GLOBAL
Association for Teacher Education in Europe. Virtual Open Day, 12 March, 2 pm CET Free Online Event – Open to All Register your interest by 10 March to receive the programme and meeting link prior to the event.
National Post. Short-term anti-racist training is not enough to counter systemic racism in Canadian education Before we can have anti-racist classrooms and a more equitable education system, teacher preparation programs need to face a reckoning. Canadian universities need to move beyond the comforting rhetoric of equity, diversity and inclusion and confront and change the values, structures and behaviours that perpetuate systemic racism within them.
Teachers College. Redefining Scholarship: With the new year under way, the Teachers College Record is amplifying a diverse new range of voices and topics. The articles in the year’s opening issue included: “Invisible Shifts in the Classroom: Dynamics of Teacher Salary and Teacher Supply in Urban China;” “White Supremacy and Teacher Education: Balancing Pedagogical Tensions when Teaching about Race”…
The Conversation. Teachers are expected to put on a brave face and ignore their emotions. We need to talk about it “Australian universities enrol thousands of people to become teachers..Despite all the theory, training and practical experience research shows teachers’ professional lives can be highly demanding, pressured, stressful and at times, emotionally exhausting”
UNITED STATES
AACTE.
1) Join Education Deans in Discussion: Leaning in and Leading Through Crisis. Tune into the Leaning in and Leading Through Crisis discussion on March 18 from 2:00 – 3:00 p.m.
2) New Partnership Gives AACTE Members Special Access to GoReact, a provider cloud-based video assessment software for educator preparation
3) New Volunteer Leaders Take the Helm of AACTE AACTE Executive Committee; AACTE Board of Directors…
AARP. Grandmother Uses Teaching Experience to Fill Virtual School Void: After 35 years in the classroom, retired Atlanta woman is the ultimate pandemic instructor Pre-pandemic, Atkins, who has a master’s degree in early childhood education, had been running what she calls “Nanny Camp,” a structured after-school education program for her grandchildren… Education runs in the Atkins family. Her parents were teachers. Her grandfather, Robert Clinton Hatch, earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University’s Teachers College in the 1940s…
Bank Street College. Voices of Aspiring Teachers on Why Money Matters Launched in the 2019-2020 academic year at 12 institutions across seven states, including public, private, large, small, urban and rural programs, the survey received 1,242 responses… The resulting dataset helps establish… a national picture of aspiring teacher-level information about the economic costs and associated burdens of entering the teaching profession.
Breakthrough Collaborative. How A Corps of College Students Closes Opportunity Gaps & Diversifies the Teacher Pipeline This report, the second in a series, shares the Teaching Fellow Training Framework used to prepare young adults to teach Breakthrough’s middle and high school students. The report also reveals how Breakthrough successfully translated the training model to a completely virtual environment during the summer of 2020.
Chalkbeat.
1) Biden to states: Teachers should be able to get vaccine in March President Biden said Tuesday that he wants every teacher, school staffer, and child care worker in the U.S. to get at least one shot in March — and he will pressure states and use federal resources to make it happen.
2) Philadelphia educator starts national project to find more Black teachers: Just 2% of teachers across U.S. are Black men; goal is to bring 21,000 Black students into the teaching pipeline The Center for Black Educator Development, founded by veteran Philadelphia educator Sharif El-Mekki, is entering a new phase in its quest to dramatically change the face of the country’s teaching profession. In what it is calling a “national educational justice campaign,” the organization will use $3.1 million in new funding from several foundations and venture capitalists to launch two major initiatives to nurture future teachers of color across the country.
3) We need school leaders who reflect the students they serve: Because seeing is believing ‘I can, too.’ … flexibility around teacher certification — a long, expensive process that research shows doesn’t lead to higher student achievement — would also help more educators of color enter the profession. This would remove the barriers that make it more difficult for people of color to become teachers. Take a look at Texas. Public charter schools here, along with traditional school districts that apply to be Districts of Innovation, are able to hire non-certified teachers in certain subjects and provide them with high-quality training throughout their careers.
