Accelerated Collaborative Teaching Program

The Accelerated Collaborative Teaching (ACT) Program provides a pathway for teachers to get their credential in a full credential program with student teaching in the shortest time possible. ACT students complete the credential program for Multiple Subject, Single Subject or Specialist in two semester. As an accelerated program ACT is very intense with work in the schools followed by classes at the university most days.

Since 1998, over 1500 candidates have completed the ACT program.  See number of participants by year and by program (elementary, secondary, and special education).

Education building

History

The ACT Preparation Program was developed through the DELTA (Design for Excellence: Linking Teaching and Achievement) Collaborative, an initiative of the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project (LAAMP) and supported by a 5-year grant from the Weingart Foundation. The original team of Prof. Nancy Burstein, Phyllis Gudoski, David Kretschmer and Carolyn Burch started the program as a residency at John H. Francis Polytechnic Senior High School. ACT was designed over a two-year period to restructure teacher education as a shared school-university responsibility, and to reflect best practices in preparing teachers for urban schools.  

The ACT Program is designed around a core of principles derived from focus group meetings with university and school faculty, reviews of the literature, and discussion among members of the Collaborative. The principles continue to inform the design and implementation of the ACT Program:

  • A supportive learning environment – A cohort based program with initial and ongoing advisement and mentoring provided by ACT Coordinators and faculty throughout the year.
  • Preparation to teach diverse urban learners – ACT promotes sensitivity to diversity and the dispositions, knowledge and skills necessary to teach in multicultural and multilingual settings.
  • A standards-based program – ACT is organized around the six interrelated domains of the California Standards for the Teaching Profession and state content standards.
  • A developmental approach – The scope and sequence of the content and experiences build developmentally, one upon the other.
  • Extensive and intensive field experiences – Teacher candidates complete a full year of fieldwork in the classrooms of exemplary teachers trained as coaches.
  • Professional, collaborative learning and teaching community – Through ACT, teachers, administrators, and parents in LAUSD, and teacher candidates and university faculty are collectively immersed in sharing knowledge, inquiry, and problem solving.
  • Decisions driven by evidence – Evaluation data is collected yearly on the development of teacher competencies and program satisfaction, with findings used to inform program practices.