With the 2018–19 school year, the Next Education Workforce initiative at ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College created and deployed a residency model for teacher preparation in which teams of teacher candidates were paid by school districts to work with one mentor teacher across two classrooms of pre-K–12 students. Each team of educators worked to meet the needs of more than 60 students, introducing a mutually beneficial approach to residency-based instruction.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many working parents had to transform themselves into teachers overnight, structuring their children’s school day, providing tech support, helping with homework and motivation. Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College is home to some of the country’s leading education experts on the intellectual and socioemotional growth and needs of K–12 students. The principal investigators raise the question: How can we connect a parent’s need to know how to help their child with the expertise of MLFTC?