UTC Center for Excellence and Innovation in Education

October 2025 Advisory Meeting - 

The Center is currently working on a new ESL Program partnering with Hamilton County Schools and the UTC School of Education. This program would provide a competitive pathway to help fill open teaching positions in our community schools. Non-traditional students will highly benefit from this asynchronous program, while also providing students with synchronous opportunities. More meetings about this program will be coming soon.

Our Literacy First Tutors Program at Brown Academy is showing growth and receiving resoundingly positive feedback. The student tutors are concluding Week 9 of the program as of October 24. The tutors are learning behavior management and how to utilize data to plan lessons and design them more accurately for each student at their current level. This real time data combined with strategic lesson plans has promoted growth among the majority of the students.

Once per semester, Dr. Stewart and the UTC tutors sit down for a data meeting and discuss each student and how they've grown. While hard data is shared at this meeting, these meetings are also a time of reflection. The tutors share stories about their experiences with each student and celebrate their wins, like how each student is connecting with learning which is helping them connect with their peers and community. 

Surveys taken by tutors and non-tutors have found that the tutors feel much more confident in their understanding of literacy in both their coursework and experiences compared to non-tutors. Non-tutors felt like they lacked a deep field experience opportunity before Residency (student teaching), while the tutors shared that they feel well supported and feel they will already be better prepared for teaching after having this tutoring experience so early in their program. 

Due to the program's overall success, the advisory is already looking into expanding this program to reach broader educational needs around the community.