Teacher Education Programs Date
Murnen—Field-Based Model
1
Teacher Education Programs Date: Program Name: Name of Person Completing Form: Program Vision & Priorities:
2/28/2013 AYA and maybe MCE Tim Murnen
The Blue Ribbon-Panel on Teacher Preparation (www.ncate.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=zzeiB1OoqPk%3D.. .715), published in November 2010—nearly 3 years ago— calls for turning Teacher Education programs “upside-down” (p. 2). Essentially, they call for placing the field experience at the center of the program, realigning the distinct silos that separate content into existing courses, and developing the necessary deep, rich genuine partnerships with the schools that take on our students.
Course
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Field Experience at the Center of Program Design: ELA.EvalRubric.1.19.13.docx Instead of having a course-driven program, we need to develop a field-experience driven program. Each semester, every student is assigned a grade-appropriate, content-area appropriate placement. We ensure that along the way, every student gets an urban, suburban, and rural experience. For AYA, every student will get experiences in grades 7-8, as well as 9-12. MCE students get experiences in 4-5, 6, 7-8. Integrated Early Childhood can do the same thing, and already are envisioning such a model, so I am told. With a field-driven program, there would no longer be a scheduling conflict for students who need multiple courses with field experiences in the same semester. Currently, students have to weigh the challenge of taking EDHD 2010, EDIS 2310, EDTL 27x0, EDFI 3030, etc. because they all require separate field experiences. If the field experience was the center piece of our program, a student could take EDIS 2310 and EDFI 303 or EDHD 2010, etc. in the same semester, because they would do their field hours for those classes all in the same field site. In addition, particular courses with overlapping content or compatible content could be paired, so that students engage the material from both classes as an integrated or semiintegrated body of thought and practice. Furthermore, this might enable us to blur the lines between courses even further. Perhaps instead of two 3-hour courses, these courses might blend into one 4 or 5-hour course. If we focus on the essential content, dovetailed with the essential companion field-experience, we might find that our students can engage the same essential content in fewer classroom hours, while increasing the time in the field, and improving the value of that time in the field.
Murnen—Field-Based Model
2
Furthermore, we ensure students have multiple, rich, appropriate field experiences every semester. Many students arrive to Methods and Student Teaching without engaging appropriate field experiences, and without doing the serious discernment required of the professionals we want them to become. Many spend a few weeks in a school in Methods, or finally take on the heavy-lifting of Student Teaching, and realize then, after 4 years in our program, that this is not the profession for them. This discernment needs to happen much earlier. But it needs to be engaged within a model that provides multiple rich field-experiences. Stronger Partnerships with Schools Naysayers will say: “We can’t possibly find placements for all these students every semester. There aren’t enough teachers, or really strong teachers, to go around.” Fair enough. This is a genuine concern. At the same time, P-12 teachers are looking at the new OTES (Ohio Teacher Evaluation System) and are saying, en masse, “We are too worried about our own jobs, and showing the value-added component of our teaching, that we can’t afford to turn our classrooms over to BGSU student teachers. Why would we take our A-Team out of the classroom and replace it with the B-Team—the student teacher?” OTES requires teachers to show student improvement each year in order to verify teacher effectiveness. This is serious business for these teachers, and it is coming very quickly. It should be serious business for us at BGSU EDHD as well; without their classrooms, we have no program. Instead of burdening the classroom teacher with an unskilled student teacher, instead of pulling the veteran teacher out of the classroom paradigm and replacing her or him with the rookie student teacher, we need to view the classroom paradigm, and our partnership with these teachers and schools, in a new way. We clearly need to engage the co-teaching philosophy, not in name only, but in rich and innovative ways that support the success of that classroom teacher while simultaneously giving our student teachers rich classroom experiences early and often through the educational pipeline. Instead of taking the veteran teacher out of the classroom, what if we placed a team of students in that teacher’s classroom to support the teaching and learning? We have begun to pilot this model on a small scale using EDTL 4810 Student Teachers and EDTL 2710 pre-methods students. The veteran teacher, Mr. Jones, remains in the classroom and co-teaches with the student teacher, Ms. Jackson. Meanwhile, one or even two EDTL 2710 students, Ms. Smith and Mr. Myers, come into the classroom once or twice a week to engage in entry-level and mid-level field experiences. They begin by observing the veteran teacher teach. They observe the student teacher teach. They interview the veteran teacher about the role, the challenges, etc. of being a teacher while the student teacher teachers. They return in subsequent weeks to assist in the classroom, perhaps leading small group guided reading, or leading station teaching within the co-teaching model. Perhaps they learn to design bulletin boards, or grade papers, or enter grades into the computer. They learn, early on, how complex the job of a teacher is, and they get a hands-on, boots on the ground reality check about being a teacher. If we expanded this model, we might imagine that one of the younger pre-service teachers might be from EDHD 2010, or EDIS 2310, or EDFI 3030. These students would observe, assist, and interact in appropriate-ways for the content of those courses.
