Month: December 2021

GLOBAL
Japan Times. A dramatic shift: Subject teachers in Japan’s grade schools   Beginning in April 2022, fifth and sixth grade students in Japan’s public elementary schools will have different teachers for different subjects — a change from the current system where a homeroom teacher essentially teaches everything from math and science to physical education. The dramatic revision is aimed at easing the burden on teachers — who currently must prepare for all subjects — and allow them to refine their teaching skills and improve their students’ learning experience.

Mayer D., Goodwin A.L., Mockler N. (2021) Teacher Education Policy: Future Research, Teaching in Contexts of Super-Diversity and Early Career Teaching. In: Mayer D. (eds) Teacher Education Policy and Research. Springer, Singapore.  There are remarkable similarities in teacher education policy in each of the 13 nations and, while most nations have a history of intense political interest in reforming teacher education, there are many instances of strong and influential leadership by teacher educators through their research, agency and partnerships, and practices. 

The National UAE. Trusting teachers drives innovation in education, Dubai conference told: Ministers from around world spoke of the importance of giving staff the skills to shape young minds   Liina Kersna, Estonia’s Minister of Education and Research, said… “We highly value schools and teacher’s autonomy, and teacher education. Our teachers must hold a master’s degree which means five years of universities and one year of in-service training,”

UNITED STATES
AACTE. Action Needed: Urge Your Members of Congress To Co-Sponsor the Educators for America Act The bill specifically calls for:
* Authorizing two, $500 million grant … as well as expanding partnership programs such as the Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP)
* …support historically Black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions in expanding and strengthening their educator preparation programs
* Doubling TEACH Grants to $8,000 per year…

Chalkbeat.
1) Michigan lawmakers create a pathway for school support staff to substitute teach   Lawmakers passed a bill late Tuesday temporarily allowing school support staff to substitute teach even if they don’t have a single college credit. The Republican-sponsored bill passed on near party lines. It’s unclear if Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, will sign it into law.
2) When I was 14, an English teacher saved my life without knowing it   She doesn’t know this, but I credit my life to Ms. Hunt’s presence. I eventually became a teacher myself in the hope I could maybe be a figure like Ms. Hunt to another lonely eighth grader struggling to see her place in the world. [Kelly Gleischman (she/her) is the managing partner of EdFuel, a national nonprofit that supports schools to recruit and retain high-quality, diverse teaching staff.]

NEA News. Educators Share 6 Ways the Build Back Better Act Can Support Students, Schools  The Build Back Better Act will begin to address the educator shortage by investing in educator recruitment and retention to address shortages and diversifying the profession, including Grow Your Own programs and teacher residencies   

U.S. Congress. Educators for America Act   The purposes are to build the capacity of educator preparation programs to ensure all students have access to profession-ready educators; recruit new and diverse educators into the profession; invest in partnerships between higher education, state and local partners, and support innovation to meet the changing need of students.

NEW YORK STATE
NYSED Board of Regents December meetings
2022–2023 State Aid Proposal  Improve the Educator Certification Process: $1.5 million for Department staff to improve teacher and school building leader certification review process timeframes… Increase Access to a Highly Qualified Diverse Teaching Workforce: $5 million to increase the participation rate of underrepresented and economically disadvantaged individuals in teaching careers through the Teacher Opportunity Corps (TOC) II program.

2022-2023 Non-State Aid Proposal
* Improving the Educator Certification Process. Funding Critical Staff Needs: Approximately $1.5 million in new state funding is needed to hire seven additional staff members in OTI. OTI Modernization: The Department is requesting that the 2022-2023 enacted budget enable the Department to access the entire $8 million prior year balance to support the cost of a technology project to overhaul and enhance the online TEACH educator certification application system. This technology upgrade will help to make the application process easier for individuals and reduce the OTI processing time for applications.

* Technology Modernization of the Office of College & University Evaluation (OCUE). Funding Critical Staff Needs: The Department is requesting $65,792 in new state funding to hire an Administrative Specialist 1 to provide support for OCUE Modernization Project.  OCUE Modernization: The Department has requested Division of Budget (DOB) approval to allocate $8.5 million to update technology and build an online system for evaluating and approving college and university programs from the $100M appropriation included in the 2021-22 enacted budget for agency related technology improvement projects.

