who we're looking for

We are seeking graduate students who are driven to become unusually effective rookie teachers in our unique partner schools.  These are schools that are organized around the belief that high quality teachers, rigorous curriculum, and robust supports enable ALL students to achieve economic freedom, sound moral development, and active civic engagement.  

Specifically, in order to be a strong candidate for admission to Sposato, you must meet three key criteria:

1. You personify our core values.

  • Strive for excellence.  Sposato has never been a simple path to a teaching license and a job. Sposato trainees embrace the goal of being “unusually effective” at the work they do. This means the Sposato route is more challenging than most, and it means that some solid people don’t make it through. The passing standard for Sposato requires a new teacher to be demonstrably better than the average non-Sposato-trained novice teacher. In other words, “average” means a Sposato trained teacher has fallen below the bar.

    We hold to this standard because the children served by Sposato rookie teachers need and deserve unusually good teachers. In most cases, racism, classism, and systemic dysfunction work against them. These children will only have access to the opportunities they deserve if their teachers are helping them to make multiple grade levels of growth every year. They cannot afford to have a teacher who is less than excellent.

    “Excellence,” is a big and overused word. Here’s what it means in our context:

    • Excellent teachers take pride in exceeding expectations. They say “I’m not going to rest until I’m really good at this.” This dedication to exceeding the baseline standard crosses into many domains—their careful planning, their attention to building classroom community, their commitment to lovingly pushing their students.

    • Excellent teachers are resilient. Teaching is a marathon, not a sprint. No matter how capable, hard-working, and well-adjusted somebody is, the path to excellent teaching is riddled with setbacks and emotional low points. Excellent teachers have built the habits and strategies necessary to persist and to continue pushing themselves, even in the most challenging circumstances. The best teachers make mistakes! But when they do, they learn from the mistakes and bounce back into the work.

    • Excellent teachers are dedicated. The children we serve will be part of their school communities for many, many years. Almost nothing plays a bigger role than having a dependable team of adults teaching them. So, excellent teachers remain with their commitments, even when folks around them might take a more fluid approach.

    • Excellent teachers are humble, see feedback as data, and are committed to constant learning. It’s relatively easy to identify our Horsemen, but it’s another thing to deal with them. Yet excellent teachers remain hungry for direct feedback on their teaching and embrace the work of planning to improve. Even once they are regarded by peers and school leaders as unusually effective, they know they still have much to learn, and they continue pushing themselves to grow.

  • Invest in relationships.  Our namesake—legendary teacher and leader Charlie Sposato—was famous for recognizing the power of relationships in driving all the other work of teaching. His philosophy was, “kids don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” and over his career, he built profound connections to thousands of young people and their families.

    For all of us, at least some relationships come easily. There will be children, parents, and co-workers you naturally connect with. This dedication to relationship-building requires far more than the deliberate, but easy bridge-building to a subset of folks. Rather, excellent teachers work systematically to build relationships with every single student they teach, and with the students’ families. This requires patience and determination. It requires careful outreach from the very beginning of the year. It also requires bringing energy, positivity, and good faith to relationships that have been strained.

    Excellent teachers kindle their own respectful curiosity about the communities their students come from. This requires constant humility. And sometimes, the best ways we build relationships with children and their communities happen outside regular work hours and/or outside the school building. Excellent teachers are willing to go that extra mile to build authentic connections.

  • Strengthen the team.  Schools are complex. And even in the best schools with the best aligned teams, there are opportunities for misunderstandings, disagreements and/or hurt feelings. As we all know, a dysfunctional team can bring out the worst in people. A strong team can bring out the best. Part of the work of being an excellent teacher is doing anything possible to support and enrich the community of adults doing the work.

2. You have what it takes to do the work.

Our coursework is rigorous, and you must have demonstrated the academic proficiency to succeed in that work. 

We do not expect you to know how to teach when you apply, but successful applicants possess the foundational capabilities key to classroom effectiveness: strong communication skills, self-confidence, and a predisposition to project gravity to students.  Experience in urban communities is also a significant asset.

3. Failure motivates you to become better.

Learning to teach is a non-linear process.  For many Sposato students, this process is their first experience with repeated and sustained failure.  Successful Sposato alumni take the long view and are able to pursue relentlessly effective teaching and maintain a positive outlook while still learning from their failures.

One of our indisputably successful alums writes:

The weeks were really long.  There were some days when I really didn’t want to listen to another training.  I woke up some mornings for student teaching loathing the idea of standing in front of 6th graders and talking about paraphrasing.  But then I’d remind myself that each day was a chance to learn something new, something I needed to get better at. I had to remind myself that each day was an opportunity and that sometimes you just have push yourself to take full advantage of it.

If you believe you have what it takes, we look forward to seeing your application.  In order to enroll in the graduate school, you must gain admission to a teaching residency.