A r c h i v e d   I n f o r m a t i o n

SUMMARY WORKSHOPS

Workshop D
Preparation and Professional Support of Preschool and Primary Teachers

Speakers:
Dolores B. Malcolm, Director of Teaching & Learning Support, St. Louis Public Schools, St. Louis, Missouri

Elois Scott, Group Leader, Compensatory Education Programs, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education

Elizabeth Primas, Coordinator, Success for All, Reading Specialist and Coordinator, Reading Tutors and Volunteers, Bowen Elementary School, Washington, D.C.

Dorothy Fowler, Member of the Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties In Young Children, Teacher, Bailey’s Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences, Fairfax County Public Schools, Falls Church, Virginia

Marcia Fineman, Assistant Principal, Stedwick Elementary School, Montgomery County Public Schools, Gaithersburg, Maryland

Virginia Pilato, Branch Chief, Program Approval, Maryland State Department of Education, Baltimore, Maryland

Moderators:
Mary Jean LeTendre, Director, Compensatory Education Programs, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education

Audrey M. Smith, Education Specialist, School Improvement Programs, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education

Abstract:
Building the capacity of teachers and school leaders for helping students successfully reach high standards in highly challenging schools is critical in education reform. Reading is recognized as the core subject essential to all other subject learning, yet the most recent reading scores indicate that seven out of every 10 fourth graders cannot read proficiently, thus preventing them from reaching high academic standards (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 1996). It is no wonder that the National Research Council’s (NRC) report is considered so timely. The NRC report provides recommendations for: (1) improving the nation’s teacher preparation programs from early childhood through elementary school; (2) adjusting existing and/or creating new policies that affect children, educators, and reading achievement; and (3) future research directions that will advance our knowledge of how to prevent reading problems.

How can the NRC’s recommendations about reading content, capacity building of teachers, and supportive policies be put into realistic practice in the classroom and at the district and state levels? This workshop will summarize points from three of the Friday sessions on professional development with specific applications for practice and policy.

The power of this session will be the focus on the continuum of teacher development, beginning with the preparation of early childhood and elementary education teachers and moving into career-long professional learning. Recommendations will be shared for the reading content of teacher preparation programs, with an emphasis on how the reading specialist can support the ongoing development of classroom teachers.

Notes

INTRODUCTION OF PANEL MEMBERS:

Moderator Audrey Smith (to the audience): How many in the audience attended Workshop #13 Ongoing Staff Development? How many of you attended the workshop on Early Childhood? How many attended the workshop on Professional Reading Specialists? (With a show of hands) Well, it looks like we have a lot to cover today. We will proceed this morning by reporting out a summary on the workshops by our panel members who attended, or actually, presented at yesterday's workshops 13, 14 and 15. We hope to pull together for you some ideas to take back to your states.

We?ll start with Dorothy Malcolm who was one of our presenters for Ongoing Staff Development. Dorothy is the Director of the Teaching and Learning Support Division from the St. Louis Public School System (and continued intro from bio).

Dorothy Malcolm: In the Ongoing Staff Development workshop some of the points that come up as we are moving into the millenium are:

- What role will technology play in literacy development and instruction?
- What are our needs and reasons for looking at and thinking differently about ongoing professional development. We learned why it has become so important to do this. We only have to look at our classrooms that look so different, hear the number of languages spoken and see the diversity among the population that create the demand for an ongoing professional development for teachers to know more about these new issues being raised.
- What kind of professional development are we talking about? Which literacy model is best? The one that works has multiple components of the professional development experience and should match the literacy model for what has been identified as needing to be accomplished. What does ?ongoing? mean? It includes making major paradigm shifts in the way professional development is thought of and planned: it means coherent, integrated, research-based and continuous planning. And means it starts with thinking about the professional development needs during pre-service education, includes technology and retirees and continues on throughout one?s career.
- Who should be involved? Involve all the stakeholders in the education community. We encourage a broad spectrum of inclusion in planning staff development including our community partnerships, higher learning, parents/families (who come into classrooms to work with teachers) to ensure a coherent and continuous staff development program.
- How do we effectively deliver professional development so that it is ongoing and systemic? We had an overview of the St. Louis Systematic Reform Initiative and how it utilizes the training of the trainers model for a delivery and dissemination strategy to reach all staffing levels across the district. The model encompasses regular monthly planning and progress meetings with district staff and principals, coaching for instructional coordinators and team teachers and weekly teacher study groups. We also heard from the comprehensive centers about another peer coaching model and strategy, the Reading Success Network (RSN), that focuses on providing teachers the skills to assess and diagnose reading problems on an ongoing basis in the classroom.

