From Prep to Practice to Profession: This Indiana Residency Program Prepares Teachers With Retention in Mind

Photo: Teacher Hannah Harry-Schade, Marian University alum.

A U.S. Department of Education Teacher Quality Partnership Grant has helped NIET support Marian University in its state-of-the-art teacher residency program, built to simultaneously prepare new educators to be ready on Day 1 and retain them in the profession long-term.

For both medicine and education, one fact remains true: The experience that comes with residency programs is unparalleled. It provides practical work experience, exposes students to mentorship and networking opportunities, increases confidence, and provides insight into real-world challenges before ever officially entering a profession. 

Marian University in Indianapolis, Indiana, knows this, and its attention to the needs of student teachers through a hands-on residency program is what makes participants so prepared to enter the field by the time they leave campus. On top of it all, Marian University’s residency program has an extra tool up its sleeve: it uses the NIET Aspiring Teacher Rubric (ATR), which means that the students in the program already know what highly effective instruction looks and sounds like by the time they start their first teaching job.

This pipeline program has been further bolstered through the University’s Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grant, awarded by the U.S. Department of Education in 2019. The $3 million funding supported the implementation of its residency program in Marian’s Fred S. Klipsch Educators College by enhancing training and support by NIET for faculty, resident teachers, and mentors - strengthening a program that’s already filled with success stories. 

Supporting new teachers to be more effective early in their careers is at the heart of the Marian Promise residency program, an innovative and collaborative effort among multiple high-need school districts, the Klipsch Educators College at Marian University, and NIET. The partnership addresses critical needs in the districts and state through the development of a residency and induction system for the recruitment, preparation, and continued development of highly effective new teachers. Marian Promise is helping Indiana districts put in place a system of support for new teachers to increase their effectiveness and retention, thereby positively impacting the achievement of the students they serve. 

The spotlight aspect of the program is the one-year residency experience for student teachers to get hands-on time in the classroom with strategic support that extends beyond the clinical year and into the students’ first two years of teaching in their classrooms. The residency is designed to put pre-service teachers in a classroom alongside a certified teacher for a whole year, following the teacher's schedule every day throughout that year. This model allows pre-service teachers to experience real day-to-day life as a full-time teacher. This extended co-teaching model provides the pre-service teacher nonstop opportunities to receive real-time coaching, support, and feedback from their mentor teacher, providing participants with a monumental head start, and offering a solution to the demanding challenge of teacher retention.

Klipsch Educators College’s residency program, and particularly those within it supported through the TQP grant, are developed and supported with educator retention in mind. Marian ensures this by maintaining the connection from pre-service teaching work to in-service work through common rubric language. After learning about NIET’s Aspiring Teacher rubric in their college classes, where it is embedded into the coursework, participants in the TQP program work directly with NIET partners that use the NIET Teaching and Learning Standards Rubric, which served as the foundation for developing the aspiring teacher rubric. This makes for a seamless and expected transition for new teachers, eliminating possible steep learning curves and wavered confidence due to being tasked with learning an entirely new protocol when entering an unfamiliar school system.

In addition, participants often stay with the same mentor teachers from their residency at the partner schools, to their employment at the partner district, which directly supports teachers in their transition to the classroom. By maintaining the same rubric and standards, same district, and even the same mentor, student teachers are offered the optimal runway to succeed - and stay - in their classrooms for years to come. 

By transcending from preparation to practice, this robust support structure and lessons embedded in real-life circumstances are proving effective. Recent graduate Hope Spaulding is a shining product of the residency’s first cohort.

Spaulding was enrolled in Marian’s Promise Residency Program from its inception, participating in its first cohort. She started her yearlong residency for the 2020-21 school year at Perry Meridian Middle School, within Perry Township Schools. Following her residency, she has been at Southport Middle School, which serves 1210 students as of the 2023-24 school year, of which 68% are students of color, and 77% are eligible for free or reduced meals. Marian’s Promise Residency Program also promotes a grow-your-own pipeline within Indiana schools by connecting student teachers with their local community and districts as they begin their professional careers. 

Spaulding’s district of residence is a longstanding partner of NIET, which provided a seamless transition to a real-life experience with a district familiar with the practices she learned in the classroom through Marian before her clinical experience. Perry Township Schools uses the NIET Teaching and Learning Standards Rubric, offers varied career pathways, and implements weekly cluster meetings among teachers - a staple practice among many NIET partners to promote community and shared learning among teachers while providing them with instructional strategies specifically designed to work with their students. 

Cluster meetings and strategic instructional development offer support for new teachers from day one, giving them one-on-one coaching and mentoring to eliminate some of the challenges that year-one teachers face. 

When districts like Perry Township Schools and Marian University are on the same page on supporting students before they’re even out the door, it gives students like Spaulding the space to learn, grow, and succeed - a foundation that Spaulding said was simply invaluable.

“I loved that I got a full year under a mentor where I could truly get my bearings as a new teacher. One semester just isn’t enough time,” Spaulding said. 

Spaulding’s story is just one out of the four cohorts of students learning and living their way through Marian’s Promise Residency Program and one success joined by all who participated in the TQP grant. According to survey data, out of all the participants supported through the Marian TQP grant, 100% reported feeling well-prepared to start teaching their classroom upon completing residency - a major indication of the impact that the local residency program and preparation with the ATR had on the group. 

While Marian University’s TQP grant is coming to a close, with stories like Spaulding’s illustrating its impact, Klipsch College and the Marian Promise Residency Program continue to keep retention in mind and use NIET’s ATR in its work to guide student teachers through their classes and residencies, so that future teachers enter the profession prepared to elevate the industry, one student at a time. 

Learn more about the Marian University Promise residency program here.