UTEACH Program Gets Support

Published June 2, 2015

UTEACH ProgramOne of California State University, Long Beach’s most successful teaching programs is offering new student stipends and scholarships thanks to a generous $500,000 gift from SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union (FCU).

CSULB’s Urban Teacher Education Academy (UTEACH) is a training and professional development program offered to students in the College of Education. The yearlong intensive involves teaching methods classes and student teaching in a Long Beach Unified School District elementary school. The program has been so successful that the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, and the American Association of Colleges for Teaching Education named it one of the nation’s top teacher preparation programs.UTEACH Program

SchoolsFirst FCU’s grant will support the program over the next five years, and provide five $5,000 scholarships each year as well as $1,000-$2,000 stipends for all program participants. The financial help for students, for whom student teaching is usually a full-time, unpaid job, will afford them some freedom to focus on their training.

“Because I’m less stressed, it allows me to perform my best every day,” said current student Jodie Podeszwik, who is benefiting from the grant.

The grant will also help continue to improve educational experiences for children in local urban schools. Master teacher and alumna Trina White said that in the process of teaching UTEACH students, she also discovers new ways to teach in the classroom. The children also get more out of Common Core curriculum, she said, because they are getting to learn from different teachers’ styles.  

Written by Sharon Hong