Empowering Math Teachers to Lead and Thrive in Los Angeles

Q: What is the difference between the Master Teacher Fellowship and the STEM Teacher Corps Fellowship?

 

A: Math for America Los Angeles has been offering multi-year teacher fellowships since 2008. The Los Angeles STEM Teacher Corps Fellowship program is modeled after these Math for America Los Angeles Master Teacher Fellowships.

STEM Teacher Corps Fellowships are open to grades upper-elementary (grades 4-5 or 4-6, depending on your school) teachers of mathematics in LAUSD.

MfA LA Master Teacher Fellowships are open to middle- and high-school teachers of mathematics and/or computer science in any district in the greater Los Angeles area.

All fellows will share and learn from one another, regardless of which type of fellowship they have.

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Q: Who is responsible for this Los Angeles Math Teacher Corps Program?

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Math educators and teacher leaders from Math for America Los Angeles, Harvey Mudd College, Cal State Fullerton, Cal Poly Pomona, and UCLA Center X are all working together to design this program.

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Q: How much additional time does the fellowship require? Will this increase my workload?

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The fellowship is designed to be sustainable alongside your teaching responsibilities. Teaching release time and stipends are built into the program so that fellows can participate without simply adding more work on top of an already full schedule.

Whenever possible, the program works with schools to provide collaboration time during the school day through release periods or equivalent coverage (see question below). This allows fellows to work on their improvement plans, collaborate with partners, and engage in professional learning as part of their professional responsibilities rather than outside of contract hours.

While fellows do participate in activities such as monthly Saturday meetings, Learning Lab days, and improvement planning, the goal of the fellowship is to support meaningful professional growth without increasing overall workload.

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Q: Do I have to apply with a colleague from my school? What if I have a team of more than two people?

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Yes, the program is designed to emphasize teacher collaboration, so teachers cannot apply individually from a school. If you teach at a school site with multiple small learning communities, you can apply with teachers from the same school site, as long as you can explain how your small learning communities can work together.

Teams of more than two people are welcome to apply.

If your improvement plan involves the participation of a coach, TOSA, or administrator, this can be described in your plan description. However, those individuals typically don't also apply as a Fellows as all Fellows need to meet the eligibility requirements (see next question).

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Q: I'm a teacher on special assignment (TOSA)/coach. Am I eligible?

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You remain eligible for this fellowship as long as you teach for at least 50% of your school's allotted instructional time. Teachers who currently don't meet that requirement are eligible to apply as long as they plan to modify their teaching assignment to meet this requirement.

 

Q: Do I have to have a course buy-out if I am selected as a fellow? How do these buy-outs work?

 

The goal of these buy-outs is to create time in the school day for Fellows to work with one another. This Fellowship asks teachers to take on a new responsibility for improving learning and we want to create time for that work wherever possible, instead of asking teachers to do more work in the same amount of time. This buy-out is not a requirement of the program, but a benefit for the team, when it is appropriate for everyone involved.

For middle- and high-school teachers, we work with your school to buy out one of your course periods, whenever it makes sense for the team. 

For upper-elementary teachers, we can work with your school to offer an auxiliary to TOSA or coach or other person in your school to cover a portion of your teaching so that you have time to work with your partner(s).

There are various ways that this additional collaboration time can be used. One option is for both Fellows to both gain an additional block of time concurrently. This common collaboration time would enable both teachers to work together without using their own planning time or without having to meet before or after school, which is often difficult for teachers to do because of other obligations. Another option is to buy out a period of time for one teacher, so that the pair of Fellows co-teach together.

Fellows are not allowed to have a course buy-out and then be paid extra to teach an "auxiliary", as this would defeat the purpose of the collaboration period, which is to provide valuable time for teachers to make progress on their improvement plans.

Even with one less period of teaching, Fellows must still meet the requirement that they have responsibilities for teaching students no less than 50% of their school’s allotted instructional time.

 

Q: What does the application entail?
View checklist. 

The application form has four parts: (1) Personal Information, (2) Lesson Plan, (3) School Improvement Plan, and (4) Recommender Information. 

Part 1 asks for your contact information, where and what you teach, National Board Certification status, resume/CV, a personal statement addressing the question "How am I continuing to grow into the teacher that I want to be?", transcripts of relevant coursework (i.e. all of your STEM, education, and certification coursework, whether it is at the undergraduate or graduate level), and demographic information. Unofficial transcripts are fine; if you want to send official transcripts to us, they can be emailed to transcripts@mfala.org.

Part 2: You'll be asked to submit a lesson plan that helps us understand who you are as an educator, along with a brief description of that lesson. You'll be asked to include a few student artifacts from that lesson, but please don't include any identifiable student information. (See the application form for more details.)

Part 3: Your team will describe a plan for improving student learning outcomes at your school over the duration of your fellowship. This should be a plan that you work out together, with approval of your school leadership. (See the application form and the question below for more details.) Each member of your school site team must apply separately, but only one member of the team needs to submit your School Improvement Plan. It's fine if more than one person submits it using this form, but each person should submit the same document(s).

Part 4: Submission of your application will trigger a request for letters to be sent to each of your recommenders. Two recommenders are required at minimum, three are suggested (ideally 1 each from current principal, colleague, coach).

All components are due by end of day on Apr 3, 2026; recommendation letters must be submitted by your letter writers by end of day on April 17, 2026.

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Q: How will my application be reviewed? What happens after my application is submitted?

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Applications will be reviewed for evidence of a deep concern for students’ learning, for evidence of growth resulting from prior PD experiences, demonstrated leadership in math education, and deep knowledge of math content and pedagogical practices. Teachers would be selected based on their potential for enacting school change, partly from their improvement plans. We will consider the appropriateness of their improvement plans in light of school and district policies and contexts and how potentially impactful their plans might be for equitable student learning outcomes and teacher growth. Improvement plans must also be approved by school leadership.

After an initial review of applications, a set of finalists would be selected for interviews and classroom observations. Applicant pairs would be interviewed and rated in these dimensions: passion and aptitude for mathematics; demonstrated effectiveness at teaching; passion for learning and growing in their teaching skills; understanding of racial justice issues and desire to broaden participation in STEM; leadership capacity and sense of personal responsibility; ability to adapt to changing situations and unexpected events; and readiness of school and department to take on the proposed improvement project.

 

Q: What kind of improvement plans are we supposed to implement?

 

Your team will describe a plan for improving student learning outcomes at your school over the duration of your fellowship. This should be a plan that you work out together, with approval of your school leadership. ​

These improvement plans need to fit the particulars of your school, student needs, and teaching contexts, so only you can come up with an ambitious project to improve student learning at your school. 

However, based on our past experiences, some common characteristics of improvement plans have been successful:

• Is aligned with local school needs, conditions, and policies

• Is informed by research on student learning

• Places students at the center of work, particularly those who have historically been left out of high-quality mathematics instruction

• Aims to bring about more equitable student learning outcomes

• Includes ways of measuring the success of implementation

• Is ambitious and achievable

• Has approval by school leadership and buy-in from relevant stakeholders

• Here are some examples of improvement plans that teachers have proposed and completed: establishing new pathways leading to Advanced Placement courses; working with computer science teachers to build pathways for students to pursue data science; implementing alternative forms of grading in their department.