UNCA Teaching Fellows Visit New York City Schools

More than Forty UNC Asheville students recently spent a week visiting New York City and Washington, D.C. with UNCA's North Carolina Teaching Fellows Program. The group traveled to New York and Washington, D.C. to learn about education in a multicultural setting and to see innovative approaches to teaching. 

"In the inner-city schools in Manhattan and the Bronx, we were able to observe passionate and dedicated teachers in schools with enrollments from a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds," said Brenda Hopper, director of UNCA Teaching Fellows Program. "Our goal is to see successful schools using a variety of programs and approaches to education and bring these ideas back to classrooms in North Carolina."

UNCA Teaching Fellows made the choice to visit New York schools after reading Jonathan Kozol's "Ordinary Resurrections," depicting the lives of children in Mother Martha's after-school care program in the Mott Haven area of the Bronx. Teaching Fellows were invited to spend an afternoon tutoring in this program as well as to visit PS 30, where students from the tutoring program took the Fellows on a tour of their school. 

The Teaching Fellows visited Seward Park High in the Lower East Side of Manhattan where students have full access to a complete curriculum taught bilingually for Chinese, Spanish and Bengali students. They also visited Bard High School Early College, a collaboration of the New York City Department of Education and Bard College. Designed to offer motivated New York public school students rigorous intellectual challenge. Bard's program allows students from five boroughs of New York City to begin college level work at age sixteen. 

While in New York City, the group visited Ellis Island, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Katz's Deli. They also attended performances of "Gypsy" and "Avenue Q." In Washington, D.C., the UNCA group toured Arlington National Cemetery and the Holocaust Museum.

The North Carolina Teaching Fellows Program is designed to attract high school seniors into the teaching field. Each year the program awards 400 North Carolina High School Seniors a $26,000 scholarship for four years of undergraduate study. In return students must teach four years in a North Carolina Public School. UNCA is one of the 14 public and private North Carolina colleges and universities approved to participate in the Teaching Fellows Program.

Students who participated in the trip are:

Media Contacts:

• Brenda Hopper, UNCA Teaching Fellows Director, 828/251-6901
• Jill Yarnall, UNCA Public Information Assistant Director, 828/251-6526