Branches

The number of new teacher candidates enrolling in preparation programs was decreasing prior to the pandemic. The pandemic has increased the rate of teachers leaving the profession. It has been a rough two years even though the current school year was supposed to be a return to ‘normal.’ Yet after the Omicron wave, everything got more challenging making the return to full-time, in-person learning after a year and a half even harder than expected. Staff shortages and students’ social emotional welfare made readjustment challenging. Substitute teachers were hard to find. There simply were not enough adults in many schools this year. The New Hampshire Union Leader published the story, T eachers retiring, but not as many as feared ,” on June 27.  “By the middle of the year, teachers said they were feeling burned out. A national survey of teachers published in late January, commissioned by the National Education Association, one of the two national teachers’ unions, reported that more th...

  Tom Schram, TRRE Faculty in Residence with TRRE Graduates UNH Teacher Residency for Rural Education (TRRE) has been an incredible journey! As Tom Schram so poignantly described in his closing at the TRRE Advisory Board meeting in June, it is the journey, not the statistics, charts or maps that truly represent the TRRE impact, it is the people in school partner districts supporting the program and the TRRE graduates making a difference each day in education.  TRRE Graduates from three out of the four cohorts gathered on June 18 at the Common Man Inn in Plymouth NH. TRREople (TRRE-people) shared lessons learned as first year teachers, celebrated TRRE graduates’ impact in rural partner schools, recognized the value of the professional TRRE network and explored future induction support opportunities for summer and beyond grant funding which ends in September 2022.   TRRE Graduates shared their experiences as first year teachers. Whether a 2019 or 2021 TRRE graduate, common ...

Eleanor Jaffee, Ph.D., Owner and Principal Consultant, Insights Evaluation, LLC. Amy Barry, MA, Evaluation Associate, UNH Carsey School of Public Policy Mona Hajnaghizadeh, UNH Graduate Research Assistant & Doctoral Student, UNH Carsey School of Public Policy Recently, Amy and Eleanor presented highlights from The TRRE Year 5 Evaluation Report at the semi-annual meeting Advisory Board on January 6, 2022. Their presentation covered TRRE Cohort 4 program feedback, teacher preparation, and graduates’ induction experience. Over time, TRRE Cohorts reported rating of their teacher preparation experience with TRRE shows an increase in the satisfaction with the quality of the program, evidence of the continual improvement process within TRRE. This finding relates specifically to each cohort’s graduation rating of preparation [represented by the blue bar] For example, Cohort 1 at graduation rated their preparation near “good” on average. The graduation average increased at each cohort’s gr...

Abbey (Filiault) Farias, TRRE Graduate, was selected last summer as the Peter C. and Kristin Van Curan Nordblom Summer Fellow at the University of New Hampshire Carsey School of Public Policy. Farias proposed research on school services addressing rural homelessness in New Hampshire in her fellowship application. The final draft of her research project, A Case Study on Homeless School Liaisons in the North Country , was submitted to homeless school liaisons across the state to increase awareness of the issues uncovered in her research. What Farias learned was incredibly valuable as a teacher. Did you know The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act 1 requires schools to find and assist homeless students and it is a child’s right to stay the school year in their school of origin? Although broad support through McKinney-Vento is offered, many families and educators are unaware of it. In addition, common challenges with implementation of McKinney-Vento become more complicated in a rural se...

The Collaborative for Equitable and Inclusive School Practices inaugural meeting took place on August 9 and 10 at The Mountain Club on Loon. Educators from TRRE partner districts in SAU 6 Claremont and SAU 18 Franklin gathered to think about the “big picture” of our practices and the impact of our decisions in school communities. They will be joined by representatives from SAU 36 Lancaster Elementary School in trainings this fall to improve disciplinary practices in context of pedagogy, school culture, social emotional learning (SEL) and trauma-informed practices. The goal is to design a sustainable partnership in support of TRRE graduates and participating school partner districts in New Hampshire to create more equitable and inclusive practices and policies in our schools. TRRE will work coordinate implementation coaching sessions for school partner teams with a coach certified in the practice of Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS) by Dr. Ross Greene as described in his book...

Brainstorming a Science "Road Map" by Abbey Filiault Summer 2021 has looked quite different for TRRE without a new cohort of residents entering the program. Instead of placing incoming residents in their community internships and beginning coursework, TRRE turned its focus to enhance frameworks of support for graduates and partner schools. Two new initiatives for school district partners further TRRE’s goals: the Rural Teacher Mentor Network will promote cross-district professional collaboration in teacher leadership and the Collaborative for Equitable and Inclusive Practices in Schools aims to integrate equitable and inclusive practices centered around Universal Design for Learning and Collaborative Proactive Solutions. TRRE also planted seeds to further develop several activities that benefit program graduates focused on curriculum coaching, classroom climate and culture, and networking opportunities to support TRRE graduates as new teachers.  TRRE graduates will have oppor...