* Increasing Access to a Highly Qualified, Diverse Teaching Workforce – Expand TOC II: $5 million in new state funds to establish a separately appropriated Teacher Opportunity Corps II program to increase the number of certified educators of color. Under this expansion, the Department projects to increase the number of TOC II programs across the state from 17 to over 30 and/or to increase the number of TOC II students served from 544 to up to 1,451.

Higher Education Sub-Committee
* Teacher Certification Reports Key findings on New York State Teacher Shortages and Certification, studies conducted and presented by Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast & Islands (REL)

* Presentation on Proposed Teacher Performance Assessment Requirement Changes

* Proposed Amendment… Relating to the Teacher Performance Assessment Requirement for Certification and Establishing a Teacher Performance Assessment Requirement for Registered Teacher Preparation Programs  … proposed regulatory amendment to modify the teacher performance assessment requirement by eliminating the requirement of the edTPA for certification and, instead, requiring that New York State registered teacher preparation programs develop or choose their own teacher performance assessment according to a proposed definition of a teacher performance assessment in New York State. Given this proposed change, Department staff will also propose to remove the edTPA safety net, edTPA multiple measures review process, and Conditional Initial certificate in the classroom teaching service from the regulations.  

* Proposed Amendment… Relating to the General Education Core in the Liberal Arts and Sciences Requirement for Registered Teacher Preparation Programs and the Individual Evaluation Pathway to Teacher Certification proposed regulatory amendment to remove the general core education in liberal arts and sciences requirement for New York State registered teacher preparation programs and the individual evaluation pathway to certification.

* Proposed Amendment… Relating to the Requirements for the Reissuance of an Initial Certificate   The Department is therefore proposing to remove the requirement that these candidates complete 50 clock hours of CTLE and/or professional learning to obtain a reissuance of their Initial certificate.

Consent Agenda
Relating to the Creation of the Bilingual Education Extension, Supplementary Bilingual Education Extension, and Registration Requirements for Programs Leading to the Bilingual Education Extension for Initial and Professional School Counselor Certificates   The Department is proposing to create the Bilingual Education extension and Supplementary Bilingual Education extension for the new Initial and Professional School Counselor certificates, continuing these extension options for school counselors in the future… If adopted at the December 2021 meeting, the proposed amendments will become effective on December 29, 2021.

NYSED Office of Teaching Initiatives. Teacher Performance Assessment Proposal Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

NYSED Press Release. State Education Department Proposes Changes to Teacher Certification Requirements to Reduce Barriers to Certification While Maintaining Rigorous Standards   …edTPA Requirement Would be Replaced with a Teacher Performance Assessment in New York State-Registered Teacher Preparation Programs Public Comment will be Accepted Through February 28 via  [email protected](link sends e-mail). It is anticipated the proposed amendment will be presented to the Board of Regents for adoption at the April 2022 meeting. If the Board adopts the proposal, New York State-registered teacher preparation programs would have until September 1, 2023 to integrate a teacher performance assessment into teacher candidates’ student teaching or similar clinical experience.

New York State United Teachers (NYSUT)  NYSUT applauds Regents for plan to eliminate edTPA requirements    “We’ve heard too many stories about edTPA’s needlessly onerous requirements and costs negatively impacting the student-teaching experience. It’s policies like this that drive people away from the profession before they even get started in their own classroom. We thank Commissioner Rosa, Chancellor Young, Regents Cashin, Collins and their colleagues on the Board for hearing educators’ concerns and taking firm steps like this toward ensuring the next generation of students will have the high-quality educators they need to be successful.”

NEW YORK CITY
Chalkbeat.
1) Could NYC families once again have a remote option? Incoming Chancellor David Banks says yes: In a Q&A with Chalkbeat, David Banks talks about remote learning, reading instruction, school segregation, and more.   I think our fundamental approach to how we’re teaching is flawed… A lot of our schools across New York City are teaching at the earliest grades through a balanced literacy approach. And I think there’s growing research that’s been talking about the fact that balanced literacy has not really worked, and particularly for Black and brown kids. The phonetic approach to teaching of reading is something that I think has been missing.
2) New York City Council punts on bill to reduce class sizes after school officials said the proposal was unworkable   Reducing class sizes can require hiring more inexperienced teachers which can dampen the academic benefits, according to a study focused on New York City…Adding roughly 100,000 classroom seats would have come at a steep cost: roughly $993 million a year over 30 years… That figure does not include the cost of hiring additional teachers to staff smaller classrooms

Hechinger Report. Students need more computer training for our increasingly digital world   City University of New York has developed robust professional learning experiences for educators, such as integrating computational thinking into the coursework and field experience of teacher education programs.