Murnen—Field-Based Model
3
The student teacher gets assistance with some of the complex tasks of teaching, but also gets to serve as a mentor to the younger students, showing them how to survive student teaching. Currently, younger students have very little idea what student teaching entails, and some students crash and burn when they hit the reality of student teaching. This model would ensure that they have been mentored into the role of student teacher early on in their field experience. Most importantly, we bring in a world of support for the classroom teacher. Our students can provide structure and support for the myriad tasks that burden the classroom teacher everyday. Beyond the undergraduate students we could send to work with and for these teachers, we could send graduate students from our various programs to bring a more sophisticated layer of support to the classroom teacher, or to the school—grad students in Curriculum Studies, Technology, Reading, Intervention Specialists, Higher Ed, Phys Ed., etc. To do this, we need to re-see our role in Teacher Education. We need to get out of our classrooms and off this campus and into our partner schools to co-design curriculum with P-12 teachers and administrators—our curriculum and their curriculum. We need to strip our courses down, focusing on the essential material that needs to be addressed in face-to-face class time. The rest of our curriculum can be addressed in the hands-on engagement of the field experience. We might find that our students need less of the disconnected educational theory when the work of our classrooms is more closely aligned to the work students will be doing in their field sites. We need to offer the same rich content in fewer courses. While the recent CORE project took a systematic look at each of the CORE courses in our program, it didn’t go further to imagine a reconfiguration of these courses. It might help if we took the CORE findings, and extracted the core objectives across our program. Then, with the core objectives in front of us, we re-envision a set of or sequence of courses that achieve these objectives more effectively and efficiently. We haven’t begun to do this. P-12 teachers and principals are going to need to see us as partners. Right now, they perceive our students as a burden on their system, and on the work they are trying to do. This model is a serious disservice to these schools. Right now, there is no added value that we bring to their schools and their classrooms. We need to reverse this paradigm. We need to bring a value-added component to our relationship with these schools. They need to see that we can help. So where can we help? First, we are sending lots of students to these teachers to help. Second, our training of these teachers must be more closely aligned to the challenges these teachers face, so that our students are better able to handle the realities of today’s classrooms earlier in their program. We can design research projects grounded in the needs of particular schools, so that as we write grants and implement interventions and collect data, we are engaging in research that will answer questions or solve real problems faced in these schools. Instead of designing distinct research projects that pull us all in different
Murnen—Field-Based Model
4
directions, we pool our energies and expertise into common efforts aimed at real change in real schools. Professional Development Schools are one model that can help us accomplish this vision, but if we only set up one or two isolated PDSes in a couple of locations, it doesn’t serve as a comprehensive model for our program. We need to create lots of rich partnerships with schools, whether we call them all PDS partnerships or not. In my own experience, I can say that we already have a number of schools that could easily be our partners in this new approach; we just need to engage their needs as we seriously consider our own. Maritime Academy wants more of our students in their school. Fostoria has huge needs that our graduate Reading program is attempting to address, but to strengthen this partnership, Fostoria needs to see what we can do to help them. They need to know that when our students walk in the door, they aren’t a drain on their program, but an asset. Gibsonburg is another school system that would work with us if and when they perceive that we can bring something to the relationship. I would say the same of Findlay HS. They have some really good teachers that my students need to work with, but I also know that my students need to be better prepared to handle the complex challenges of at-risk students. But if I were getting my students into these schools earlier on, they would be ready to handle the challenges of student teaching in ways they currently are not ready to handle. Maumee High School has excellent teachers, and I know my students (2000 and 4000-level students) can benefit from even more interaction with these teachers. Four County Career Center— same thing; a great potential partner. Any number of schools or districts could play a significant role in this new approach, but we need to make some significant changes— now. We need to increase our presence in these schools, and pool our resources and energies to create a coherent teacher education program across all our various programs, including graduate and undergraduate programs. We need to offer more courses in the evening to free up day time for students to be in schools. Or we need to offer some courses in a classroom in a school during the school day. A PDS partnership would allow us to teach all kinds of courses (EDHD 201, EDIS 2310, EDFI 303, EDFI 4080, EDAS 4090, classroom management, etc., for instance) right in the partner school, with teachers, guidance counselors & school psychologists, intervention specialists, administrators, union stewards, parents, police/fire/safety officers, etc. as the coinstructors of these courses.