Effingham Daily News. Rural locations, pandemic worsen educator shortages in east-central Illinois Teacher shortages are not new to the state, but Thompson said matters began to worsen when the State Board of Education made EdTPA, a performance-based national assessment for licensure, a state requirement to become a teacher.
Hechinger Report. Substitute teacher crisis forces districts to turn to local businesses and recent grads: In Missouri, a barrel company’s employees serve as substitute teachers. In Connecticut, a superintendent turns to recent high school grads. And not all substitute teachers are equally qualified; those with training and certifications are more effective than those with minimal credentials. At the start of this school year, the Missouri State Board of Education suspended its requirement that applicants have 60 college credits to be certified as a substitute teacher… anyone with a high school diploma or its equivalent can substitute if they complete a 20-hour on-line training session and pass the necessary background check.
National Education Policy Center. Caught in the Crosshairs: Emerging Bilinguals and the Reading Wars More than a dozen states—including Florida, Texas and North Carolina—rushed to react, passing laws requiring pre-service and current teachers to place a greater emphasis on phonics… In addition to adding new reading standards to the evaluation of teacher preparation programs, Colorado lawmakers also, in 2019, passed legislation requiring the state education department to ensure that early reading curricula used in schools emphasizes phonemic awareness.
Teachers College. Tracing the Sources of Inspiration: Amoy Walker (M.A. ’06) is honored for teaching that “dives deep” and strengthens critical thinking …she enrolled at TC, where she earned her degree in Social Studies Education… looking at the research of equity and inclusion and figuring out how to create a safe and respectable place for all children to grow and learn. TC showed me how to look at the resources that a child needs to live a full and dignified life. And I have taken that understanding with me for all these years since I left TC.”
The 74. Force of Habit: New Study Finds that Routines Could Be Blocking Teacher Improvement New approaches to instructional coaching held the promise for initiating positive changes. Sims pointed especially to an exercise at the University of Virginia that places pre-service teachers in virtual classrooms, where they were asked to manage student-like avatars that loudly disrupted their teaching.
Washington Post. Denied a teaching job for being ‘too Black,’ she started her own school — and a movement Burroughs was forward-thinking in her understanding of what women can or should learn. She taught vocational skills, but her school also emphasized subjects such as literature and Latin. To graduate, all students were required to take a Black history course.
NEW YORK STATE
New York State Education Department.
1) Seeking candidates for Senior Deputy Commissioner of Education Policy to serve as a member of the Commissioner’s Leadership Team The incumbent will play a key role in implementing strategic plans relating to student assessment, the development and implementation of New York State learning standards, charter school management, teacher and school leader preparation requirements and certification…
2) Statement From Chancellor Lester W. Young, Jr., the Board of Regents and State Education Commissioner Betty A. Rosa on Appointments “We are pleased to congratulate Regents Hakanson and Reyes on their re-elections to the Board of Regents… “We welcome Ruth Turner and Aramina Vega Ferrer who were elected to the Board of Regents today by the New York State Legislature.
NEW YORK CITY
Columbia University Education Law and Policy Society. Panel Discussion: “Special Education and COVID-19” Zoom Webinar: Monday, March 8, 2021 6:00 pm
Gotham Gazette. Expanding Educational Opportunities for Our Youngest Learners By expanding and reforming the bilingual certifications needed to teach younger children, we can offer scholarships and financial aid to student-teachers who can teach languages like Spanish, Chinese, and Polish at an introductory level, helping provide educational support for both our children and their instructors.
NYTimes. Susan Feingold Dies at 95; Helped Give New York Children a Head Start: Her Bloomingdale Family Program provided preschoolers with a haven where there hadn’t been one before. With the aid of federal funding, Bloomingdale grew, with longtime volunteer parents joining its full-time staff. In the 1970s, Ms. Feingold introduced a “one to one” program, which focused on individual care for children with special needs, eventually offering bilingual speech therapy and occupational therapy. By the 1990s, Bloomingdale had three early childhood centers in Upper Manhattan, including its Columbus Avenue site.