Teachers College.
1) Leading for Educational Equity in New York: The Case for Emancipatory Leadership.  hosted by the Black Education Research Collective (BERC) at Teachers College Professor Sonya Douglass Horsford, Founding Director of BERC, in conversation with Chancellor Lester Young, Jr. New York Board of Regents, and incoming Chancellor David Banks, New York City Department of Education.  Thursday, January 27 5:30 [viewing details to follow]
2) New Research and Applications for Teaching Reading Workshop   online asynchronous course March 4-April 16; 12 clock hours CTLE credit; Facilitator: Dr. S. G. Masullo
3) The Pandemic as a Portal to New Futures in Education   Please join Bank Street College, Teachers College, and Erikson Institute for a 90-minute special event featuring educators and parents who contributed articles to Bank Street Occasional Paper Series #46, “The Pandemic as a Portal: On Transformative Ruptures and Possible Futures for Education.”  Friday, January 21, 5PM

GLOBAL
European Conference on Educational Research (ECER). CFP Education in a Changing World: The impact of global realities on the prospects and experiences of educational research [deadline 31 Jan.]

MTL Blog. Quebec Has New Scholarships Ranging From $9K To $20K For Students In 6 Fields   The government has identified six in-demand sectors. These are health and social services, education, early childhood education and care, engineering, information technology and construction.

The Guardian. Staff absences having ‘massive impact’ on pupils in England say head teachers: More than half of 1,000 senior teachers surveyed say they have insufficient staff due to absences caused by Covid and illnesses   Last year, there was a welcome spike in applications for initial teacher training, amid fears over the impact of the pandemic on jobs. Just 82% of the DfE’s target for secondary trainees was reached this year, well short of last year’s peak of 103% and below even the 83% achieved in 2019.

UNESCO. 2021/2 Global Education Monitoring Report on non-state actors in education, Who chooses? Who loses?    Chapter 7 unpacks the special case of tertiary education, where expansion of private provision has been rapid in several countries, posing particular challenges for governments that wish to promote equity and assure quality. Post-secondary teacher training institutions are another area in which non-state provision has emerged.

UNITED STATES
AACTE. AACTE Endorses Educators for America Act   The legislation, introduced by Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.), addresses crises in educator preparation, including the growing teacher shortage, fewer students completing bachelor’s degrees in education, and the lack of diversity in the profession.

Boston Globe. An Andover preschool hired an unusual teacher’s aide: a robot   The district first connected with Bolat, a father to an adult son with autism and a Navy veteran, this summer. He introduced Stetson to a slate of MOVIA robots, each built to aid people with intellectual disabilities… “We worked extensively with teachers and therapists to create their personalities and the lesson plans,” Bolat said…MOVIA needs teachers to keep the robots attuned to educational advances and children’s responses.

Chalkbeat.
1) Child care staffing shortages across Pennsylvania persist, but solutions taking shape  … the state’s Teacher Education and Compensation Helps Early Childhood, or TEACH, program…a public-private partnership including businesses, foundations and government that offers scholarships to help child care workers improve their education and their compensation. Through TEACH, the college courses are free, and she gets paid release time during the work day to attend them. It is a powerful incentive.
2) Michigan dyslexia bills launch debate over supporting struggling readers   The bills require school districts to screen students for dyslexia characteristics and increase teacher training requirements so teachers are better able to identify and address reading problems… Several of the state’s largest teacher preparation programs previously told Chalkbeat that they already cover dyslexia and the science of reading.

Education Week. 4 Changes Schools Can Make to Recruit Teachers of Color and Keep Them Around   1. Establish teacher residency programs   2. Advocate for states to rethink the use of teacher certification exams or establish alternative certification requirements 3. Establish ‘grow your own’ programs 4. Provide targeted specific training and support for teachers of color

New York Times.
1) In Texas, a Battle Over What Can Be Taught, and What Books Can Be Read   As for the state’s attempt to ban critical race theory, for all the Republicans’ talk, the Texas law makes no mention of the term. Aspects of critical race theory are influential in some teacher colleges, and shape how some administrators and teachers approach race and ideas of white privilege. Yet no one has identified a Texas high school class that teaches the theory.
2) How Public Preschool Can Help, and How to Make Sure It Doesn’t Hurt: Congress is considering universal pre-K and subsidies for child care   The bill in Congress includes quality thresholds. It says that within six years, all children should be able to secure a spot in a center of the highest quality. It also has grants that include teacher training and building improvements. 

