Affordances and Challenges of the Residency Model Embedded in the City’s Education Landscape

• In Event: Transformation from Within and Outside of Schools: Residency-based preparation for education professionals supporting systemic change

Abstract

Residency experience is a cornerstone of our program. During the day, our students work at schools, nonprofits, school districts, and public agencies; in the evening, they attend master’s classes on campus. Together, our students’ immersive experiences reflect the city’s complex educational context and policy-making landscape. The residency experience is additionally supported by a Residency course (separate by concentration) that spans across the Fall and Spring semesters. This course engages students in critical reflection, teaching/advocating skill-building, and career advancement support. The residency model affords opportunities and poses challenges.
The model affords ample opportunities for connecting the master’s program curriculum with particularities of local schools and the local education landscape. In-class discussions testify to how theory and practice inform one another. Critical theories in the curriculum help students make sense of the interpersonal and structural inequalities they witness daily in the city’s educational spaces; meanwhile, their experiences as educators and advocates for marginalized students inform their understanding of critical theories and pedagogies. On the other hand, one area that warrants contemplation is that the residency experiences, at times, vividly present to our students the stubbornness of the educational status quo. For example, the structural issues that contextualize urban schools have realistic consequences for children and youth in our teacher candidates’ classrooms. Theories could seem to offer more explanations of inequity than solutions, especially not solutions that immediately mitigate harm. Such tensions bring up discomforts that faculty and students must engage with while creating collaborative spaces for rethinking our approaches to educational transformation. What can we do more, or differently?
Designing the program according to the needs of local schools, education advocacy organizations, and policy actors is the program’s creators' attempt to bridge the university/community divide. The residency model allows the program to maintain a collaborative relationship with many schools and educational organizations in the city, obtaining information about the “needs” of the community through regular surveys, liaison meetings,and from stories shared by our students. Arguably, our students grow into agents of positive change in their residency settings during the program, and many stay in the city’s schools and policy arena after graduation. Aside from the rewards, the residency model for aspiring education professionals working within and outside of school is inextricably linked to the city’s political and economic realities. Recent federal funding and workforce cuts have caused budget difficulties and uncertainties across the city’s education landscape and impacted the residency placement process for our students. By exploring feedback from residency partners and student reflections and artifacts produced in their residency classes, this paper examines the logistical and pedagogical tensions embedded in the residency model, inviting both complications and transformative opportunities. Data reveal that the residency model enables students to critically examine the theory-practice nexus while developing the university's position as a partner within the city's educational ecosystem.

Author

• Mingzhu Deng, Georgetown University