November 18 Meeting Minutes

Pittsburgh Regional Meeting
Friday, November 18, 2005
University of Pittsburgh

Present at Meeting

Mardi Isler	United Way of Westmoreland County
Mary Ann Rafoth	IUP College of Education
Rick Myer	Duquesne University
Susan Munson	Dept. Of Counseling, Duquesne University
Sheila Hillwig	Kiski School District
Ron Sofo	Freedom Area School District
Karen Hermes	Southmoreland School District
Gary Clark	Tenured Teacher, Doctoral Student, and Involved Parent
Carolyn Heil	LaRoche College
Kevin Kelly	Math & Science Collaborative serving AIU3 & IU1
Victor A. Boerio	Franciscan University of Steubenville
Norman Hipps	School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and Computing, St. Vincent College
Barbara Biglan	Chatham College
Roberta Schomburg	School of Education, Carlow College
Dina Vargo	A+ Schools: Pittsburgh's Community Alliance for Public Education
Karen Levitt	Duquesne University
Cheryl Sills	MARC USA
Cheryl Kennedy	Pittsburgh Public Schools
Nancy Bunt	Commissioner
Sarah Coon	Commission Research Coordinator
Ron Cowell	Commissioner
Robert Feir	Executive Chair
Richard Kneedler	Commission Chair
Alan Lesgold	Commissioner
Michelle Tarlecki	Commission Administrative Assistant

The Pittsburgh regional meeting was held at the University of Pittsburgh on November 18, 2005. There were 25 people in attendance. Many issues were raised with the Commission. They are as follows:

