DPS program brings success to classrooms

It isn’t uncommon for many professionals to switch careers at some point in their life.

Knowing this, Denver Public Schools developed a program in an effort to attract diverse individuals with distinct backgrounds who are interested in becoming educators.

The Denver Teacher Residency program gives teacher candidates the opportunity to get a first hand classroom experience through top-level training where they can then become a successful teacher in a DPS classroom. The Denver Teacher Residency (DTR) is a partnership between the University of Denver’s (DU) Morgridge College of Education and Denver Public Schools (DPS).

In their first of five years, candidates will serve as residents in a kindergarten to fifth grade classroom in an urban, high needs DPS school where they will be partnered up with a Lead Teacher.

During this time, residents will spend four days of the week at their assigned school acting as co-teachers and one full day with other residents of the program in a seminar of M.A. course work provided by the University of Denver’s Morgridge College of Education.

Rosa Felix, one of the program’s teacher candidates, said that DTR has given her the opportunity to pursue a career in teaching in an environment where she can relate directly with her students. “My background is similar to a lot of these kids and I’ve had a lot of challenges as I was growing up and I still made it through college,” said Felix.

Felix, who hails from El Paso, Texas and who has lived in Denver for six years, earned a B.A. in criminal justice and initially worked in a migrant education program where she taught ESL to adults. That is where, she said, she first fell in love with teaching.

She said she first found out about the ...