Program Description

There are two components of TEP: the MidCareer Math and Science (MCMS) program and the Teaching and Curriculum (TAC) program. MCMS prepares math and science professionals (exclusively) who want to become secondary math and science teachers. TAC prepares all other candidates, i.e. recent and not-so-recent college graduates, liberal arts concentrators, mid-career humanities candidates.

• Teaching and Curriculum
• MidCareer Math and Science

Goals and Standards

Goals

• Prepare teachers for the specific challenges of urban education including providing high quality instruction for all students, addressing the causes of unequal access in our educational system, and creating classrooms and schools where previously unsuccessful students can succeed.
• Enable teachers who graduate from this program to facilitate students' understandings and capacity to construct knowledge and to assume new leadership roles within schools. Further, these teachers will have skills to participate in organizational diagnosis and change leadership activities.
• Demonstrate that teaching can be a life-long career with multiple stages and aspects of growth typical of adult development. The program will reflect this goal by designing an approach that starts novice teachers on a path toward National Board Certification.

TEP Program Standards

The work of the Harvard Teacher Education Program is guided by the overarching question, "What does it mean to be an effective educator of urban youth?" The Program's six standards provide candidates with a framework for studying this question and an outline of the Program's expectations.

The Program expects its candidates to:

• Demonstrate an in-depth understanding of content-specific skills and/or concepts and apply that understanding to the construction of meaningful learning activities for all students.
• Advocate skillfully for the achievement of all students by helping them learn how to construct meaning and apply that understanding to solve problems through the use of verbal, numeric, and symbolic language and through technology.
• Address the diverse needs of all learners through the application of principles of adolescent and cognitive development to the establishment of positive learning environments and design of appropriately challenging curricula, pedagogical strategies, and assessments.
• Demonstrate promise as leaders and agents for organizational change in their classrooms, schools, and society. 
• Exhibit the capacity for professional growth by developing questions about their work as educators, by engaging in inquiry and reflection to address their questions, by applying their understanding to improve learning, teaching, and school organization, and by participating in professional development activities.
• Promote equity and democracy in their classrooms and schools based on a complex understanding of social inequities, an understanding of and respect for students' cultures and communities, and a continuing examination of their own identities, biases, and social locations.