• Teachers need to have passion for teaching and learning.
• Pennsylvania should prepare quality teachers for schools in any geographic location so they have the ability to get a job anywhere.
• An important need to address is the structure of the professional year and time for inservice professional development.
• At the present time, the teachers in Pennsylvania are not world-class. The best students should become teachers and should be sought out when they are young. Methods need to be developed for finding such potential teachers.
• An example of an induction program that appears to be working is in Northern Ireland (where higher education is free).
• The program started in the late 1990s.
• 1st year: Universities are mentoring new teachers.
• 2nd year: Schools and universities share the mentoring responsibilities. This allows for a trust to develop between the two.
• 3rd year: Schools are solely responsible for mentoring the new teachers.
• The program requires a lot of money. In Northern Ireland it is paid for through taxes.
• An electronic mentoring system in place.
• Partnerships between K-12 schools and universities need to be universal. This will help build long-term partnerships and trust between the two.
• By having a partnership between a university and school district, the university can mentor all new teachers to that school district, not only their graduates.
• An electronic mentoring system should be in place for those who are not within close proximity to the university where they obtained their degrees.
• There already is a statutory requirement for university involvement in induction, but this is not always (or uniformly) implemented.
• In medical education, there is collaboration through the agencies that accredit both the medical schools and the hospitals. Hospitals have matching programs for graduates. To do this in the educational field, universities and schools would both have to sacrifice some of the control they have over their individual programs, and there would need to be a mechanism for matching potential teachers and schools.
• In the field of psychology, psychologists have a national organization; if a candidate passes the exam, he or she can be certified in any state.
• Both medicine and psychology have strong national accrediting bodies compared with PDE’s program approval standards.
• In medicine, doctors are taught anatomy by a professor of anatomy and are taught surgery by a surgeon.
• There is no standardization of community college programs. A trust needs to be formed between two- and four-year schools to be able to transfer credits.
• Student-teacher experience: School districts should place students with their best teachers.
• A consensus needs to be formed on what is the best teacher for a student to be placed with, however.
• Some universities have a relationship with the people that are going to place the students, and they have carefully picked the characteristics of the best teachers. Other universities do not have this relationship.
• The same structure should exist in all universities so that if a student transfers universities, his or her experiences in the major would have been the same at both places.
• Students should have real world experience in their freshman and sophomore year to see if they really want to become a teacher.
• One reason that teachers leave the profession after only a few years is because the real issues they are dealing with were not taught to them in the university.
• A reason that universities cannot provide more support to new teachers is because of resources such as time, money, and limited faculty size.
• There need to be two types of partnerships in education:
  • Partnerships between the universities
  • Partnerships between the universities and the schools
• Professors should be required to have professional development similar to K-12 teachers through Act 48. One approach to professional development would be for them to go into classroom to get real world experience.
• Problem: some professors have never been teachers.
• In Florida there is a list of competencies for student teachers to work on as they move through the program.
  • Pennsylvania should come up with a list similar to that of Florida and few other states. Many countries have such a list.
  • Businesses and other organizations wishing to be certified as having exceptional quality need to meet explicit standards such as those comprising I.S.O. 9000 or 9001.
• An Education Department is needed at each university certifying teachers.
• The problem with changing all Education Departments is that universities and their departments are pretty autonomous.
• A reform of the PDE Form 430 for evaluating student teachers is needed. It is too generic. Some universities have their own forms beyond 430.
  • It needs to include competencies elated to specific subject area content
  • Form 430 does not demonstrate how a teacher is having an impact on his or her students.
• Schools like to hire teachers who have gone beyond the four-year degree. These teachers tend to be more mature when entering the teaching field.
• Teachers need more schooling, just as doctors and lawyers do. We need to break out of the comfort zone that has been created around a four-year degree.
• The school year should be lengthened for teachers or students should attend school four days a week, leaving one day for professional development.
• Chapter 354 has forced universities to cut the number of credit hours so that teachers can complete 120 credit hours in four years.
• New teachers tend to have adequate content knowledge but lack sufficient grounding in student discipline and motivation and lack of parental support.
• Arts and sciences faculty should work with education faculty so students learn not just the academic content but also how to teach it.
• Are there better ways than making a professor go into the classroom? Would going into the classroom be the best way for professors to get real world experience? There was agreement that many education faculty and most content faculty have little if any exposure to actual, current K-12 classrooms.
• Reality: College professors going into the classroom will not be rewarded for tenure or promotion.
• Professors should be required to retain a valid teaching certificate in Pennsylvania.
• Problem with making professors go into the classroom for any length of time: It will prohibit the professor from teaching classes at the university and he or she will probably not be replaced for the period of time that the professor is in the classroom.
• A first year teacher should have a reduced schedule compared to the other, more experienced teachers.
• Teachers unions need to change: They should not bargain for the more experienced teacher to get the easier class to teach. Rather they should bargain for the first year teacher to get the easier job. Seniority should not play a role in deciding who gets what class.
• Also, first year teachers should not have to do extra activities such as coaching. They should be focused on improving their teaching skills.
• Every teacher should know the content they are teaching.
• The first two years of a teacher’s undergraduate education are important. It gives the student a well-rounded liberal arts education.
• Both sides of the special education issue were brought up:
  • Special education training is needed because students have widely varying abilities and learning needs.
  • Teaching content to students may be exceedingly difficult if a teacher has to worry about students with special education needs.
• Many first year teachers are not sufficiently prepared and confident to connect with their students effectively
• What about the possibility of professional development being held at the universities and not at the school districts?
• The 24 credit hours to get an Instructional II certificate need to be made more content specific.
• The state should regulate how many days of professional development each school district completes and should have the same number for all schools.
• Other professions have internships built in. Students should not have to seek them out for themselves.
• What is at the other end of a teacher’s career?
  • Retired teachers should teach at a university. This will allow for real world experience to be brought into college classes.
  • Help younger teachers by going into the classroom for them while the young teachers are getting their professional development credits.
• Schenley Program: Teacher training center in Pittsburgh where there were real teachers and real students and where other teachers received school-based professional development.
• Universities are asking students to develop a professional development plan before graduating from college. The problem is “students don’t know what they don’t know.” New teachers need to be given time in a classroom before coming up with a professional development plan.
• Higher education can only do so much to help the teaching profession because most of the work force is already in place.
• Think of teacher education as a continuum that includes four years of undergraduate preservice education plus three years of inservice professional development, with the latter more structured and controlled by the profession of practitioners (as in other professions).
  • West Virginia:
    • End of the 3rd year of an education summit – Conclusions
    • First - Change in government needs to occur at all levels
    • Second – Change in the role of universities
    • Third – Change in the role of schools
    • Every level needs to be changed if positive change is to happen

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