U.S. Congress. S.879 – Civics Secures Democracy Act.  SEC. 105. GRANTS TO INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION. (a) Program Authorized.—The Secretary of Education is authorized to make grants to institutions of higher education, on a competitive basis, to assist such institutions in developing and implementing programs to train elementary and secondary school teachers in methods for instructing and engaging students in civics and history.

Washington Post.
1) D.C.’s struggle to hire more diverse teachers — and keep them: Latino educators remain sparse, even in the city’s largely Latino schools   Nineteen percent of the city’s students, meanwhile, were Latino or Hispanic, compared with 7 percent of teachers. The latter gap was even wider in Wards 1 and 4, where “15 percent and 10 percent of teachers are Hispanic/Latino, respectively, but 58 percent and 40 percent of students are Hispanic/Latino,” the report said… “What message does that send to [students]? That Latinx people don’t or can’t become teachers,” Sanchez, who has since moved to Garrison Elementary, said of those disparities in an interview. “There’s so much messaging that happens on kind of a subconscious level.”
2) GOP resistance to preschool plan could imperil key Biden proposal in many states   The president’s plan would also require states to implement new standards for what children learn in the classroom, upgrade credentials for hiring new preschool instructors and mandate higher teacher pay than most states do currently…

NEW YORK STATE
NYSED Board of Regents. December meeting agenda

New York State Register. Rule Making Activities Education Department: Definition of the Term “Year of Experience” for Permanent or Professional Certification. Candidates in the classroom teaching, educational leadership, and pupil personnel service must complete … at least three years of experience for the Professional certificate… To allow for additional types of experiences, the Department is proposing to revise the definition to provide a single definition of a year of experience for Permanent or Professional certification, which would be defined as: * a minimum of 180 days in a 12-month period of full-time satisfactory experience, or its equivalent, in an educational setting acceptable to the Department. Data, views or arguments may be submitted before Jan. 28, 2022 to: Petra Maxwell, NYS Education Department, Office of Higher Education, 89 Washington Avenue, Room 975 EBA, Albany, NY 12234, (518) 474-2238, email: [email protected]

New York Times. SUNY Leader to Resign After Disparaging Cuomo Victim: Jim Malatras, the chancellor of the State University of New York, said he would resign after text messages showed he had belittled a woman who had accused Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment.

NEW YORK CITY
Chalkbeat. It’s official: David Banks will be NYC’s next schools chancellor   Banks, 59, has a long track record as an educator stretching back to 1986 when he began as a teacher at P.S. 167 in Crown Heights, a post he held for five years before becoming the school’s dean of students for a year…

Gothamist. Teachers Union, Parents Push For Class Size Bill As Legislative Session Winds Down   According to the city’s Independent Budget Office, under the bill originally proposed, nearly half the city’s 1,600 schools would not be able to comply with the class size legislation. Schools would also have to hire additional teachers to accommodate smaller classes.

NY Daily News. NYC teachers union pressures City Council to vote on class size bill before end of the year.  The union projects that the amended bill would require the city to hire an additional 11,000 teachers over the next five years — outlays he said could be funded by the recent influx of state and federal funding.

NYTimes. David Banks, Educator and Adams Ally, Is Next N.Y.C. Schools Chancellor    Mr. Banks earned his law degree from St. John’s in Queens and worked for the city’s law department and the state attorney general before becoming a public school teacher in Crown Heights… Mr. Banks has already begun to build out his cabinet. Daniel Weisberg, who served as the lead labor strategist for schools under former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and now runs an organization focused on teacher training and quality, will serve as Mr. Banks’s first deputy. 

Teachers College. Advocacy at Teachers College. Join Tuesday, December 14 at 12pm ET for an Advocacy Academy workshop to learn about the federal, bipartisan Civics Secures Democracy bill (see U.S. Congress above) that would improve civics education; we’ll also write letters to Congress in support of the bill [hosted by Dr. Matt Camp]

The Action Network. Please bring the class size bill to a vote!  Please send a letter today to NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson, urging him to bring the bill that would require smaller classes, Intro 2374, to a vote.  We only have one week before nearly the entire NYC Council turns over.

