School teachers in the reality of urban education

In the 1990s, when Jesse Solomon ’91 first started teaching at a middle school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was at a loss. “I have 25 students working in eight different grades-some are learning English, some are in personal education plans,” he said. “I was not prepared for this level of complexity.” Fortunately, there is a senior teacher in the next room. “Every day before school, I would copy what she wrote on the blackboard. She would tell me what she was going to do that day and how to think about the whole course,” he recalled. “That’s how I learned to be a teacher.”

In 2003, after ten years of teaching high school mathematics, Solomon replicated this experience on a larger scale by co-founding the Boston Teacher Residency (BTR), which helps new teachers become effective urban educators. As the executive director of the non-profit Boston Excellence Program (BPE), Solomon supervises the program with two charter schools in Roxbury, a densely populated low-income community in Boston, highly diverse and diverse. Language. At Dudley Neighborhood School (K-5) and Dearborn STEM Academy (6-12), he led a network of teachers, many of whom came up through BTR. “Being a lone wolf and being a good teacher is not an option,” Solomon said. “Building a network is a necessary part of the job.”

Solomon grew up in Cambridge. His mother Vicki was a school librarian, and his father Frank Solomon was a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (now retired). At MIT, he majored in mathematics, and his interest in urban studies inspired him to offer a course on urban politics. Although he received a master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he found that he needed more targeted training to teach in urban schools.

BTR uses the medical resident as a model, instructing teachers from one-on-one interactions to group lessons and then to the whole class. The instructor guides them as they practice, first with other adults and then students.

The goal is what Solomon calls “ambitious teaching”, which is both “rigorous and fascinating”, so students will enjoy learning and accept challenges to do their best. BTR has trained more than 700 teachers, half of whom are teachers of color, and helped create a network of dozens of other teacher residency programs across the country. This year, Solomon witnessed Dearborn’s first students graduate from college. “Regardless of whether it is clear or not, our country teaches that not everyone should be smart,” Solomon said. “In BTR, our goal is to teach a way of thinking that makes everyone in the classroom accountable for their talents-we support teachers to master the skills needed to advance this goal.”