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What teachers know and can do has a critical influence on what students learn - and better ways are emerging to support their professional growth.
Teacher Preparation and Renewal: Creating Conditions for Better Practice
VOLUME 3, NUMBER 2
SPRING 1999
Teacher Preparation and Renewal: Creating Conditions for Better Practice
VOLUME 3, NUMBER 2
SPRING 1999
By the time Maria Mandujano took her first job as an elementary teacher at Helms Community Learning Center in 1998, any first-year teaching jitters were already ancient history to her.
As an undergraduate at a nearby university, she had spent the previous three years assisting daily in the classrooms of this 380 student elementary school, which serves a largely low-income and Latino neighborhood of Houston's Independent School District.
Mandujano took her courses at j the University of St. Thomas after hours and on weekends, and during the school day she soaked up the expertise of seasoned mentors on the staff. While a $10,000 yearly stipend from Helms helped pay her way through college, she was learning even more valuable lessons in the real world of the classroom.
In Houston, one of several Texas districts to use the Teacher Early Entry Program (TEEP) as a means of recruiting high quality teachers for hard-to-fill positions, students like Maria Mandujano are a godsend in more ways than one.
As interns, they provide invaluable aid in the classroom, freeing teachers to give more individualized attention to students and sometimes taking over class while the regular teacher takes part in professional learning opportunities.
As entry-level teachers, they begin their careers with distinct advantages: an intimate knowledge of the school and community culture, and expectations for continual professional growth.
As Maria Mandujano finishes her first year at Helms, the district has chosen her to compete for the U. S. Education Department's First Year Teacher of the Year award.
And the TEEP program is gaining prominence as an exemplary school -university partnership that addresses one of education's most pressing problems: the preparation and renewal of high-quality teachers, especially for schools that serve communities most in need.
As an undergraduate at a nearby university, she had spent the previous three years assisting daily in the classrooms of this 380 student elementary school, which serves a largely low-income and Latino neighborhood of Houston's Independent School District.
Mandujano took her courses at j the University of St. Thomas after hours and on weekends, and during the school day she soaked up the expertise of seasoned mentors on the staff. While a $10,000 yearly stipend from Helms helped pay her way through college, she was learning even more valuable lessons in the real world of the classroom.
In Houston, one of several Texas districts to use the Teacher Early Entry Program (TEEP) as a means of recruiting high quality teachers for hard-to-fill positions, students like Maria Mandujano are a godsend in more ways than one.
As interns, they provide invaluable aid in the classroom, freeing teachers to give more individualized attention to students and sometimes taking over class while the regular teacher takes part in professional learning opportunities.
As entry-level teachers, they begin their careers with distinct advantages: an intimate knowledge of the school and community culture, and expectations for continual professional growth.
As Maria Mandujano finishes her first year at Helms, the district has chosen her to compete for the U. S. Education Department's First Year Teacher of the Year award.
And the TEEP program is gaining prominence as an exemplary school -university partnership that addresses one of education's most pressing problems: the preparation and renewal of high-quality teachers, especially for schools that serve communities most in need.
Teachers as Learners
In fact, the United States is facing an unprecedented crisis in both the supply and the qualifications of its teachers. With a massive turnover predicted as a generation retires from the classroom, and with professional conditions that lag far behind those in other fields, attracting and keeping good people in teaching has never been harder. (See sidebar, page 3.)
At the same time, the demands of the job have never seemed so formidable. Teachers must keep up with their swiftly expanding fields of knowledge. They must learn new ways to coach all children toward higher standards, and must build stronger bridges to increasingly diverse students and their families. And they get little time, -support, or resources for their own professional growth, or for sharing collegial feedback to improve their practice.
In the face of such challenges, Annenberg projects have concluded, conventional models of teacher preparation and professional development - from university -based course offerings to intermittent workshops-no longer yield sufficient results.
Instead, they are finding new ways to interweave the elements that research shows are most effective in improving the quality of teaching. Teacher preparation closely connects with the professional renewal of working teachers, in this view. Pedagogy and subject area expertise grow in tandem. And learning thrives in the context of trusting collegial relationships.
Instead of treating teachers as technicians who simply require training and testing in the basics of their trade, the Challenge regards them as professionals who will spend a lifetime inquiring into both academic subjects and the strengths and needs of their students.
