What Generation Schools does

• In-school residencies for teachers-in-training. Generation Schools partners with schools of education to create an intensive residency program for graduate education students pursuing their teaching certifications. This path-breaking residency program allows new teachers to become fully prepared to teach upon receiving their certification and thus less likely to abandon the profession during the first, most difficult years of their careers.
  
• Operational innovations in scheduling and staffing to address chronic structural challenges inherent in traditional school models. Some of the benefits derived from Generation School’s scheduling and staffing innovations include the following:
• Low and flexible teacher:student instructional ratios at traditional per pupil expenditures. Through its residency program, Generation Schools integrates graduate education students throughout the school routine to offer an affordable strategy for providing extraordinarily low and flexible teacher-to-student instructional ratios.
• Common planning time for teachers within the school day hours. Generation Schools integrates professional development time into teachers’ standard workday, providing 1,000 hours of training for teachers in the first year of the school’s operation.
• An extended academic year for students with a reduced work year for teachers. Many of the most successful charter schools extend their hours of instruction by extending their school day and year. Generation Schools does the same for students, but by maintaining a rotation for teachers, allows its adult staff to enjoy the same vacation as their peers working at traditional schools.
• Opportunities for test preparation without “teaching to the test” during regular class-time. The flexible format of a Generation School allows it to familiarize students with test-taking techniques and review key content in the weeks leading up to tests while protecting core academic periods from rote drill-and-skill teaching techniques that dull student excitement about learning.