The Nation. To Reduce Inequality in Our Education System, Reduce Class Sizes   New York City has a rare opportunity to pass a hugely popular bill to shrink class sizes. So why are the mayor and the City Council speaker standing in its way?   The legislation currently has 41 cosponsors out of 50 members—a supermajority that could overturn the mayor’s likely veto. Yet the vote on this bill has been delayed by Speaker Corey Johnson… time is running out. If the City Council doesn’t vote on the bill by December 16, it will have to be reintroduced and reconsidered by a largely new council under a different speaker.

GLOBAL
Jersey Evening Post. Government misses secondary school teacher training target   Data from the Department for Education (DfE) shows there were 37,069 new entrants to initial teacher training (ITT) this year (2021-22) compared with 40,377 last year (2020-21) – a fall of 8%. The figures show that only 82% of the overall target for secondary subject trainees was reached this year, down from 103% in 2020-21 and 83% in 2019-20.

Mirage News. Growing teacher shortages and NSW could miss out on thousands of teachers   A confidential government document warns NSW has a large and growing shortage of teachers and says the state could miss out on more than 3,000 teachers unless a drop of almost 30% in the number of people studying to become a teacher is reversed.

National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education (NCSPE).  Should France Establish Charter Schools?     …since 1959, France has funded education at private schools—which are primarily Catholic—through a system called sous contrat (“under contract”), whereby the government covers about 90 percent of tuition, and schools, in turn, must hire only state-certified teachers and follow the national curriculum…

Teacher Task Force. This radio program in Uganda is inspiring teachers to take risks and try new ideas   STiR worked closely with senior officials within the country’s Ministry of Education and … The sessions were based on simple but effective evidence-based teaching strategies to help all teachers progress and improve their practice. Each lesson was accompanied by a one-page document or infographic shared over WhatsApp to reinforce the content. 

US Dept. of Education International Affairs Office. International Summit on the Teaching Profession 2021 (ISTP21)  Based on the success of the first ISTP in 2011, the event became an annual event hosted by different countries each year. Subsequent host countries have included the United States (which hosted again in 2012); the Netherlands (2013), New Zealand (2014), Canada (2015), Germany (2016), the United Kingdom (2017), Portugal (2018), Finland (2019), and Spain (2020). OECD and Education International have continued to co-host each year.

UNITED STATES
AACTE. In Memoriam: Dean Corrigan  Corrigan, who served as AACTE president from 1981-82, passed away on November 7 at his home in Middlebury, VT. He was 91 years old …received his doctorate degree in education from (Teachers College EdD ‘61) Columbia University”  [Dissertation: “Attitude changes of student teachers”. Gottesman Library: LB2157.A3 C67 1961]

BuzzFeed News. “This Is Blackface”: White Actors Are Playing Black Characters In Virtual Reality Diversity Training: Mursion tells big corporate clients that its VR simulations will help teach racial sensitivity. But the actors playing its Black characters are often white.   Mursion was not created to provide diversity and inclusion training. It began as a K–12 teacher training tool, enabling teachers to practice lesson plans on avatar children before going into a live classroom. 

InsideHigherEd.
1) A Road Map for a Compassionate Classroom: It’s the environment where students reap the most educational and social-emotional benefits   Ultimately, effective teaching and compassionate teaching are synergistically linked, and it is in a compassionate classroom where students reap the greatest educational and social-emotional benefits.
2) Higher Education’s Brave New World   To reflect on Levine’s career is to confront a welter of contradictions.  He’s a former president of Teachers College, who is perhaps best known for his damning critiques of schools of education, which he derided for their low admissions, academic, and graduation standards, faculty out of touch with practice, limited interaction with K12 schools, and a sizable gap between the theories that they teach and the actual challenges that classroom teachers face… a 13-year tenure as president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (now the Institute for Citizens & Scholars). There, he launched initiatives to transform STEM teacher preparation programs, recruit teachers with strong STEM backgrounds to work in high-needs schools…

NEAToday. The Making of the Student Debt Crisis, Explained   The federal student loan program was created in the 1970s so that all Americans could go to college. Those good intentions have had some less-than-good consequences, as student debt has grown astronomically.

New York Times. In Minneapolis Schools, White Families Are Asked to Help Do the Integrating. … research by the Black Education Research Collective at Teachers College, Columbia University, which surveyed hundreds of Black families and educators nationally this year. “Integration never comes up,” said the group’s founding director, Sonya Douglass Horsford. Instead, she said, Black families often express other priorities: “I want my child to be safe. I don’t want them to be harassed. I don’t want them to be discriminated against. I’d like the curriculum to reflect them.”

