Relay Graduate School of Education- Denver

Introduction to Classroom Management, Setting the Tone, Teacher Mindsets and Professionalism, Introduction to Lesson Planning, Identity and Bias 

Classroom Management, Getting to Know Students, Families, and Schools, The Together Teacher, Introducing New Material, Engaging Everybody, Content-Based Instruction 

Checking for Understanding, Student Practice, Using Data to Drive Instruction, Designing Assessments, Teaching Exceptional Learners, Teaching English Language Learners, Educational Autobiography, Content-Based Instruction
These courses all include 1:1 pairing with a mentor teacher weekly, deliberate practice and a gradual on-ramp to teaching.

Unit Planning, Building Culturally Responsive Curriculum, Introduction to Character Strengths, Teaching English Language Learners, Community Asset Mapping, The First Days of School, Content-Based Instruction

Creating your Pathway for Data Collection, Questioning Academic Rigor, Teaching Character Strengths, Purpose and Joy, Effective Review, Electives, Content-Based Instruction 

Tracking Academic and Character Progress, Feedback and Grading, Teaching Students with Disabilities, Teaching English Language Learners, Reading Taxonomy, Electives, Content-Based Instruction, The Master’s Defense

Deliberate Practice 

Deliberate practice — practice with a focus on the concrete and specific teaching skills that maximize impact in the classroom — is a cornerstone of the residency experience. You’ll participate in weekly practice sessions, each lasting 3-4 hours, that complement and support your master’s coursework. For example, you might practice responding to common student misconceptions. Then, you would receive expert feedback, apply that feedback, and do it again to build your skills. You will be released from your teaching responsibilities each week to join Relay faculty and other residents for deliberate practice sessions. 

Gradual Transition into Teaching

The Relay Teaching Residency provides you with a carefully structured, gradual transition into teaching as your skills and effectiveness increase during your first year as a teacher-in-residence. As the school year progresses, you will teach more often and take on more responsibilities in the classroom. By late spring, you should be ready to teach at least one period a day and demonstrate overall readiness for lead teaching the following year. If you show early promise, your partner school may accelerate the transition to lead teaching during the first year.

Two-thirds of aspiring teachers enrolled in the Relay Graduate School of Education identify as persons of color, making it one of the largest and most diverse educator residency programs in the country. Relay’s commitment and success in recruiting, preparing and supporting diverse teachers has been sustained annually even as the institution has increased enrollment each year.

Over the course of the two-year program, you will learn how to understand and intentionally respond to differences among the learners in your classroom. You will also develop skills to identify and implement accommodations that align with individual students’ needs. In particular, you will learn how to use Universal Design for Learning to accommodate learner variability during whole-group instruction.

Finally, all graduate students at Relay Graduate School of Education earn the Culturally Linguistically Diverse Educator endorsement, which reflects their ability to meet the academic and social/emotional needs of their K-12 learners.

Relay places all first-year students in schools with a resident advisor who is there to provide a window into teaching and into the curriculum of our partner school. In this role, the resident advisor fulfills several responsibilities to assist your development, including modeling and co-teaching, curriculum and lesson-planning, and communication with Relay.

Relay Denver works closely with some of the strongest public district schools and charter networks in Denver to support teaching residents. We’re particularly interested in applicants who graduated from Denver schools and want to teach at their alma maters. Relay Denver participates in the Residency School Placement program, working with Relay’s national recruiters to help qualified applicants find resident positions at partner PK-12 Denver schools.