Teachers for a New Era: Activities
TNE Learning Forum | SCC/UW Partnership Pathway | Project Updates
TNE Learning Forum - Critical Lessons, Critical Next Steps
In 2002 the Carnegie Corporation of New York invited the University of Washington with other institutions across the country to apply for a slot in a new initiative aimed at putting university-based teacher education on an evidence-based footing. Dr. Bill McDiarmid, Boeing Professor of Education, UW College of Education, introduced our Teachers for a New Era (TNE) proposal with a bold statement, "The University of Washington is ready to reinvent the way it prepares teachers." He went on to make a case for systemic change:
Despite decades of dramatic social, cultural, economic, and intellectual changes, teacher preparation looks remarkably like it did fifty years ago. Yet we have learned a great deal from research about the dynamics of schools, classrooms and communities, learning, and what teachers need to understand and be able to do. We know also that teachers benefit from opportunities to integrate theory and research with clinical practice. Further, they must continue to learn across their careers, drawing from new knowledge and adapting to their ever-changing socially and culturally diverse classrooms. Teachers need support to continue learning after they graduate.
The University of Washington proposes to undertake all of these: redesign curriculum, expand contexts for learning, extend support to teachers beyond graduation, and then to evaluate results.
The grant was awarded to the UW in 2003, and TNE was underway. Project resources focused on the three core design principles laid out in Carnegie’s TNE Prospectus – continuous renewal based on evidence from the classrooms of program graduates, engagement of Arts & Sciences faculty, and approaching teaching as an academically taught clinical practice profession. UW’s guiding principles include: the tripartite (colleges of Education and Arts & Sciences as well as P-12 schools) collaboration required to improve teaching and learning both at the University and in schools, and the establishment of a continuum of support for teachers from preservice education through at least the first decade of their careers.
As the project unfolded, educators undertook to examine the effects of their teaching practice; dynamic new partnerships were initiated with the College of Arts and Sciences, community colleges and P-12 partners; and the College of Education concentrated its resources on the seemingly intractable achievement gap in urban public schools. Perhaps most importantly, the project began to look at how evidence of pupil learning from graduates’ classrooms might be used to measure success in addressing inequitable access to learning.
At the halfway point, twenty individual and interwoven projects supported through TNE were underway. Efforts range from the renewal of the Teacher Education Programs, to creating an Integrated Science degree (focusing on the needs of future science teachers) in the College of Arts and Sciences, to collaborations between teachers, university faculty, and student teachers to improve the pupils’ mathematical knowledge. Research projects have examined the role that different contexts play in the development of students’ identities as teachers, a study of students of color experience in the TEP program, and the ability of student teachers to lead pupils in scientific inquiry. An online support system for novice teachers has begun to take shape, and we have started to craft a database that could house evidence of program effectiveness, including data on both learning during the program and pupil learning in graduates’ classrooms.
With all of this work going on, TNE leadership felt the need to bring these efforts together and begin to describe "the whole" of TNE at the university. In Winter Quarter, 2006, faculty and graduate students from the Colleges of Education and Arts & Sciences met with their P-12 school colleagues and community partners to consider what had been accomplished and what lay ahead for the second half of the grant.
The productivity of this gathering underlined the value of bringing all of the partners together to describe progress and identify persistent challenges. Such gatherings also support the growth of connective tissue between individual projects. This mid-point event was the first, not the last, such gathering.
On January 19, 2007, sixty UW, P-12 and community partners representing most of the individual and interconnected projects, research studies, and renewal efforts participated in a second convening - Teachers for a New Era Collective Learning Forum – Critical Lessons, Critical Next Steps.
As with the first gathering, the Learning Forum had three purposes: foster understanding of the TNE project as a whole; provide opportunities for participants to interact and recognize connections among the projects; and identify activities worthy of sustaining beyond the grant and ways to achieve this.
Click on the links below to download a pdf describing the project.
SCC/UW Partnership Pathway
The SCC/UW Teachers for a New Era Program aims to cultivate a cohort of teachers which is aware of—and responsive to—issues particular to economically disadvantaged elementary school students.
The University of Washington College of Education research shows a need to increase the number of culturally competent university students majoring in education to better reflect the socio-economic and ethnic diversity in the K-12 classrooms where they will eventually teach.
One measure of economic disadvantage is the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced price lunch. In the Seattle School District, that number is 40.8%; in Auburn, 39.2%; Renton, 36.7%; Everett, 31.4%; Shoreline, 20.8%; and Bellevue, 20.5%. (Source: Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/)
SCC/UW TNE Program Materials
Brochure
Program Flow Diagram
Application
Application Checklist
Letter to Parents of Potential Students
Orientation Meeting Flyer
Seattle Central Community College Application and Scholarship Information:
Admissions: http://seattlecentral.edu/admissions/application.php
Scholarships: http://seattlecentral.edu/foundation/scholarships/
Placement Testing: http://seattlecentral.edu/testing/
For more information and application deadlines, please contact:
Lisa Saunders
Manager, Teacher Training/Education Programs
Seattle Central Community College
206-587-3895
lsaunders@sccd.ctc.edu
Wanda M. Brown
Director of P-12 Engagement
Distinguished P-12 Educator
UW College of Education
206-897-1606
Brownw3@u.washington.edu
Project Updates
August 2006 Update | September/October 2005 Update | May 2005 Update