Every teacher and intern is matched with mentors to provide ongoing support and coaching. Veteran educators and instructional supervisors provide on-site modeling, observation, and lesson plan review, and feedback is customized to each teacher’s situation, strengths, and growth areas. By extending our expertise in music education, we ensure teachers grow as educators and impact student learning as indispensable members of their school community.
Music Teacher Workforce Development Program
Building the next generation of New York City music educators.
We're creating a pipeline of high quality music teachers to provide comprehensive music instruction to all students in New York City schools.
THE CHALLENGE
We face the most significant educator workforce shortage in our nation’s history.
Experienced teachers are leaving the profession at an accelerated rate following the pandemic, and are being replaced with an increasing number of inexperienced or uncertified teachers. This trend disproportionately affects urban schools, often impacting economically disadvantaged students. In filling this gap, ETM has found that many qualified musicians, instructors, and professionals are interested in teaching music in public schools but need the opportunity, training, and support to navigate the process of becoming certified teachers.
OUR APPROACH
In response, ETM launched its Workforce Development Program during the 2023-2024 school year to improve the recruitment, training, and retention of music teachers.
Funded by a $5M grant to be used over five years, the program allows ETM to enhance and expand its support for early career educators and music teacher interns. By providing them with mentorship, guidance through the certification process, financial assistance for coursework, and access to ETM’s best-in-class professional development workshops and curriculum resources, ETM is building the next generation of high quality music educators as they become full-time certified teachers with the NYC Department of Education.
Core Components of the Program
Teacher & Intern Mentorship
Certification & Tuition Support
Professional Development
Curriculum Resources
Teacher & Intern Mentorship
Certification & Tuition Support
Our program supports ETM teachers as they pursue employment with the NYC Department of Education. To this end, we provides guidance for navigating the teaching certification process and offers tuition reimbursement for educators pursuing their degree in music education. We are also initiating a higher education residency program that will allow ETM teachers to receive college credits for our professional development and graduate with their Masters in Music Education and NYS Music Teaching Certification.
Professional Development
We provide over 100 hours of professional development annually to music teachers, including the intensive, multi-day “ETM Academy” before the start of the school year. These workshops emphasize a student-centered approach and cover an extensive variety of topics such as: social emotional learning, curriculum-driven lesson planning, trauma-informed practices, culturally responsive classroom management, leveraging technology in the classroom, age-appropriate repertoire, and much more.
Curriculum Resources
Teachers receive access to our suite of comprehensive, sequential, and culturally responsive PreK-12 curriculum resources, which include: ETM benchmarks that incorporate National Arts Standards, grade leveled units and lesson plans, repertoire, music technology software and programming materials, and a variety of diverse children’s literature and classroom resources. Our curriculum is a product of professional expertise and compassionate understanding to be inclusive and relevant to the students we teach.
Learn more on our podcast!
In this episode of ETM: The Podcast, we go inside our pioneering workforce development program to understand the origins and impact of the initiative during its first year. We speak with ETM leadership, instructional supervisors, master teachers, and ETM’s first cohort of interns for a holistic perspective on how ETM is uniquely building the next generation of music educators in NYC schools. Stream now!