TERI Update
15 October 2010
http://www.cehd.umn.edu/teri/
Welcome to the sixth installment of the TERI Update. We hope to use this regular email communication as a way to keep all of us informed about works in progress, deliberations, decisions, and events related to the Teacher Education Redesign Initiative.
Mark your calendars: December 3, 2010 and January 28, 2011
Location: TBD
We are planning for two new TERI working days in the coming months. Friday Dec. 3, 2010 will be focused on curriculum development, including deliberations about common content. January 28, 2011 will focus on assessment within our licensure programs and may include an opportunity to work with the Value-Added Research Center on data reporting models. Mark your calendars now and more details will follow.
Welcome Elizabeth Finsness as Curriculum & Assessment Coordinator
After a broad search that brought many applicants, Elizabeth Finsness was hired in August as the Curriculum & Assessment Coordinator. Lisa will be working with licensure programs to develop procedures and curriculum for the Teacher Performance Assessment pilot this year, she is co-chairing the Common Content Task Group with Martha Bigelow, and she will provide coordination for common assessments we will be developing and piloting in the coming years. Elizabeth comes to us from Minnesota State University-Mankato, having earned her PhD in the OLPD Dept. here at the U in 2008. Elizabeth will be located in the Educator Development and Research Center on the second floor of Peik Hall. Welcome, Elizabeth!
Welcome new members to the TERI Leadership Team
The TERI Leadership team coordinates the work of TERI and acts as a liaison group to the Bush Foundation. The current team includes:
Ken Bartlett, Associate Dean
Martha Bigelow, C&I
Peter Demerath, OLPD
Stacy Ernst, Partnership Coordinator
Elizabeth Finsness, Curriculum & Assessment Coordinator, EDRC
Jane Gilles, Coordinator for Accountability and Accreditation, Educator Development and Research Center
Carole Gupton, Director, Educator Development and Research Center
Lisa Jones, Executive Director, Educator Development and Research Center
Annie Mason, GA
Andrea Raich, Student Services
Misty Sato, TERI Director, C&I
Kathy Seifert, Special Education
See the TERI Governance Map on the next page for a snapshot of how the TERI leadership team interfaces with other parts of the college and advisory groups.
TERI Governance Map 2010-11
TERI Milestone Review with the Bush Foundation
On September 9, the TERI Leadership Team held a conference call with the Bush Foundation to review progress toward the milestones that we set for ourselves in our memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the foundation. For details, this review can be found on the TERI website and was distributed at the September Licensed School Professional meeting. This assessment of our progress gave us a great sense of pride in moving forward quickly on complex work while engaging more than 80 different people from across the college and among our school partners.
Program summer engagement
Thank you to the ten licensure programs who worked this summer with TERI funds to re-think their programs in relationship to clinical placements, the TPA, and other possible changes related to our ongoing discussions the past 9 months.
Common Content Task Group
Martha Bigelow and Elizabeth Finsness are co-chairing a Common Content Task group this semester. This group is charged with identifying how the current foundations of education courses will be redesigned to more strongly link to program-specific course work and assignments, to re-think the curricular experiences of our candidates within these courses, and to propose some structural / scheduling suggestions delivering common content courses / modules / clinical experiences.
October 1 Work Sessions review
More than 60 people attended the October 1 working session. At this meeting, we reviewed the redesign principles and the non-negotiable elements that we have agreed upon. Program areas led discussions on their progress in taking information about new clinical placements, partnerships, the Teacher Performance Assessment, and beginning to redesign their programs. A special thank you to Elementary Education, Agricultural Education, English Education for their presentations and to everyone else who brought out important elements from their own program work into the conversations. The core of the discussion brought out ways that common content courses can link more strongly to program-specific work and assessments. The group also examined the Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA) and identified strategic ways that elements of the TPA can be embedded into existing common content and program-specific experiences. We also reviewed the 4 common assessments proposed in May by the Curriculum & Assessment Task group and gathered input from programs about how to move forward strategically with their development.
