Dallas Teacher Residency 2014, 2016

Dallas Teacher Residency (DTR) serves as a strategic response to local urban school districts’ need to recruit, prepare, and retain effective classroom teachers to serve urban students in urban classrooms.

Research demonstrates that the classroom teacher serves as the single greatest catalyst in increasing levels of student achievement.

With that said, nearly 50% of all urban school teachers leave the profession within their first three years – creating long term economic consequences for urban school districts,’ and more importantly, academic consequences for children in urban schools. Through a rigorous and purposeful year-long apprenticeship program patterned after a medical residency model, DTR is a district-based teacher education program that pairs master’s level education content with a rigorous full-year classroom apprenticeship with trained mentor teachers in urban classrooms. DTR prepares and supports teachers to successfully serve students in urban schools, ensuring that prior to having a classroom of their own, program residents are provided with the training, skillset, and on-going support necessary to best meet the needs of students in urban schools.

Through this innovative approach to teacher training, DTR aims to create both high-quality educators, in addition to creating support systems which ensure educators have the opportunity to impact levels of student academic achievement through teaching.

OUR WORK: Through two investments, GroundFloor invested $120,000 in seed funding and mentoring focused on building Dallas ISD and university partner relationships and coaching to improve their fundraising strategy. DTR came to GroundFloor as a “back of the napkin” idea, and a few short years later they are impacting thousands of DISD students each year.