It empowers teachers to make more intelligent, informed decisions in the classroom, adapting to the situations in which they teach.
From Houston to Boston, for those new to the profession as well as for seasoned veterans, this growing movement toward higher professional and intellectual status for teachers takes many forms:
In fact, the United States is facing an unprecedented crisis in both the supply and the qualifications of its teachers. With a massive turnover predicted as a generation retires from the classroom, and with professional conditions that lag far behind those in other fields, attracting and keeping good people in teaching has never been harder. (See sidebar, page 3.)
At the same time, the demands of the job have never seemed so formidable. Teachers must keep up with their swiftly expanding fields of knowledge. They must learn new ways to coach all children toward higher standards, and must build stronger bridges to increasingly diverse students and their families. And they get little time, -support, or resources for their own professional growth, or for sharing collegial feedback to improve their practice.
In the face of such challenges, Annenberg projects have concluded, conventional models of teacher preparation and professional development - from university -based course offerings to intermittent workshops-no longer yield sufficient results.
Instead, they are finding new ways to interweave the elements that research shows are most effective in improving the quality of teaching. Teacher preparation closely connects with the professional renewal of working teachers, in this view. Pedagogy and subject area expertise grow in tandem. And learning thrives in the context of trusting collegial relationships.
Instead of treating teachers as technicians who simply require training and testing in the basics of their trade, the Challenge regards them as professionals who will spend a lifetime inquiring into both academic subjects and the strengths and needs of their students.
It empowers teachers to make more intelligent, informed decisions in the classroom, adapting to the situations in which they teach.
From Houston to Boston, for those new to the profession as well as for seasoned veterans, this growing movement toward higher professional and intellectual status for teachers takes many forms:
- It brings the university into the school, through partnerships for new-teacher education, collaborative research, and laboratories and coaching relationships that help develop new curriculum and instruction.
- It changes the ways teachers work together, creating collaborative teams that analyze and critique each other's practice.
- It fosters inquiry skills among teachers, so they can construct new knowledge from their own experiences and research.
- It situates collegial teacher learning at the school, as a routine part of the work day.
- It makes public the work of teaching and learning, sharing with the larger community an inquiry into what the data reveal.
- It puts a premium on developing professional relationships through networks of every kind.
Enacting any one of these changes makes immediate ripples throughout a typical school system, Challenge projects are finding. So as they take on the task of teacher renewal, they inevitably seek changes in the larger system, too.
- Money spent on supporting and educating teachers pays off in student performance. Teachers who know a lot about teaching and learning, and who work in environments that allow them to know students well, are the critical elements of successful learning, several recent studies suggest. An analysis of 900 Texas districts by Ronald Ferguson found that student gains in math and reading were influenced more by better teachers than by any other factor. Small schools and lower class sizes in elementary school also contributed significantly - and when those three factors combined, they made more difference than even the students' backgrounds. Another study in Alabama, by Ferguson and Helen Ladd, bore similar results; and so did a review by R. Greenwald, L. V Hedges, and R.D. Laine of 60 studies on the effect of school resources on student achievement.
- Aspiring teachers who have the time to master academic areas as they learn teaching skills will per-, form better on the job. Four years of college that ends with a teaching degree gives short shrift to both practice teaching and subject-area understanding, studies show. But programs that combine college with a fifth year of teacher education, or one- to two-year graduate programs for college graduates or mid-career recruits, turn out a more diverse group of teachers who are often as confident and effective as their senior colleagues. Just as important, they are, much more likely to stay in teaching after the first few years-so investment in their education pays off.
- New teachers do better with mentor support. To get through the tough first years without leaving in dismay, beginning teachers need ongoing support from a skilled mentor in their academic field. If they have, it, attrition rates drop dramatically (often to about 5 percent, even in cities). If they don't, upwards of 30 percent of new teachers will be gone after three years.
- Teachers express more satisfaction in restructured schools. When schools give them more time to-work and learn together, and when teaching teams can work with groups of students over more extended periods of time, teachers report not only better student performance but better working conditions, better relationships with principals, and more career satisfaction, according to a 1993 Harris' survey for the Ford Foundation.
For the two reports What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future (1996) and Doing What Matters Most: Investing in Quality Teaching (1997), both by Linda Darling- Hammond, call the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future at (888) 492-1241 or visit www.tc.columbia.edu/~teachcomm.