Murnen—Field-Based Model
Field-Based Teacher Education Model Fall Semester
Spring Semester
Yr1 Course
Course
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Yr2 Course
Course
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Yr3 Course
Course
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Yr4 Course
Course
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
5
1
Teacher Education Programs Date: Program Name: Name of Person Completing Form: Program Vision & Priorities:
2/28/2013 AYA and maybe MCE Tim Murnen
The Blue Ribbon-Panel on Teacher Preparation (www.ncate.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=zzeiB1OoqPk%3D.. .715), published in November 2010—nearly 3 years ago— calls for turning Teacher Education programs “upside-down” (p. 2). Essentially, they call for placing the field experience at the center of the program, realigning the distinct silos that separate content into existing courses, and developing the necessary deep, rich genuine partnerships with the schools that take on our students.
Course
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Field Experience at the Center of Program Design: ELA.EvalRubric.1.19.13.docx Instead of having a course-driven program, we need to develop a field-experience driven program. Each semester, every student is assigned a grade-appropriate, content-area appropriate placement. We ensure that along the way, every student gets an urban, suburban, and rural experience. For AYA, every student will get experiences in grades 7-8, as well as 9-12. MCE students get experiences in 4-5, 6, 7-8. Integrated Early Childhood can do the same thing, and already are envisioning such a model, so I am told. With a field-driven program, there would no longer be a scheduling conflict for students who need multiple courses with field experiences in the same semester. Currently, students have to weigh the challenge of taking EDHD 2010, EDIS 2310, EDTL 27x0, EDFI 3030, etc. because they all require separate field experiences. If the field experience was the center piece of our program, a student could take EDIS 2310 and EDFI 303 or EDHD 2010, etc. in the same semester, because they would do their field hours for those classes all in the same field site. In addition, particular courses with overlapping content or compatible content could be paired, so that students engage the material from both classes as an integrated or semiintegrated body of thought and practice. Furthermore, this might enable us to blur the lines between courses even further. Perhaps instead of two 3-hour courses, these courses might blend into one 4 or 5-hour course. If we focus on the essential content, dovetailed with the essential companion field-experience, we might find that our students can engage the same essential content in fewer classroom hours, while increasing the time in the field, and improving the value of that time in the field.
Murnen—Field-Based Model
2
Furthermore, we ensure students have multiple, rich, appropriate field experiences every semester. Many students arrive to Methods and Student Teaching without engaging appropriate field experiences, and without doing the serious discernment required of the professionals we want them to become. Many spend a few weeks in a school in Methods, or finally take on the heavy-lifting of Student Teaching, and realize then, after 4 years in our program, that this is not the profession for them. This discernment needs to happen much earlier. But it needs to be engaged within a model that provides multiple rich field-experiences. Stronger Partnerships with Schools Naysayers will say: “We can’t possibly find placements for all these students every semester. There aren’t enough teachers, or really strong teachers, to go around.” Fair enough. This is a genuine concern. At the same time, P-12 teachers are looking at the new OTES (Ohio Teacher Evaluation System) and are saying, en masse, “We are too worried about our own jobs, and showing the value-added component of our teaching, that we can’t afford to turn our classrooms over to BGSU student teachers. Why would we take our A-Team out of the classroom and replace it with the B-Team—the student teacher?” OTES requires teachers to show student improvement each year in order to verify teacher effectiveness. This is serious business for these teachers, and it is coming very quickly. It should be serious business for us at BGSU EDHD as well; without their classrooms, we have no program. Instead of burdening the classroom teacher with an unskilled student teacher, instead of pulling the veteran teacher out of the classroom paradigm and replacing her or him with the rookie student teacher, we need to view the classroom paradigm, and our partnership with these teachers and schools, in a new way. We clearly need to engage the co-teaching philosophy, not in name only, but in rich and innovative ways that support the success of that classroom teacher while simultaneously giving our student teachers rich classroom experiences early and often through the educational pipeline. Instead of taking the veteran teacher out of the classroom, what if we placed a team of students in that teacher’s classroom to support the teaching and learning? We have begun to pilot this model on a small scale using EDTL 4810 Student Teachers and EDTL 2710 pre-methods students. The veteran teacher, Mr. Jones, remains in the classroom and co-teaches with the student teacher, Ms. Jackson. Meanwhile, one or even two EDTL 2710 students, Ms. Smith and Mr. Myers, come into the classroom once or twice a week to engage in entry-level and mid-level field experiences. They begin by observing the veteran teacher teach. They observe the student teacher teach. They interview the veteran teacher about the role, the challenges, etc. of being a teacher while the student teacher teachers. They return in subsequent weeks to assist in the classroom, perhaps leading small group guided reading, or leading station teaching within the co-teaching model. Perhaps they learn to design bulletin boards, or grade papers, or enter grades into the computer. They learn, early on, how complex the job of a teacher is, and they get a hands-on, boots on the ground reality check about being a teacher. If we expanded this model, we might imagine that one of the younger pre-service teachers might be from EDHD 2010, or EDIS 2310, or EDFI 3030. These students would observe, assist, and interact in appropriate-ways for the content of those courses.