Omaha World-Herald. Bellevue University combats Nebraska teacher shortage   BU is the newest secondary education program in the state, having just received its full certification in March 2021. Currently, BU only offers the secondary education track, but this will not be the case for much longer. “One of the things that we’re doing right now is we’re adding an elementary ed and a special ed endorsement area, because those are the top two shortage areas in the state right now,” Alford said. Alford said in her 40 years of teaching she has not seen a shortage in elementary education quite like it is now.

Tristate Homepage. Lawmaker pushes to eliminate some teacher tests in Illinois   An Illinois state lawmaker is looking at eliminating a test teachers take to get their license. State Representative Sue Scherer, a former teacher, is targeting the edTPA test. She says it’s redundant because it just makes prospective teachers take all of the hard work they did during residencies and student teaching and make them replicate it during a high stress test.

Washington Post. The principal is cleaning the bathroom: Schools reel with staff shortages.   The Los Angeles Unified School District is hiring students in teacher-preparation programs who will soon graduate, district officials said.

NEW YORK STATE
InsideHigherEd. Calls Mount for SUNY Chancellor’s Removal: Jim Malatras has repeatedly faced criticism for his work with the Cuomo administration. Old text messages that show him mocking a former Cuomo aide have prompted demands for his ouster.

New York State Education Department Office of Higher Education. Educator Preparation Newsletter November 2021
Board of Regents November Items
* Certification. The Department presented an overview of certification and plans for a comprehensive review of certification in response to teacher shortages across New York State.
* Admission Requirements for Graduate-Level Teacher and Educational Leader Programs.  Governor Hochul signed two bills that changed these admission requirements effective November 15, 2021

Times Union. Schenectady schools partners with colleges to diversify teaching staff   “The goal is to take students who are interested in education and becoming teachers from Schenectady High School and feed them into SUNY Schenectady to then Cazenovia College, and then Clarkson, and then ultimately hopefully bring them back into our workforce to work with our future scholars,” said Soler. “The powerful thing here is that we’re taking it from the beginning all the way through to the end and working with our partners.” 

NEW YORK CITY
Class Size Matters. Time is running out on the class size bill — & how you can help!   41 of 49 City Council members plus the United Federation of Teachers have endorsed the bill. Please send a letter TODAY to Council Speaker Corey Johnson by clicking here— demanding that he schedule a vote for the class size reduction bill, Int 2347.  

Gothamist. City Faces Largest-Ever Lawsuit Payout To NYC Teachers Affected By “Discriminatory” Certification Tests   A massive decades-long lawsuit against New York City over the use of two teaching certification tests is winding to a conclusion, with nearly $660 million and pension benefits in damages awarded to plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit claiming the tests were discriminatory against Black and Latino teachers and prevented them from achieving full seniority, pay and benefits.

NY Daily News. Ex-NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg pledges $750 million for charter schools   The money will go toward expanding existing charter schools, incubating new ones, upgrading facilities and providing teacher and administrator training, he said.

Pix11. Parents, teachers call for NYC Council to vote for smaller class sizes at schools   It would require the city purchasing or leasing new educational space or adding access to buildings as well as hiring about 13,000 new teachers. The City Council could vote on the bill in December.

Teachers College.
1) Diversifying City Classrooms with the Teacher Opportunity Corps: The TC program recently received renewed state funding to support educators from underrepresented backgrounds in pursuing NYC public school careers   Teacher Opportunity Corps is a State Education Department initiative that in September renewed its commitment to TC with a $812,500 grant across five years. “This grant allows us to offer 25 eligible TC students tuition support, seminars with top faculty, professional development opportunities, and internship experiences in local schools,” said Katie Ledwell, Associate Director for Specialized School-Based Support Services in the Office of Teacher Education… “TC is grateful for our partnership with the New York State Education Department, which supports us in meeting our deep and longstanding goal of preparing outstanding teachers of color for work in New York City public schools,” said Aimee Katembo, Director of the Office of Teacher Education.
2 ) The Success of Blue’s Clues Runs Straight Through TC Alumna Angela Santomero: Creator of the hit children’s television show rooted in her studies of developmental psychology, Santomero discusses building a phenomenon as the program celebrates its 25th year   “The idea that we could put educational and curriculum development into a television show and make it a hit – that was the dream,” says Santomero.