New York City Teaching Fellows is now a sponsor of One Day, One Job. Check out our sponsored post to get an updated look at their teaching opportunities for new grads.

Do you remember the name of your first grade teacher? If the answer is yes, think about the impact that he or she had on your life. If your answer was no, either you partied a little too hard in college or your teacher didn’t give you the educational experience that you deserved. Every child should be able to look back on his or her teachers and appreciate their devotion to education. New York City Teaching Fellows wants to help make you somebody that will be remembered.

The New York City Public School System, with 1.1 million students, has an especially dire need for devoted teachers. Since teachers are legally required to gain certification before they teach, the shortage is exacerbated by the hurdles applicants must jump over to enter the field. In 2000 New York City’s Department of Education collaborated with the New Teacher Project to form New York City Teaching Fellows as an alternative certification program. Instead of requiring teachers to go through the traditional teacher education program, Fellows engage in a short, intensive pre-service training program and then complete their subsidized Master’s of Education while they teach. Since 2000, NYCTF has added 13,000 new teachers to New York City’s public schools from over 115,000 applicants. Talk about filling a need.

Over the past 7 years, NYCTF has become a very selective organization with only 1 in 8 applicants being hired on average despite the fact that the program has been expanded to 2,000 Fellows a year. NYCTF hires from all backgrounds. They are looking for both career changers and recent college graduates. The awesome thing about NYCTF’s job requirements is that the list of things you can’t have done before is longer than the list of things you should have done. They want people who are new to teaching whether it is their first or twelfth job. In fact, they don’t even care what you majored in. If you want to teach Math or Science but didn’t have a relevant major, NYCTF offers Math and Science Immersion Programs. NYCTF is more impressed by who you are and how you can lead than what experiences you’ve compiled for your resume.

As if the opportunity to touch the lives of children every day isn’t enough, NYCTF also offers excellent benefits and a starting salary of $45,530 for recent grads with only a Bachelor’s Degree. On top of that are the subsidized Master’s Degree and a nontaxable $2,500 stipend during the training period. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, and to begin as a June Fellow (for the 2008-2009 school year) your application must be submitted by January, 7th.

Overall, the NYCTF website is phenomenal. It’s easy to navigate and includes every detail you would want to know about the program. The site is what corporate careers sites should look like. Unfortunately, there is one glaring error on the site. It’s easy to access every page on the site, except the application page. Here at One Day, One Job we uses Apple Macs with the Safari browser. When we try to go to their application page, we get a browser not supported error. The silly thing about this is that our browser is supported! We know how to trick the site into thinking we’re using Firefox or Internet Explorer, and then it works fine. What is happening is that they block “unsupported browsers” from viewing the page, even if the browser can display the page perfectly fine. I hate to think how many applicants are being frustrated by this (especially with the growth in Mac users over the past few years).

We don’t want to end this post on a sour note, though. New York City Teaching Fellows is an amazing program for college graduates whether you are planning on a lifelong career in teaching or just want to try it out for a few years.

Note: On April 26th we revisited entry-level jobs at New York City Teaching Fellows.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• The New York City Teaching Fellows Home Page
• What is the Fellowship?
• NYCTF for Recent College Graduates
• Eligibility Requirements
• Meet a Fellow
• Video Profiles of NYC Teaching Fellows
• NYCTF Frequently Asked Questions
• Teaching in NYC

Teaching can be a stressful job, why not enter our contest so that you can relax by playing Nintendo Wii after a long day at school?

We've identified New York City Teaching Fellows as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• all employers
• education
• fellowship programs
• New York
• non-profit
• teaching

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4 responses to “New York City Teaching Fellows”

1. Alyssa says:

   December 11, 2007 at 6:54 pm

   There are many other opportunities very similar to the NYCTF. These types of programs have actually become increasingly competitive in recent years, and you will do yourself a favor by looking into similar programs and applying for others that interest you as well. For instance, Washington DC, Baltimore, Oakland, Memphis, Miami, Philadelphia, Texas, Chicago, and Indianapolis also have Teaching Fellow programs. Teach For America has a webpage with the links to all of these program sites, as well as MANY other similar opportunities. That resource guide can be found here:
   http://www.teachforamerica.org/admissions/resource_guide.htm

   Reply
2. TONYA says:

   August 4, 2008 at 12:30 pm

   I LOVE NYCTF. GREAT PROGRAM.

   Reply
3. stad says:

   November 16, 2008 at 5:12 am

   nyctf is a horrible program
   i’m not coming to flame but to tell my experience

   i moved out to ny from mpls in june, and since then its been a roller coaster ride with fellows, i’ve had 3 job sites and just got ‘hired’ when in fact the school has no room for me in the budget and in less than a month i get kicked from the program. i’m not the only one that this has happened to either, hundreds of fellows around the 5 boroughs feel my pain and anger at nyctf

   why move to ny for this
   outrageous

   Reply
4. Willy Franzen says:

   November 18, 2008 at 2:44 pm

   Hi stad,

   Programs like NYCTF aren’t for everyone. Inner city public schools are often a mess, so trying to work with them can often be difficult. I don’t know the details of your case, but your point might have more effect if you use proper grammar (capitalization and punctuation perhaps).

   Reply