Ready2Teach Overview

The Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) is the sixth-largest state university and community college system in the United States and prepares more than half of all teacher candidates in the state. We are redesigning all education programs within the Board of Regents system, which includes 6 universities and 13 community colleges. Our redesign is called Ready2Teach, as our focus is on preparing teacher candidates who are ready to teach from day one.

The primary goals of the Ready2Teach Initiative are to:

Prepare teacher candidates so that they have a positive impact on student performance from the first time they enter the classroom.
Work collaboratively with schools to improve outcomes for students, schools, and communities.

The Ready2Teach initiative will produce graduates with strong academic content knowledge aligned with Tennessee high school curriculum standards, strong skills in instruction, assessment, and management, and well-developed skills in meeting the academic and social needs of all students.

Our comprehensive, progressive year long school-based clinical residency equips teacher education graduates to succeed in challenging urban and rural public schools. The close partnership between university faculty and public school faculty also promotes professional development and innovation among all participants.

Education components of the curriculum are organized in modules, within which candidates learn by working through targeted real-world situations. We use a Problem Based Learning model for structuring these situations format. Our redesign focuses on demonstration of learning and best practice.

We recognize the importance of providing candidates with relevant, authentic and engaging learning experiences. Therefore, teacher candidates’ tasks are aligned with identified school priorities and needs. In addition, candidates will engage in school-based service learning opportunities, working directly with P-12 students and their families.

Faculty will work closely with school administrators and mentor teachers to implement meaningful experiences for teacher candidates that allow schools to meet their needs and the goals identified in their school improvement plans. This means that our university faculty will spend more time in P-12 schools and classrooms engaging in co-teaching with both mentor teachers and candidates. Content and pedagogy will be delivered by both higher education faculty and P-12 faculty in the clinical setting as much as possible, with a consistent focus on helping schools.

We are currently in partnership with Stanford University, the Council of Chief State School Officers and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education along with Vanderbilt and UT Knoxville as part of the Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium, TPAC-TN.

Ready2Teach is a four-year degree program and will be fully implemented in fall 2013. For additional information contact, Dr. Kandi Hill-Clarke at k.hill-clarke@tbr.edu or 615-366-3948.