is designed to help teacher candidates learn to design and teach via projects which are interdisciplinary, and grounded in real world problems, which build social, emotional, as well as academic skills, and which require deep collaboration among students from different backgrounds. 

We also want teachers to learn to see themselves, not as middlemen between fixed bodies of knowledge and the empty minds of their students, but rather as facilitators who set up structures through which their students explore questions that are fundamentally uncertain. So the questions around which a given project might be organized could be something like how might human civilization end, with kids exploring the question using evidence from history, anthropology, political science, climate science, and even science fiction. 

And eventually, producing films in which they mount a case for their predictions and harness this to a call to action. At the High Tech High Graduate School of Education, we also care very much about becoming a pipeline by which to increase the presence of high quality teachers of color in our schools. While more than half of all United States public school students identify as people of color, more than 80% of the teaching workforce is white. 

A large body of recent research affirms the fact that having teachers of color has a positive impact on the achievement and engagement of all students, with a particularly high effect for students of color. Within our program, we have a strong and sustained emphasis on developing all candidates into culturally responsive, anti-racist teachers, who can help to transform schools from places which reproduce social inequalities, to places where all students are challenged, engaged, and feel a deep sense of agency and belongingness. 

Now that you know about the why behind TAP, let's talk a little bit about the what. TAP is a two year program. In the first year you will spend four days a week as a resident student teacher at one of High Tech High's 16 schools, working closely with a veteran teacher, and gradually taking on more responsibilities in the classroom. One day plus one evening a week during that first year, you'll be in classes at the graduate school, building close relationships with your cohort, while receiving intensive support from our expert teaching faculty. 

You will also receive individualized coaching from a personalized supervisor who helps you grow at your own pace. At the end of the first year, you earn your California preliminary credential, and are supported in applying for teaching jobs, both within and beyond the High Tech High network. So TAPers do get priority consideration for jobs at High Tech High schools. But we also encourage candidates to apply to jobs at other project-based schools throughout Southern California. Just for reference, 90% of our candidates from our first cohort are currently fully employed. 

In year 2 you'll return to the graduate school one evening per week to complete your MED in teaching and learning. In your master's Capstone classes, you build on both the learning and the relationships you form during year one, to explore problems of practice that emerge in your classroom. Compared to year one, the year two experience is much less intensive in terms of your time commitment. But it does serve as a critical support to you, as you move into your career, and seek to connect and sustain the learning provided during the residency year. 

The admission process for TAP has several steps. First, you'll need to apply via our online application portal, submitting your application no later than February 8. Key materials required for this application are a cover letter, a statement of interest, two recommendations from folks who have seen you working with, or teaching young people, and an undergraduate transcript. An unofficial transcript is OK if you're currently in school, but we'll need an official one when you graduate this spring. 

You also have to tell us which credential you plan to pursue, since we try to balance the subjects and grade levels within the cohorts. We offer all core academic credentials, multiple subjects, so that's K to 8, science, social science, math, and English. We do not yet offer special education credentials. 

You don't have to provide scores for the two required assessments, CBEST and CSET. But if we make you an offer of admission we will need both of those tests, no later than July, 1 in order to finalize your spot in the cohort. After reviewing all the applications, we then conduct online screening interviews with all applicants. Finalists will be invited to participate in a more extended interviewing and demo teaching process. For those local to Southern California, this happens on site at the graduate school in mid-March, whereas for others we can set up individual times to connect. 

Letters of admission are sent out by the end of March and once you've accepted our offer, we then begin the process of matching you with a mentor teacher at one of the High Tech High schools. We do continue to process applications on a space-available basis throughout the spring, but we strongly encourage you to apply by the priority deadline in February. We'll likely accept 25 students for next year's cohort. 

In terms of tuition, each of the two years costs $10,000 in tuition. All students are eligible to apply for federal financial aid to support them in making tuition payments and in covering their costs of living. In addition, we have a limited number of diversity fellowships that we award. Happily, we are now able to accept the GI Bill funds and other military aid. We're very excited that you're interested in the TAP program, and we look forward to fielding your questions in just a few minutes. 

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