Title of Session Growing Our Own:  Connecticut's Institutes for Future Teachers

Type of Session:  Roundtable Discussion
 

David L. Stoloff, Ph.D.,  Professor and Department Chair, Education Department Eastern Connecticut State University 83 Windham Street, Webb Hall Room 129 Willimantic, CT 06226 tel. no. (860) 465 - 5501  fax. no. (860) 465 - 4538 email:  stoloffd@easternct.edu

Carole Mulready, Coordinator,  Minority Teacher Recruiting Capitol Region Education Council 111 Charter Oak Avenue Hartford, CT 06106 Tel. no. (860) 524-4013   fax. no. (860) 246-3304 Email: cmulready@crec.org

Strand Identifier: Advocacy for Diversity -
How can teacher educators prepare a more diverse teaching corps?

Summary:
Forum to discuss strategies similar to Connecticut's Institutes for Future Teachers, coursework and summer programs designed to provide an orientation for diverse high school students into teaching and the profession.

Participation:
Dr. Stoloff co-facilitated a roundtable discussion at his first ATE conference last year.  For Ms. Mulready, this presentation will be their first participation at an ATE conference.

 The purpose of this roundtable discussion would be to create a forum for educators who implement workshops, courses, or institutes for high school students planning to become teachers.  The presenters will discuss the four-year history of their school-regional service center-university partnership that has created a college-credit bearing, university-residential summer institute for rising high school juniors and seniors on the teaching profession.  Also discussed will be the process of admission into the institutes, research on student achievement and retention in the profession, and the development of follow-up workshops throughout the academic year and other projects, which have built on these institutes.

Relationship to Conference Theme and Strand

 The roundtable discussion will focus on the goal of these institutes - to prepare a more diverse teaching corps through the encouragement of high school students into the teaching profession.  The curriculum of the Summer Institute for Future Teacher (SIFT) will be showcased for its emphases on cultural diversity, the involvement of parents in the program, the careful selection of faculty and curriculum, and the infusion of educational technology, special education, and constructivism throughout the coursework.  This focus on the role of teacher educators as Advocators for Diversity within this action research project fits well the themes of this annual conference.

Abstract of Presentation

 In the Spring of 1996, teacher educators from Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU) and from the Capitol Region Education Council (CREC) in Hartford received a Connecticut State Department of Education grant for an Interdistrict Cooperative project that was designed to develop a Summer Institute for Future Teachers at ECSU.   The first cohort of more than 40 high school students spent the month of July 1996 in residence on the university campus in a curriculum enriched with the theory and practice of education.  The month-long session featured emphases on cultural diversity, cooperative learning, and computer applications in education and field experiences in regional summer school programs and in a daycare center.

 Now in its fourth year, these summer institutes have expanded to over 60 students drawn from throughout Connecticut, with a particular focus on students from urban high schools and from diverse backgrounds.  The partnership has also grown to include a Saturday session in January for 200 middle school and high school students and their teachers and parents.  Other outcomes have included YES (Young Educators' Society) conferences in early spring, web-sites for resources on Education with the potential for online courses for future teachers, and a planned high school-university course that would provide credit in both settings.

This roundtable will feature an overview by the project coordinators of the summer institutes on the evolving curriculum for the course in Teaching in the 21st Century.  The coordinator of the state's Minority Teacher Recruitment program, an educator from a regional service center, will review how these institutes have served as a foundation for other outreach efforts to recruit a diverse teaching population.  The faculty member from the university's teacher education program will discuss how the faculty's involvement in these recruitment efforts has strengthened the preservice program on campus.

1) Alumni Survey Analysis - a downloadable WORD document
An analysis of a survey of the 189 Summer Institutes for Future Teachers alumni since July 1997 indicates 89% of the 57 respondents are still considering becoming teachers.

The respondents were from 36 of the state's high schools and the majority (54%) had been in the summer program as rising seniors, the July before their senior year.  Of the 26 that indicated their college attendance, the majority (62%) are studying in Connecticut - with 9 at Eastern Connecticut State University.

For most, the academic majors they are pursuing were in Psychology or Education-related programs.   Many were also working part-time as day care or teaching assistants.

The respondents felt well prepared by the Summer Institutes for Future Teachers when asked to evaluate the programs from the perspective of the Connecticut Common Core of Teaching.  They rated most of the characteristics of effective teaching in the "very well prepared" range, except for less enthusiastic ratings for two attributes -

"being proficient in reading, writing, and mathematics"
and
"conducting [themselves] myself as a professional in accordance with the Code of Professional Responsibility for Teachers."

Implications from this survey include that the faculty might consider infusing more use of such programs as "Learning-Plus" - a self-paced computer program for learning skills and strategies, parallelling the PRAXIS I exam required for admission into certification programs in Connecticut.  There might also need to be more discussion on professional conduct;  the Code of Professional Responsibility for Teachers might be used as a stimulus for a conversation on professional ethics and the essential importance of teaching.

2) The Summer Institutes for Future Teachers Web Presence

Each of the SIFT program participants developed websites describing their experiences.  The programs' welcoming website may be found at http://www.easternct.edu/depts/edu/sift.html.

Each July, students participated in a workshop on webpage development.  Their list of teaching web-based resources, bookmark lists, were posted on the WWW and found through each of the year's websites.

3) Developing an Online Modules for Future Teachers

The CREC-ECSU Partnership also was involved in developing online modules for use in Connecticut's Young Educators Societies (YES) Clubs.  These modules are linked from the YES homepage at http://www.easternct.edu/depts/edu/yes.html and start at http://www.easternct.edu/depts/edu/yes/yesonline.html .

 Participants in this roundtable will be asked to discuss their involvement in the development of workshops, coursework, and month-long summer institutes for diverse high school students planning to become teachers. Names and e-mail addresses will be collected to initiate increased networking among colleagues interested in developing teacher recruitment programs for high school students.