Audrey: Elois Scott, from the Department?s Compensatory Education Programs, attended Workshop #14 on Early Childhood Educators and will report out with a summary of what was presented.

Elois Scott: Participants were asked to think about all the information in the National Research Council?s report and what part (portion) is most interesting to you?

To begin with, one of the comments in response was regarding instruction: how you do introduce material that makes a difference and it is engaging to children?

Another response concerned parental and community involvement and that we need to be able to know and cite the research to legislators and others who are in positions to influence and create the programs for us to use this kind of research. The point being made is to advocate for the need to create legislation and make policies that helps families and schools and it is incumbent upon us to provide this kind of information (the report?s findings) to the legislators, policy and decision makers on the report?s findings and recommendations.

The next point is having quality teachers in all classrooms. How do we get our colleges to provide education programs that teachers need to teach in today?s classroom? Due to the student diversity and special needs apparent in today?s regular classroom, subject content matters important as well as having the skills and understanding necessary to build on students? experiences while preparing students to reach high academic state and local standards.

Another response has to do with the notion of invented spelling and that it is not in conflict with teaching correct spelling. The emphasis on it and as it was presented in the research and use in the beginning stages of identification of sounds and letters and how invented spelling (phonetic spelling) is a strategy that is still being supported. Also, the importance of promoting and encouraging the development of oral language and literacy growth and the importance of engaging children in oral language activity and helping parents to know how to do this with their children. Modeling this behavior in the early childhood classroom is an important strategy for good teaching and reading.

One of the questions raised was on early childhood assessment and the difference of opinion on assessing too early. An example was provided of one State that is beginning the testing in pre-K and the results has provided useful information for diagnostic purposes. The other side though has been the fear of high stakes use and for ability grouping. It was recognized how important it is to provide this information early to teachers for intervention and instruction but also having to be very careful of using early assessment inappropriately.

Another question was raised on the emerging practice of emergency certification and at times resulting in teachers being hired without being qualified (certified). Qualified teachers in the classroom provide needed diagnostic, instructional and critical teaching skills.

Audrey Smith introducing Elizabeth V. Primas, Reading Specialist, and presenter of Workshop #15: Professional Reading Specialists, (continued introduction from bio).

Elizabeth Primas: The reading specialist has many roles: the assessment of children who have reading difficulties; providing information to classroom teachers on how to implement, to corroborate the problem the child is having and develop a coherent strategy so instruction is not fragmented; assist in identifying other support services for the child; provide model strategies for parents as well as providing staff development to all classroom teachers so all have effective strategies to teach; coordinates training and often does the training for volunteers and recruits for outreach programs in engaging the community with the reading program and the thrust is to read for pleasure. Our focus is on classroom instruction and strategies carried out mainly in the classroom. The underlying purpose is so that strategies will grow exponentially so all children will benefit.

Every school should have a reading specialist-this is not an option.

Audrey Smith and introduction of three members of Panel #2:

Marcia Fineman, Assistant Principal of Stedwick Elementary School and Staff Developer for Early Literacy, Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland.

Marcia Fineman: The key is staff development but it takes money and time. We know we need to do better but what does this look like? We have a reading specialist in every school but not full time in Montgomery County. In 54 schools we have a new reading initiative and we?ve reduced class size to 15, have set aside blocks of time (60 minutes) for teaching reading. To help teachers know what they are to do, there is a new pilot institute for teachers where they attend classes and then are being monitored in classroom. Then these teachers provide support for others enrolled and other grade level teachers. There are fewer reading initiative teachers for this year?s institute and it has been cut back two weeks. We are also in the process of trying to move from a school plan of activities to a document that shows outcomes driven by test data and linking the expectations of teachers who have completed the institute training. We think we are on the right track and sometimes very difficult to keep the focus when the targets keep moving.