Murnen—Field-Based Model
3
The student teacher gets assistance with some of the complex tasks of teaching, but also gets to serve as a mentor to the younger students, showing them how to survive student teaching. Currently, younger students have very little idea what student teaching entails, and some students crash and burn when they hit the reality of student teaching. This model would ensure that they have been mentored into the role of student teacher early on in their field experience. Most importantly, we bring in a world of support for the classroom teacher. Our students can provide structure and support for the myriad tasks that burden the classroom teacher everyday. Beyond the undergraduate students we could send to work with and for these teachers, we could send graduate students from our various programs to bring a more sophisticated layer of support to the classroom teacher, or to the school—grad students in Curriculum Studies, Technology, Reading, Intervention Specialists, Higher Ed, Phys Ed., etc. To do this, we need to re-see our role in Teacher Education. We need to get out of our classrooms and off this campus and into our partner schools to co-design curriculum with P-12 teachers and administrators—our curriculum and their curriculum. We need to strip our courses down, focusing on the essential material that needs to be addressed in face-to-face class time. The rest of our curriculum can be addressed in the hands-on engagement of the field experience. We might find that our students need less of the disconnected educational theory when the work of our classrooms is more closely aligned to the work students will be doing in their field sites. We need to offer the same rich content in fewer courses. While the recent CORE project took a systematic look at each of the CORE courses in our program, it didn’t go further to imagine a reconfiguration of these courses. It might help if we took the CORE findings, and extracted the core objectives across our program. Then, with the core objectives in front of us, we re-envision a set of or sequence of courses that achieve these objectives more effectively and efficiently. We haven’t begun to do this. P-12 teachers and principals are going to need to see us as partners. Right now, they perceive our students as a burden on their system, and on the work they are trying to do. This model is a serious disservice to these schools. Right now, there is no added value that we bring to their schools and their classrooms. We need to reverse this paradigm. We need to bring a value-added component to our relationship with these schools. They need to see that we can help. So where can we help? First, we are sending lots of students to these teachers to help. Second, our training of these teachers must be more closely aligned to the challenges these teachers face, so that our students are better able to handle the realities of today’s classrooms earlier in their program. We can design research projects grounded in the needs of particular schools, so that as we write grants and implement interventions and collect data, we are engaging in research that will answer questions or solve real problems faced in these schools. Instead of designing distinct research projects that pull us all in different
Murnen—Field-Based Model
4
directions, we pool our energies and expertise into common efforts aimed at real change in real schools. Professional Development Schools are one model that can help us accomplish this vision, but if we only set up one or two isolated PDSes in a couple of locations, it doesn’t serve as a comprehensive model for our program. We need to create lots of rich partnerships with schools, whether we call them all PDS partnerships or not. In my own experience, I can say that we already have a number of schools that could easily be our partners in this new approach; we just need to engage their needs as we seriously consider our own. Maritime Academy wants more of our students in their school. Fostoria has huge needs that our graduate Reading program is attempting to address, but to strengthen this partnership, Fostoria needs to see what we can do to help them. They need to know that when our students walk in the door, they aren’t a drain on their program, but an asset. Gibsonburg is another school system that would work with us if and when they perceive that we can bring something to the relationship. I would say the same of Findlay HS. They have some really good teachers that my students need to work with, but I also know that my students need to be better prepared to handle the complex challenges of at-risk students. But if I were getting my students into these schools earlier on, they would be ready to handle the challenges of student teaching in ways they currently are not ready to handle. Maumee High School has excellent teachers, and I know my students (2000 and 4000-level students) can benefit from even more interaction with these teachers. Four County Career Center— same thing; a great potential partner. Any number of schools or districts could play a significant role in this new approach, but we need to make some significant changes— now. We need to increase our presence in these schools, and pool our resources and energies to create a coherent teacher education program across all our various programs, including graduate and undergraduate programs. We need to offer more courses in the evening to free up day time for students to be in schools. Or we need to offer some courses in a classroom in a school during the school day. A PDS partnership would allow us to teach all kinds of courses (EDHD 201, EDIS 2310, EDFI 303, EDFI 4080, EDAS 4090, classroom management, etc., for instance) right in the partner school, with teachers, guidance counselors & school psychologists, intervention specialists, administrators, union stewards, parents, police/fire/safety officers, etc. as the coinstructors of these courses.
Murnen—Field-Based Model
Field-Based Teacher Education Model Fall Semester
Spring Semester
Yr1 Course
Course
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Yr2 Course
Course
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Yr3 Course
Course
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Yr4 Course
Course
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
Course
Course
Field Experience at the Center Of Program Design
5
