 |
Exemplary Practices B-9: Meeting the Challenge of High Quality Teacher Education: Why Higher Education Must Change |
History
"It was a hot El Paso morning. I put on the brand new dress I had bought especially for my first day as an intern at Ascarate Elementary. I arrived at school on time and after going through the formalities of introductions, I was kindly escorted to my assigned classroom. As I walked down the hall, I could hear, smell, and feel learning going on. My sense of excitement hit its peak when I entered the room. . . "
Juanita Garcia, teacher preparation intern, e-mail journal
This scenario has been repeated twice a year for the past 25 years at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). For 20 of those years, students preparing to become teachers enrolled in classes for seven semesters and did practice teaching in a school during the final semester. But for the last five years, teacher preparation has changed dramatically at UTEP. We have become more clinical and field-based, working closely with our colleagues at local schools. Teachers are now prepared more like doctors and nurses, and less like philosophers and historians. Our teacher candidates spend more time in the classroom, and they are there earlier in their college careers.
What events led to this change in teacher preparation? In 1992, UTEP was invited to join the National Network for Educational Renewal, led by John Goodlad. College faculty held meetings with public school teachers and administrators to examine teacher preparation. The group recommended that the preparation of new teachers should shift to a clinical model by the year 2001. The College's mission for the remainder of the decade was charted. That same year, the University president brought together key business and local government leaders; representatives from UTEP and the El Paso Community College; superintendents from the three local public school districts; and EPISO, a grassroots community organization, to form the El Paso Collaborative for Academic Excellence. This partnership has already achieved impressive results in turning around the academic underachievement of local students.
The El Paso area is an urban community that is among the poorest in the United States. Eighty percent of the 135,000 students come from Hispanic and mostly under-educated families. In order to improve student achievement, teacher improvement was identified as key to the Collaborative's systemic educational reform effort. And in 1993, the College of Education received a three-year grant from the state to become a Center for Professional Development and Technology. A new vision of what teacher preparation candidates should know and be able to do and the role technology could play became a part of the College's overall mission. Grant funds paid for staff development, as well as hardware and software for the College and the schools in which our students did their practice teaching. Two five-year Challenge Grants in Educational Technology, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, added an emphasis on telecommunications, teacher training in the uses of technology, and parent involvement.
To fulfill our new mission, the College has had to change, and the schools where our students practice-teach have had to change, simultaneously. All candidates entering teacher education are now prepared following a new model. Partnerships are created with the schools in which pre-service teachers do their internships. All major stakeholders participate in planning and evaluating the teacher preparation program, including the teachers and school administrators.
We can't prepare 21st-century innovative teachers and send them to old-fashioned schools, nor can we prepare old-fashioned teachers and send them to innovative schools. It was not easy to strengthen our collaborative partnerships and redefine the roles of university and public school faculties, but it was essential. Now our new teachers are prepared to enter schools that have themselves undergone change.
". . .when I entered Mrs. Valencia's third grade classroom, I immediately saw Erika, Joaquin, and Brenda sitting at three computers with CD-ROMs. There was also a scanner and printer. It reminded me of my math class at the College when each of us would sit at a computer to practice the concepts introduced by the professor. . . Later, Mrs. Valencia told me that she is taking a sequence of four graduate courses at UTEP on how to enhance the curriculum using various technologies. . . "
One of the areas in which teacher preparation has changed dramatically is incorporating technology with effective teaching practices. Through numerous grants, the classrooms in which our interns practice, as well as the college labs, have been outfitted with the latest hardware and software. Professors teach classes using interactive video, displaying their work on projection panels; classroom teachers help kids prepare projects using multimedia technologies; and interns e-mail journals to their professors and notes to their pupils. Each of our partner schools has an average of 100 state-of-the-art computers and related equipment in its classrooms.
". . .I just came from a home visit. I noticed that Mrs. Perez had checked out one of the laptop computers the school has in the Parent Center for parents to use at home. She told me she was writing a resume in order to get a new job. She was taught these skills by the parent educator. Now several parents help each other. . ."
One new component of the teacher preparation program is to learn how to work with parents, particularly low socio-economic and minority parents. Interns take a course on parent engagement, which requires home visits. The partner schools have opened Parent Centers designed to offer professional development opportunities for parents and provide them with the skills to volunteer in the classroom and be advocates for the school in the neighborhood. The Parent Centers make computers accessible to parents, who can check out one of 10 laptop computers from several of the partner schools.
At UTEP, we are changing public schools and teacher preparation programs at the same time. Students preparing to be elementary and secondary teachers now work in cohorts, are scheduled to take their university classes together, and spend two semesters in the field at Partner Schools under the joint supervision of university faculty and public school teachers who act as clinical faculty. This new approach to teacher preparation is a major paradigm shift, characterized by the following features:
- Pre-service teacher education is collaboratively designed and managed. Public school personnel, university faculty (including Arts and Science faculty), and community members work together to design, implement, and evaluate the restructured teacher education program.
[Return to Exemplary Practices]