Charter Teacher Residency
Every young person needs an advocate, a helping hand and a listening ear along the path to success. Achieve your dream of a sustainable career while making a difference. Become a Special Education teacher through the New Visions Charter Teacher Residency.
What is The New Visions-Hunter College Charter Residency?
The New Visions-Hunter College Charter residency is a 24-month teacher preparation program that provides mentoring, supported teaching experiences, coursework, and financial support to prepare exceptional Special Education teachers to work in the New Visions Charter High Schools network. Upon completion of the program, residents will receive their Master’s in Education for grades 7-12 and their initial state certification in Special Education. They will teach for at least four years in the New Visions Charter High Schools network of schools as a valued faculty member.
Mentoring: During their first full year, residents work one-on-one with an experienced mentor teacher in a New Visions charter high school. In addition to the support of their mentor, residents will also benefit from frequent feedback from an assistant principal who will support resident-mentor pairs, from other charter teachers, and from peers in their cohort.
Supported Teaching Experiences: Residents learn to teach through deliberate, supported practice and responsibilities that gradually increase over time. They begin the year collaborating with their mentors in one team-teaching class. Residents’ official teaching responsibilities increase during trimester 2. During trimester 3, residents teach almost a complete course load so that by the end of the year, they are well-prepared for beginning full-time teaching in the fall. Residents will experience the range of different types of roles that special educators play in the school (see below under “what do Special Educators do?”).
Graduate Coursework: Over 24 months, residents earn a Master’s Degree in Secondary Education 7-12 Special Education from Hunter College, CUNY. The course sequence is designed to align with residents’ teaching experiences. Many courses will be delivered in an online or blended (both online and in-person) format and will be customized specifically for the cohort of Charter SpEd residents, to ensure that residents’ time is maximized and professors and peers can tailor course content and assignments to resident experiences.
Financial Support: During their residency year, residents receive a stipend. After successfully completing the residency year, residents are hired as full-time teachers at a starting salary of around $60,000. The New Visions Charter High Schools residents’ receive tuition support.
How are the New Visions Charter High Schools making a difference in high-need communities?
The New Visions Charter High Schools address the gap in high-quality educational options by establishing schools in under-resourced neighborhoods, with admission through an open lottery. Our seven schools are located in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, in each case co-located in buildings where previous high schools have struggled to graduate students. Over the past five years, our network has experienced success in fostering good will and participation from each school’s surrounding community and building out pathways for students with diverse needs -- including high performers, students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and students reading below grade level. We have seen gains over time in students’ reading and vocabulary comprehension, average daily attendance rates (above 90%), and accelerated credit accumulation. The New Visions Charter Network had an network-wide average graduation rate of 90.9% in the 2015-2016 school year.
Special Education at the New Visions Charter High Schools
New Visions for Public Schools’ vision for special education is that all learners have equal access to educational opportunities where barriers to learning are reduced and learner diversity is recognized, supported, and embraced. Our mission is to partner with school communities to advance this common approach to special education. We provide support through small group reading interventions, co-taught content classes, special education teacher support services and by building relationships with families through extensive outreach as well as hosting educational workshops dedicated to topics in special education.
Special Educators at the New Visions Charter High schools:
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Develop accessible curriculum through team co-planning, co-teaching and co-assessing
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Build students’ academic and socio-emotional skills
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Work with students one-on-one or in small groups
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Advocate to ensure that students receive appropriate supports
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Meet with families and the school-based support team
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Create plans to for post-high school transition to ensure quality of life after high school
Candidate Criteria:
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Both career-changers and recent college graduates are encouraged to apply
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Possess an undergraduate degree with a 3.0+ GPA (or complete their undergraduate degree by June 2017)
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NOT currently certified to teach in the U.S.
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Commitment to changing the lives of New York City’s high-need special education students.
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Commitment to the 24-month residency and to four years of teaching in a New Vision Charter School after the successful completion of the residency.
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A major in a liberal arts or science subject
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6 credits in English
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6 credits in a foreign language
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6 credits in political science, history, economics or geography with at least one course in history or geography
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6 credits in math
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6 credits in science
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3 credits in the arts
Residents must be willing and able to commute daily to their host school. During the admissions process, prospective residents will interview at the host school(s) of their preference and will be admitted to the program knowing where they will complete their residency. In the application, you will be asked which of the Charter schools you will be most willing/able to commute to. Please click here to view the map of our school locations.
Our host schools are:
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Humanities III (Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn)
New Visions for Public Schools is an equal opportunity employer. It is the policy of New Visions that all employees and applicants for employment will be treated in all respects on the basis of their merit and qualifications and without regards to their race, color, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion, gender, military status, marital status, ancestry or any other reason prohibited by law.
