|
December 22, 2005
ANDOVER, Mass.—Chronicle, a New England–based television newsmagazine produced by WCVB-TV in Boston, is scheduled to air a profile of the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers (IRT) on Wednesday, Dec. 28 at 7:30 p.m. WCVB-TV is an ABC affiliate station that broadcasts on Channel 5 in the New England area.
The profile will be based on a July visit Chronicle made to IRT’s four-week summer workshop, which is held each year on the Phillips Academy campus. During its visit, the Chronicle news team attended IRT classes and conferences and interviewed IRT students, faculty and staff. The visit was prompted by Chronicle’s interest in IRT’s mission to increase diversity in education by encouraging outstanding students of color to enter the teaching profession.
“The interviewer seemed to be very impressed by the program and excited by the commentary she received from the students,” said Kelly Wise, founder and executive director of IRT. “We’re gratified that Chronicle is covering IRT, especially because it helps highlight a problem of critical importance to the U.S. educational system—the dearth of teachers of color in American schools and universities.”
In addition to the on-campus interviews it conducted, the Chronicle news team also traveled to Boston to visit with two former IRT students currently working as teachers while pursuing their master’s degrees. Elizabeth Solis, currently teaches in a Boston public high school and attends graduate classes at Tufts University, and Shenora Plenty teaches elementary school in Dorchester and is a graduate student at Boston College. Solis earned her undergraduate degree at San Francisco State University, while Plenty earned hers at Boston College.
Founded in 1990, IRT is a Phillips Academy outreach program that fulfills its mission to increase diversity in education by supporting 100 students each year as they prepare for and apply to graduate schools. The students are selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants, and to qualify for the program, they must be rising college seniors or recent graduates, have excellent grades, and demonstrate a strong desire to purse a career in education. Thirty of those students are invited to participate in IRT’s four-week summer workshop, in which they have the opportunity to take intensive graduate-level seminars on a wide variety of topics.
|
