Interim TERI director, Stacy Ernst, recently contributed to the VISION 2020 blog. Continue reading to learn more about how TERI is re-envisioning the future of teacher education.

The Bush Foundation has released their midterm reports for public perusal. Click through to learn about all of the great work and lessons learned within the NExT institutions of higher education – the 14 selected by Bush to redesign teacher education. The Bush Foundation grant supports ten-year long projects such as ours at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

overview  |  full report  |  executive summary

The EdMN UMN-TC student chapter received a $1,000 grant from the National Education Association and used the funds to support a makeover of the teachers’ lounge at Roosevelt High School. In honor of Teacher Apprecation Week, the dedicated crew cleaned, painted, and installed new furniture on Saturday, May 10. The Teacher Education Redesign Initiative (TERI) sponsored bagels and coffee for the teachers yesterday morning to welcome them into their new space, and to show appreciation for all that they do.

Check out the before and after photos below!

Thomas Rademacher, a graduate of the College of Education and Human Development, was named MN Teacher of the Year on Sunday, May 4. Rademacher teaches high school English at the FAIR School in downtown Minneapolis. Congratulation. Read full story.

We are in the third year of providing co-teaching training and support to cooperating teacher and teacher candidate pairs. The training and practices have been well received and all our partner districts have adopted co-teaching as their preferred model for student teaching experiences.

Most partner schools and districts are now providing the co-teaching training with their own staff as well as using the online co-teaching training. As the partnership grows and more people own co-teaching professional development in the network, CEHD staff are able to focus on collecting data to improve this research-based, high impact model.

To assess what we’ve accomplished – and to determine what is still needed – we conducted a co-teaching fidelity study. University supervisors met with their candidates and cooperating teachers to learn if the pair is co-teaching and what instructional strategies are most common in the team’s practice. We asked what training the pair has completed and what training they still need. We probed general satisfaction with the process and asked for specific benefits of co-teaching for the K-12 students in their classrooms.

This spring we will compile the data collected to create a complete picture of co-teaching in our partner schools and other student teaching sites. These data will help us understand where co-teaching is successful and where it is not yet being used. As a result we will offer new, targeted training to our school partners and support to extend co-teaching in the next academic year.

Stay tuned for more details later this summer!

Submitted by:
Bob Utke, Clinical Learning Coordinator
Amy Jo Lundell, Clinical Partnerships Coordinator
Stacy Ernst, School Partner Network Coordinator & Interim TERI Director

University of Minnesota CEHD alum Lindsey Bryant, a first-year teacher at Jenny Lind Elementary in Minneapolis, is featured in a video on the Education Minnesota “Ed Moments” website. Lindsey was one of our 2012-13 teacher candidates placed in a yearlong co-teaching placement last year at Highlands in Edina- one of our partner school sites in TERI.

Jenny Lind Elementary was chosen for the project because of its work to narrow the achievement gap and Lindsey is featured in the first and third video. See how this first year teacher from CEHD’s redesigned elementary education program is helping to do her part with her colleagues at a great school! Watch video.

Each spring CEHD welcomes representatives from the Bush Foundation and our project coach, Ivan Charner, from FHI 360 to a full review and update of TERI progress and partnerships. The visit provides CEHD and school partners leaders with an opportunity to engage directly with the foundation’s leadership team in generative conversations specific to the work in TERI in the larger NExT initiative.

School representatives from our six partner districts contributed to the day by sharing evidence of impact on students, teachers, schools, and districts. School district partners provided updates organized around the pillars in NExT: Recruit, Prepare, Support, Employ. Each district provided overviews on the partnership’s impact. Here are a few samples of the information shared: SPPS, MPS, Roosevelt High School (MPS), and Forest Lake Area Schools.

Edina Public Schools recently featured a partnership between Creek Valley Elementary and the University of Minnesota. Read the full story.

We’re pleased to announce that Barbara Billington and Terry Wyberg will be embedded half-time as faculty liaisons in SPPS and MPS during the next academic school year. Both CEHD instructors will work alongside school partners for the year as part of the faculty and as co-teachers.

“We are very excited about the CEHD faculty liaison position proposed for Linwood-Monroe” said Patricia King, Assistant Director of Leadership Development in the Office of Teaching, Learning, and Leading at SPPS. Patrick Duffy, principal of Clara Barton K-8 in MPS also reports ” I am really excited to continue our partnership with the University of Minnesota and have Terry here as a resource for our teachers and students.”

