FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
To apply for a Center for Urban Teaching Summer School teacher position, click here.
To talk with someone at the Center for Urban Teaching, call 414.433.9180 or contact us.
Yes, for some universities! Several partner universities are adding the CfUT Summer School Program to their urban education minor or other programs. Contact us for more information about starting this at your university.
No, but with the number of teachers in the program it’s easy to carpool with someone going to the same Summer School site.
Applicants should be 18 years or older and be aligned with CfUT’s core values. No prior teaching experience or a major in education is necessary. We do require all teachers to have participated in an immersion tour and to be accepted into our program before summer to build a vision of the high-performance model CfUT seeks in its summer school. Participants must be enrolled at a college or university or already have a bachelor’s degree.
Yes! The base pay is a stipend of $2,000. Alternatively, this can be received as a scholarship paid directly to your university from CfUT.
CfUT has a contract with Wisconsin Lutheran College to use its fully furnished apartments. A small portion of the teacher’s stipend is taken out to pay for this option. Alternatively, teachers who know people in the Milwaukee area might make arrangements to stay with them.
Each of the components of training are further developed through ongoing coaching and feedback throughout the summer school program from their summer school leader. Every teacher receives informal feedback daily, and there’s formal observation with a sit-down debrief including next steps, to implement every week. Teachers also come back together once every week for additional professional development. Most classrooms also utilize a co-teaching model.
We like to say our schools “give us the keys and the kids” – they let us take over their schools for four weeks. Together – CfUT leaders, coaches and our undergraduate teachers – we develop a school from the ground up, outlining policies and procedures and anything and everything that builds a school culture. It’s not just about academics and lesson plans, but our spiritual component of unconditional love driving strong teacher-student relationships that have lasting impact.
Teachers engage in two weeks of intensive training that focus on three important elements: building a positive school culture, high-performance instructional strategies, and character development. Through these three lenses, teachers are trained on strategies that build trust while setting and maintaining high-behavioral expectations, instructional strategies that ensure teachers plan and deliver data-driven lessons that foster student engagement, and a process for character development that helps teachers, leaders, and students explore their personal identity and purpose as it relates to their performance. There is also an immense amount of team building in which everyone learns how to work together and how to build strong relationships with one another.