  Cohort 4 - missing Rachele Harvey - with Bryan Mascio, Marie Collins and Tom Schram. Cohort four dedicated their final summer TRRE institute to completion of coursework in special education and professional development opportunities. One occasion for enrichment, Beginning a Marathon: The Power of Pacing, presented by Mike Anderson explored strategies for building classroom community over the first few weeks of school and establishing routines. Twelve of the thirteen members of cohort four, as well as several TRRE teaching mentors, were able to attend the workshop, which took place on Thursday, July 29th, at The Mountain Club on Loon. The day included time for sharing strategies, discussing ideas for setting up a classroom, thinking about relationship building with students, and time for planning as our recent graduates prepare to enter their first year as certified educators.   After a long and arduous year of virtual seminars and mostly virtual observations, the profession...

  The UNH Extension and Teacher Residency for Rural Education (TRRE) partnership to further engage TRRE graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education and community engagement began early in the program design to prepare and retain highly effective teachers for rural New Hampshire. Funded by a U.S. Department of Education Teacher Quality Partnership grant in 2016, the residency model design supports the Extension-TRRE partnership. Beyond the TRRE goal to recruit and prepare new teachers, TRRE also provides residents with two years of induction, new teacher support after graduation. The UNH Extension course, Inquiry Teaching Methods:  Grounding STEM Education in Science Practices , provides graduates of TRRE and K-8 educators around the state with an understanding and strategies to design student-centered, inquiry-based science lessons that incorporate the Science and Engineering Practices as laid out in the Next Generation Science Standards. Inquiry-b...

  Community mapping at Conway Elementary School Community engagement, a pillar of the TRRE residency program, was initially conceived as a community-based summer internship experience. Community-based internships were designed to give residents an opportunity to meet local community members and to identify local resources to bring into the classroom. Fast forward four years, and the concept of competency in community and family engagement has evolved. To supplement remote and online community internships Cohort 4 experienced in summer 2020 due to COVID-19, TRRE residency supervisors with Emilie Coppinger, TRRE Director of Community Engagement, implemented new strategies to teach family and community competency. Residents designed community resource maps using Mindomo as part of their teaching seminar course and collaborated in the organization of a series of community and family engagement panels. Evidence of community mapping was seen this year in Rachele Harvey’s work with st...

Emilie Reagan has begun a new adventure with a new appointment as  Associate Professor in the Claremont Graduate University School of Educational Studies in Claremont, CA. Although she has changed university affiliation, Emilie remains the co-principal investigator of the Teacher Residency for Rural Education (TRRE) program. She is also currently the president of New England Educational Research Organization (NEERO), and her involvement with NEERO ensures that she will visit Portsmouth for years to come. Near or far, we not surprised at her commitment to remain involved with TRRE. Emilie began her career in education as a fifth-grade teacher in Philadelphia, PA. She earned a Ph.D. in Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation from the Boston College Lynch School of Education, where she was awarded the Donald J. White Teaching Excellence Award. Prior to her arrival at University of NH in 2013, Emilie was the lead research associate, partnership schools coordinator, and adjunct...

Kristy Wells, left, with her TRRE Teaching Mentor, Kristin Foss at Lancaster Elementary (SAU 36) Kristy Wells, UNH TRRE resident, is working towards completion of her M.Ed. in elementary education with dual certification in special education as a member of cohort 4. Her TRRE residency placement at Lancaster Elementary School is part of the School Administrative Unit 36 located north of the White Mountains. She co-teaches in a kindergarten classroom with the support of her TRRE teaching mentor, Kristen Foss. Wells is also enrolled in the UNH Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (TIPP) Graduate Certificate Program.  Wells demonstrated a strong desire during the application process to improve her understanding of students’ behavior as a form of communication and a desire to implement social emotional learning into her teaching. Previously as a paraprofessional and substitute teacher, she worked with students on the autism spectrum, collected behavioral data to establish IEP goals and f...

Alayna Signorello (2019 TRRE Graduate) has a love for outdoor education. She is in her second year of teaching at Warren Village School in Warren, NH, which is a part of the Haverhill School Administrative Unit 23. After teaching fifth grade her first year, Alayna moved to a third-grade classroom. Rumor has it Alayna single handedly refurbished the school’s playground this fall. Thanks to a Celia B. Gosil Grants in Place Fellow award through Rural Schools Collaborative , Alayna’s on to her next project to improve the school’s greenhouse. The Warren Village School greenhouse requires repairs. As structure plainly visible on the campus not currently utilized, the greenhouse occasionally raises questions among students and community members about its’ purpose. Warren, NH is a small, rural town where many families depend food services provided through a school lunch company and, subsequently, some students have little exposure to the original source of their food.  According to Alayna,...