Working together, side by side, in shared spaces has been an integral part of our redesign effort in CEHD’s Teacher Education Redesign Initiative. School partners serving on TERI’s curriculum development teams, hired as clinical supervisors, working as induction liaisons, and teaching in CEHD classrooms have contributed invaluable perspectives and expertise to our shared work to prepare new teachers who will change the world. Similarly, the opportunity for CEHD faculty to engage directly with partner sites as co-teachers and teachers with K-8 students provides embedded professional development opportunities for CEHD faculty and staff engaged in giving back directly to our P-12 students and the teaching profession.

The orientation for the upcoming DirecTrack to Teaching students was an exciting and wonderful experience. I enjoyed every part of the orientation, all the way from learning about the program to meeting other people that shared the same interest as me. The best part about the orientation is that it made me feel one step closer to achieving my dream to become a teacher. It was reassuring to see that the room was overflowing with other students who all wanted to be future educators like me. There was an overwhelming amount of excitement and happiness in the air as people started talking and getting to know each other. Everyone was super excited to learn more about the program and what they have to do to become a teacher. Not only did the DirecTrack to Teaching orientation prepare me for my following years in the program, but it prepared me for the rest of my life as a teacher. Whenever I will look back at my career I will remember this orientation, because it was the first moment where I began my journey as a teacher.

Submitted by Anna Reget, new DirecTrack student from the College of Liberal Arts

TERI has transformed the ways that we think about our roles here in the College of Education & Human Development. For example, the clinical placement coordinator role and responsibilities has shifted in the last three years from placing student teachers in schools to developing and supporting clinical partnerships. The work of CEHD’s clinical partnership coordinators is described as “engaging, collaborative, intense, and hopeful” as we build deeper relationships and connections with school partners.

Clinical Partnerships Coordinator expectations include:

• Serve as primary placement contact for CEHD with district partners.
• Address partner school/district concerns regarding placements.
• Collaboratively solve problems with data collection, communication, relationship building, etc.
• Provide professional development on co-teaching to cooperating teachers and teacher candidates on campus, at school, and at district sites.
• Support needs of cluster placements (coordinate with liaisons and partner network coordinator)
• Present to whole faculty and administrators at school sites.
• Attend face-to-face meetings with district administrators/HR departments.
• Actively shape district placement processes.
• Track practicum and student teaching placements.

Clinical Partnerships Coordinator is:

• Engaging with other IHE placement coordinators to improve communication regarding placements.
• Collecting data and tracking placements in real time with school partners.
• Creating surveys, documents, and meetings to engage school partners in decision making.
• Interfacing with college team on partnerships and redesign elements.
• Clustering placements in partner school districts/sites.
• Providing external feedback from school partners to improve ILP-School relationships.
• Planning interviews and other matchmaking initiatives.
• Centralizing process while collaborating with departments to improve external relations and overall efficiency.

Submitted by Amy Jo Lundell, Clinical Partnerships Coordinator for Curriculum & Instruction

This year our training for supervisors (Supershops) was focused on developing new leadership, aligning our work with district partners’ work, and promoting the use of better tools to assure candidates’ professional development and skill growth. The Supershop series met on six Friday mornings through the fall and into the winter for a total of 18 hours of ongoing professional development and support.

The topics included an overview of job responsibilities and specific skill and knowledge building in observation and documentation of performance, mentoring, dealing with common dilemmas, supporting the edTPA, and providing career services and launching new teachers into their practice.

We drew in different expertise this year, using trainers from Minneapolis public schools (Paul Hegerle, SOEI trainer), experienced district mentors (Tiffany Moore and Marjorie Nadler), and members of our own faculty and staff who had not previously been in college-wide training roles (Barbara Billington, SciEd; Amy Jo Lundell, CI Dept, and Deb Peterson, MCRR and state edTPA steering committee).

Our added emphasis was on coaching practice to build skills around our new observation de-briefing outline, and developing practice with our new formative assessment for clinical practice.

We also spent time organizing supervision to support better (and more) co-teaching in classrooms. One traditional difficulty in the university supervisors’ role is clarifying how the supervisor can support the teaching candidate, cooperating teacher relationship. We shared materials and did simulations to help the supervisor in problem identification and supporting problem solving for the co-teaching practice.

Submitted by Bob Utke, Clinical Learning Coordinator