Research
The Educator Development and Research Center, the college home for TERI, will begin coordinating research around various parts of the TERI work. Part of this coordination will be to seek additional grant funds for large-scale as research in partnership with our Professional Development Schools. Watch your email for an invitation to the TERI research roundtable discussions to be held on Fridays later in the semester. We are developing a research “map” that will help us to locate research on educator development within particular contexts of the educational system. We are seeking to support multi-disciplinary research on educator development. For now, four concepts have emerged as particular focal areas for research specifically related to TERI: partnerships, assessment-driven approaches, adaptive expertise (enduring dilemmas, uncertainties in practice), and transformation.
AACTE Proposal Accepted
The annual American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) conference to be held Feb 24-27, 2011 in San Diego, CA. A group (Misty Sato, Cassie Scharber, Martha Bigelow, Lori Helman, Stacy Ernst, and Michelle Gabrielli) submitted a joint proposal titled: Teacher Education Redesign Initiative: Preparing teachers with adaptive expertise.
TERI team attends Bush Summit
The Bush Foundation hosted a two-day summit on October 14 and 15, 2010. We had a team of 16 people attend, including 8 representatives from our partner districts and Professional Development Schools. We learned a lot from our colleagues across the state and gained some perspective from the national advisory committee.
District and School Partner Development
District partnership development moved forward with leaps and bounds this summer. We now have Memorandum of Understanding signed by four school districts that agrees to continue to planning with us to develop stronger partnerships for transforming educator development: Forest Lake, White Bear Lake, East Metro Integration District, and Brooklyn Center. Within these districts, three high schools, one middle school, and six elementary schools have been identified as future Professional Development Schools. Licensure programs are beginning to meet with school level leadership to work out arrangements for clinical placements in the coming year. Faith Clover from Art Education has already begun an innovative partnership in Forest Lake in which art teaching candidates co-develop an art lesson with an elementary teacher. The lesson integrates art with content area learning, providing children of Forest Lake schools with high quality art learning experiences while our candidates get practice teaching experiences.
Saturday Scholars
TERI leadership members Carole Gupton, Jane Gilles, and Stacey Ernst are the keynote presenters for the UMTC CE&HD Alumni Societies Saturday Scholars event on Saturday, November 6, 2010. This well attended event attracts alumni and friends who are interested in being current in education policy, programs and initiatives.
TERI Timeline
March–December 2009 Proposal to Bush Foundation
Convened CEHD and School representative Task Groups around essential curriculum in teacher education and school partner development. Proposed Professional Development School model of redesign to bush Foundation and received funding.
January–May 2010 Design Phase
Convened Task Groups to make recommendations for recruitment & admission, curriculum & assessment, partnership development, and research processes and structures related to teacher preparation and development. Began identifying district partners through series of meetings and retreats.
June–September 2010 Focus on Partnership Development
Identified and signed Memoranda of Understanding with 4 school district partners: Brooklyn Center, Forest Lake, White Bear Lake, East Metro Integration District. MOUs with districts focus on planning for teacher development (pre-service and in-service) together.
Across the partner districts, 7 schools have been identified as Professional Development Schools. Partnership development is proceeding differently with each school district, with priorities on professional development school identification, developing models for teacher preparation and development that aligned with school and university needs, and preparing teachers for mentoring student teachers.
September 2010–May 2011 On the Ground Design Phase
University curriculum and assessments begin to be restructured and new field placement arrangements with Professional Development Schools in partner districts are tried out. Roles for district partners in teacher preparation are identified and roles for university staff in schools are identified. New district partnerships continue to be developed and formalized. Identification of new Professional Development Schools continues.
May 2011 A New Beginning
The first candidates enroll in the “redesigned” teacher licensing programs at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in partnership with school districts. New district partnerships continue to be developed and formalized. Identification of new Professional Development Schools continues.
June 2011–May 2012 Working Out the Details Phase
Close monitoring through data collection and feedback from candidates and schools drive ongoing refinement within the redesigned programs. New district partnerships continue to be developed and formalized. Identification of new Professional Development Schools continues.