Our Vision, Mission, and Story

Born out of Partnerships to Uplift Communities and its Alumni Teach Program, the PUC Teacher Residency Program uniquely uplifts PUC alumni, employees, and area community members to become California credentialed teachers through a year-long residency program. Intensive mentoring supports, Loyola Marymount University certification coursework, and weekly implementation seminars prepare resident graduates to teach in today’s diverse urban educational settings.

Our mission at the PUC Teacher Residency Program (PUC TRP) is to recruit, train, and retain highly qualified educators from the communities we serve and to build a deep educational and cultural knowledge base that develops Teacher Residents and Mentors into self-directed reflective decision-makers.

Our Vision: PUC TRP envisions a future where all our students have access to highly qualified teachers from our communities who provide high quality rigorous instruction for our students. We believe that passionate educators grounded in their purpose and driven by a commitment to their own lifelong learning will create schools in which students feel a sense of belonging and develop their own sense of purpose and worth. We see effective teacher preparation as being supportive of teachers who are advocates for equitable, interesting, innovative, relevant, and compassionate education for all.

Our Story

PUC Teacher Residency Program began in 2013 during a teacher shortage. At the same time, PUC alumni, passionate about fulfilling the PUC third commitment of uplifting their communities now and forever, wanted to return to their middle and high schools to teach. The PUC Alumni Teach Program (PUC ATP) was ahead of its time, providing PUC alumni with a year-long, hands-on resident teaching experience paired with a credential program with PUC’s long-standing partner, Loyola Marymount University. ATP resident teachers obtained their credential in one year with the financial supported of a tuition scholarship, as well as salary and benefits, as they worked in a paraprofessional role with students and side-by-side with their mentors each day.

In 2018, the state of California, acknowledging the need to train highly qualified teachers beyond traditional credential pathways, drafted legislation to provide grants to teacher residency programs like ATP to train highly qualified teachers who would commit to serve in high needs schools. Thanks to the generous support of these state-funded grants, ATP was able to provide financial support not only to the residents it trained but also to the schools in which they served.

PUC ATP rebranded in 2023 to become the PUC Teacher Residency Program, TRP, in part as a way for PUC Schools to uplift our entire community by recruiting and training anyone from the San Fernando Valley and Northeast LA who wishes to become a teacher, and by partnering with area charter schools to join our long and strong program. At PUC TRP, we strongly believe that public charter schools and other youth and community organizations benefit from collaboration, partnership, and benevolence to best serve our youth and families now and forever. We are stronger together.

We proudly celebrate the 66 graduates of the PUC Teacher Residency Program so far, who have gone on to teach and to support students in multiple capacities. Our graduates are multiple subjects and single subject teachers, Special Education teachers, mentors, coaches, and school and community leaders. When you join PUC TRP, you become part of our family – a family that loves and supports you always.