Institute for Recruitment of Teachers

IRT Hiring Advisors!

The time to hire Statement of Purpose Advisors (SOPAs) is upon us! The IRT seeks to hire 15-20 alumni or similarly qualified applicants to serve as SOPAs for the incoming 2024 cohort. A full description of the role, length of employment, compensation, and qualifications can be found in the job description here. The deadline to apply is March 17^th.

Anyone with questions about the role should reach out to Arts & Sciences Programs Specialist Brittany A. Zorn at bzorn@andover.edu. Previous SOPAs have said about the role:

“I applied to be an SOPA advisor because I would not be where I am today without IRT. The individualized attention I received through the program, the academic and emotional support, and the knowledge I gained was priceless. It is my greatest hope that I can give any student I work with the same feeling of confidence that no matter where I ended after the application deadline was over, I had done everything I could. Every individual in the IRT program belongs in academia, and I am incredibly proud to be a part of this program.”
Yasmin Mendoza, IRT ’21

“I’m really excited to return to the IRT community as a Statement of Purpose Advisor. With the support of Leslie and LaShawnda a few years ago, I found the process of writing a Statement of Purpose to be an important and rewarding intellectual journey that helped me refine my ideas, weave my lived experiences and interests into a narrative, and articulate my scholarship and its significance in different words. I look forward to becoming a thought partner to IRT scholars in their intellectual adventures!”
Woohee Kim, IRT ’19

IRT Letter, January 2024

Greetings from IRT!

We hope the holidays offered you time to rest, reflect and rejuvenate. Venturing into the new year, we are excited to continue to explore IRT’s future. Given the continuing urgency and crisis of our times, we know we need more diverse teachers, specialists, administrators, and professors now. We know that change does not happen in isolation or departmental vacuums. With the mounting challenges to what we teach, how we teach, where we teach, and who we teach with, the IRT represents a throughline of community, connection, and care.

The IRT Furthering Connections and Conversation

In partnership with educational thought leaders across the country, the IRT engages in conversations on the current landscape, implementing change, and sharing knowledge.

October 2023

In October Catherine Wong, IRT Associate Director and Manager of Programs, co-presented with Gerry Ebalaroza-Tunnell, PhD at the 13th International Conference on Education and Justice led by Kevin Kumashiro, PhD, currently the Interim Dean of the School of Education at Hofstra University, and hosted by the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, College of Education, University Laboratory School (HI) and Hawai‘i Scholars for Education and Social Justice (HSESJ). The theme of the conference was “Collective Scholarship for Public Pedagogy and Against Empire,” and the title of their workshop was “Whose Talk Story? Our Talk Story; Battling the Empire Through Pōkā Laenui’s Process of Decolonization.”

(L-R) Jennifer Dazo Bishop, Ke Kula Kaiapuni ‘O Pū‘ōhala, Gerry Ebalaroza-Tunnell, Co3 Consulting, Jose Paolo Magcalas, California State University at Los Angeles

The 2023 UNCF/Mellon Programs Conference

IRT Education Programs Specialist Leislie Godo-Solo, IRT ’91 collaborated with colleagues and presented in this one-day workshop. This year’s annual conference, which was held in Atlanta, focused on the imperative to transform the academy.

On Process: Tenure and Beyond

David Sterling Brown, IRT ’08, Associate Professor of English at Trinity College in Connecticut

In 2009, thanks to IRT—and the exceptional guidance I received from my IRT advisor Leislie Godo-Solo—I was accepted into NYU’s English PhD program off the waitlist. Despite applying to about ten grad programs, NYU was the only one that accepted me and my low GRE score, which recalled the low 940 combined SAT score I had when my undergrad alma mater Trinity College (Connecticut) accepted me in 2001. And so, I quit my job as Teach For America’s Connecticut Recruitment Director and began commuting from Connecticut, my home state, to NYU for several years as I took grad classes and taught, and eventually finished drafting my dissertation during my 2013-14 Trinity College Ann Plato Predoctoral Fellowship. With my dissertation fully drafted by Spring 2014, I went on the academic job market that Fall and landed a job as Assistant Professor of English, of Shakespeare and critical race studies, at the University of Arizona.

Connecting and Supporting Teachers

Alyssa Strykers, IRT ’14 shares her experiences leading up to her current role as an assistant principal

I am currently an Assistant Principal at Inwood Academy for Leadership in Manhattan, New York. I was born and raised in NYC and went to Davidson College where I majored in Anthropology with a concentration in Education. Next, I began my career in education with Citizen Schools in NY to see if I truly wanted to pursue teaching.

After my 2-year Americorp commitment, I left NYC to pursue a M.Ed at Boston College (Masters in Moderate Special Needs) through the Donovan Urban Teaching Scholars Program led by Catherine Wong, former Director, Urban Outreach Initiatives. Catherine actively recruited me from IRT. If you are considering a leadership position down the line, I suggest a pathway to special education. You can be a more effective leader when you can teach and differentiate for students who need it the most. You also may be able to receive dual certification in some states. Originally, I thought I would return to NYC right after completion of my Masters but fell in love with my school in Dorchester. I waited until my first cohort of students graduated before returning to teach in NYC. The one thing I wish I had done differently was get my NY teaching certification while I was still in Massachusetts because the transfer of certification was a headache.