University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The Teaching Fellows program at UNC Chapel Hill prepares educators for working with North Carolina’s diverse learners through critical scholarship. Our goal is to empower teachers to be active agents of social transformation, thereby increasing equity and the quality of public education for all learners in North Carolina. Through coursework, events, and field experiences in a wide range of social contexts, we support practices of self-reflection, examination of multiple-perspectives, and strategies for transformation and activism. We partner with community organizations, campus leaders, and schools and teachers in the Triangle to develop our curriculum, and we are guided by our students in the development and evaluation of our program.
Our Teaching Fellows curriculum is designed to assist prospective teachers in developing broad perspectives on the contexts of schooling and on teaching as a profession in a period of redefinition. Beginning in their first semester, and throughout their second year Teaching Fellows have unique opportunities for rich field experiences in a range of school and community contexts such as tutoring in local classrooms and observing experienced teachers. During their junior year the TF classes consist of community field placements such as the YMCA, Morehead Planetarium, UNC Hospital School, Kidzu Museum and Ackland Art Museum. The purpose of the community placement is for Teaching Fellows to get to know kids outside of the school environment. In the last year, senior MAT-bound students are placed in classrooms again and the senior education teaching fellows are focused on their student internship. These field experiences are designed for each Fellow based on his or her individual interests, creating a diverse and interdependent peer learning community. Teaching Fellows take service-learning courses as a cohort to connect theory directly with practice.
Curriculum for Teaching Fellows
The Teaching Fellows Program will provide a systematic four-year curriculum designed to meet the following goals:
• Provide Teaching Fellows with a set of experiences that will help them explore the interrelationships among children, families, schools and communities.
• Introduce Teaching Fellows to teaching as a profession that extends outside of the classroom and the school into these communities.
• Assist Teaching Fellows in exploring teaching at a variety of levels so that they can make informed career choices.
• Help Teaching Fellows gain an understanding of education as a career, and hopefully confirm them in their career choice.
• Help Teaching Fellows understand what is at stake in the current debate about teachers and teaching.
• Help provide Teaching Fellows with a deeper and broader understanding of issues involved in learning and teaching; to provoke reexamination of Teaching Fellows’ preconceptions about the realities of learning and teaching in millennial North Carolina.
• Prepare Teaching Fellows to assume effective leadership throughout their careers in the schools of North Carolina, especially through their understanding of the ways in which children, families, schools, and communities all work together to support the education of children and young adults.
Teacher Licensure:
http://soe.unc.edu/academics/
Education Majors
Child Development and Family Studies, Elementary Education, Middle Grades and UNC BEST- Biology, Physics, Geology, Mathematics, and Chemistry.
Content Area Majors (M.A.T.-bound)
English, History, K-12 music
***Teaching Fellows interested in teaching secondary education (excluding Biology, Geology, Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics) and K-12 music must complete a 5th year M.A.T. program to earn licensure. If there is a four-year licensure program available for the major, Fellow must choose the four-year licensure program over attending the M.A.T. program to achieve licensure. Teaching Fellows status does not guarantee admission into the MAT program, unless the Fellow meets the UNC-Chapel Hill MAT Program requirements. Fellows cannot major in a foreign language.
Housing Available: Horton Hall (Optional)
Study Abroad: Over 300 study abroad options
For more information go to: http://soe.unc.edu/tf/
