VISION 2020: Goals for Teacher Preparation in Rhode Island
Teacher preparation institutions are inviting K-12 and community partners to develop a common vision for teacher preparation. We want to bring together the State’s educational reform agenda and the latest thinking in the teacher preparation profession to create a partnership dedicated to building innovative and comprehensive state framework for teacher preparation. We are inviting others to provide input:
1. Teacher candidates will be
o Recruited primarily from the top half of their class
o Required to demonstrate competency in all key teaching skills
o Will be licensed when they can prove impact on student learning
o Followed by their teacher preparation programs into the first years of teaching for mentoring, support, and research
2. K-12 Partners will
o Play a major role in designing teacher preparation programs, their assessments, and outcomes
o Take part in evaluating teacher candidate readiness
o Be supported and encouraged to play an active role in teacher preparation
o Help provide data on teacher performance to teacher preparation programs
3. Clinical instructors will be:
o Master teachers who demonstrated positive impact on student growth
o Specifically trained to provide coaching and mentoring
o Closely connected to full time college faculty
o Recognized and rewarded for their work
4. Teacher preparation programs will
o Implement clinically based model of teacher preparation
o Focus curriculum on student achievement
o Develop strong research components to use student performance data for program improvement
o Eliminate gaps and redundancies in programs, accommodate changing needs of K-12 partners, and reflect and surpass best national practices of traditional and alternative models
Potential Participants
RIACTE, RIDE, RIBGHE, Kids Count, RI Foundation, NEA, AFT, RIASCD
What do we do next?
1. Submit your comments, suggest your ideas on this public forum. Mention your name.
2. We will set up a faculty meeting to discuss where we are going, and who else do we need on board to get there.
3. We will also reach out to other programs, our K-12 partners, and other potential players.
4. We make it an actionable plan.
I like it. We need to get this out in the public eye, and we need to pull to be treated as a partner at RIDE, and not as a lackey.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of taking control of our destiny but I am concerned that all of what we will do is assessment based. this list does not talk about how we will foster our teachers to be active, critical professional educators. How will we make sure children (and our studnets) are treated as individuals and numbers? How will we assess that not only are our students up for academic rigor but also up for critical progressive thinking?
ReplyDeleteJulie
No doubt the final version of Vision 2020 will be well received by all parties referenced above. May I suggest that some thought and attention be given to the significant role that community service and service learning play in teacher preparation and pre-professional development. A well -rounded teacher preparation program provides a variety of high quality experiential learning avenues including practicum, methods, service learning, community service, and student teaching. These opportunities enable teacher candidates to engage in a variety of traditional, non-traditional and out-of school time experiences, to interactwith a broad spectrum of students, and, as Julie commented, to “develop into active, critical, professional educators”. Key community partners that serve as host sites for our teacher candidates collect and share data on their impact on student learning and achievement, offer alternative perspectives on candidate performance in terms of student engagement and professionalism, and serve as platforms to promote the contributions of our candidates to student learning in the state.
ReplyDelete