Audrey Smith introduces Dorothy Fowler, Committee Member on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children and National Board Certified Teacher at the Bailey Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences, Falls Church, Virginia.

Dorothy Fowler: There is nothing that makes more of a difference to a child than the teacher. But how do we develop good teachers? A key is that we must have a good administrator leading the team. My administrator pays her teachers to come in two days early that are devoted to staff development. One of these days we read and teachers plan for staff development. The second day is left to the teacher's own interest. For example, teachers are provided with the research information, books, literature, etc. These are distributed to the teachers and teachers read, discuss the article, discussions are in groups and we shared articles, we call it ?book talks?. This is one way of giving teachers time and promoting discussion of book reading and creating communities of professionals. This is what we talk about when we talk of ongoing staff development and a need to encourage teachers for intrinsic learning that is continuously and ongoing.

Audrey Smith introduces Joann H. Ericson (who substituted for Virginia Pilato), Program Approval Specialist, Maryland State Department of Education.

Joann Ericson: Gave an overview of the new proposal introduced by Maryland?s reading task that all new teachers and those seeking re-certification in that state are to take up to 12 semester hours in reading instruction. The three new courses will focus on reading, reading instruction, and instructional materials and strategies that will include design principles for implementation, evaluation and practical methods for reading programs. Maryland has also adopted new certification requirements for new early childhood and special education educators. There will be new course work content focusing on recent brain research, developing phonemic awareness, introducing balanced strategies for instruction and assessment with emphasis on using data from variety sources and for appropriate purposes-important to stress not for use as a label. Reading materials will cover incorporating use of electronic media and giving teachers know how on how to select. The new State certification program will include an extensive field base experience.

As result of the task force?s recommendations teacher education programs will evaluate and revamp their course instruction. The task force came to an end in July but are considering developing generic frameworks that would be distributed to districts. Implementation design principles will also be disseminated and the task force report will then be explained in family-friendly terms.

Questions from the audience:

You have mentioned that quality staff development is costly, well, where do we find the money? And a second question is where do we find how to implement quality professional development for the veteran teacher? These are teachers that are committed but have made their professional decisions to be where they are. If you are thinking of mentoring development this is being done and we have engaged those willing mentors but not for these teachers. Professional development is fragmented and that can be due to changes in staff, ideas, practice, career changes, etc., and given this, how do we work with these people who are working and have to deal with this fragmentation.

How do we motivate unmotivated teachers?

Dorothy Fowler: I can tell you what works with staff in our building and that is open doors and open invitations. We try to have incumbents on our teams to go to those who are not going (participating)--sometimes teachers just need to be asked--teacher to teacher.

Marcia Fineman: I recommend that this is an area of research for the National Research Council. There is no current research on the impact of teachers? staff development. We have been spending billions of dollars on staff development and we do not know what we are providing in terms of teacher effectiveness, etc. What is the problem--teacher change? Then we need to study what makes teachers change. We need to look at what do, what we expect teachers to do and then match our staff development to this.

When we study on what makes things happen and when clear expectation are made on what the teachers are to do, we go from of 0% to a 98% implementation rate! (Bruce Joyce and Beverly Slowers) And it is about follow-up, coming back to talk about it, going over and over it. This is not a matter of money or time--we are looking at the wrong solution to the problem. The question is how do we get teachers to do what is good for children?

Dorothy Malcolm: Regarding the need for more funds. Our district hired a funding development person. She has been very good and out looking for funds and every grant we receive has a professional development component. There is one person dedicated to this and is a district person who searches where those funds are.

Closing comment from the audience:

This is in regard to what I have heard yesterday and that is that university faculty do not want students to have field experience. I want to correct these misconceptions of not wanting or discouraging them but how do we get State governments to work with us to incorporate and coordinate with us for them?