GLOBAL
CBC News. Ontario announces new Indigenous curriculum for Grades 1-3 However, those changes have been criticized, both for the lack of consultation in the lead-up to them, and for the amount of training teachers are given prior to being expected to teach the curriculum.
Education International. Improving the status of teachers through intelligent professionalism The responses identified that status is affected by teacher pay and working conditions, is related to workplace stress, influences the attractiveness of teaching as a career for young people and impacts whether qualified teachers want to remain in the classroom.
International Task Force on Teachers. Teachers in Crisis Contexts: We must invest in their strengths, not rest on them [by Danni Falk and Chris Henderson from Teachers College, Columbia University.] 3. Enable teachers to support all learners by continuously investing in and dramatically improving the nature and quality of teacher preparation, continuous professional development, and sustained support.
NYTimes. GONE: Nearly 100,000 people have disappeared in Mexico. Their families now search for clues among the dead. Among the most widely known examples: the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from a rural teachers’ college in the town of Ayotzinapa. An investigation under Enrique Peña Nieto, the president at the time, placed blame on a local drug cartel and the municipal police. But that explanation has been widely condemned by international experts, including the United Nations…
Washington Post. Millions of Indian kids have been out of school for 18 months. The break threatens decades of progress. Some state governments have attempted to stem the mounting learning losses with local initiatives. In Odisha, a poor state on the eastern coast of the country, a government initiative supported by UNICEF connected trainee teachers with out-of-school kids in villages.
UNITED STATES
Chalkbeat.
1) ‘Alarming’ shortage of child care workers in Philadelphia prompts recruitment event Jackson said that the minimum requirement for her center to keep its top rating from Keystone Stars is a high school diploma with two years of experience or a child development associate credential, or CDA, which can be obtained online and is the equivalent of nine college credits toward an early education degree.
2) Four reasons why schools are facing crippling shortages Short-term bonuses can help, but make less of an impact in increasing the supply of teachers or other certified jobs like counseling that require longer-term training.
CivXNow. State Policy Menu *Pre-service Teaching Requirements: States should strengthen pre-service requirements for civics teachers by requiring undergraduate courses in U.S. Government and U.S. History, as well as undergraduate course work in the unique pedagogy of history and civics. States should also implement a fellowship program to encourage humanities and social science graduates of color to join the social studies teaching profession.
Colorado NewsLine. Congress has a plan for universal pre-K. Will states opt in? If the congressional plan grandfathers in a workforce that is not required to have a four-year degree, that could in turn affect the quality of education some children receive, he said. Often private or home-based day care providers have two-year degrees or high school diplomas. States would be able to decide on the teaching skills needed in order to bypass a degree requirement.
Education Week.
1) Combating the Problems With Facebook and Instagram: 8 Tips for Teachers
2) I’m Back in the Classroom With a Ph.D. and Some Advice for Policymakers I spent time with the elusive psychometricians who created those value-added models of teacher performance. (Turns out, many of them were not thrilled their models were used to judge teacher quality, particularly when the models were attached to pay-for-performance schemes.)… The university where I work, like others, has been seeing declining enrollment in teacher-preparation programs.
Inside Higher Ed. Change Comes to Public Service Loan Forgiveness: Most of the reforms are temporary, but they’ll still help hundreds of thousands of borrowers chart a renewed path toward loan forgiveness. The overhaul is intended to fulfill a “largely unmet” promise to wipe away the student debt of teachers, military service members and others working in the public sector.
MarketScreener. Nation’s Largest College of Education Celebrates American Education Week with Scholarships for Current and Aspiring Teachers. Western Governors University’s (WGU) Teachers College will mark the National Education Association’s (NEA) 2021 American Education Week Nov. 15-19 by announcing its WGU Loves Teachers and Become a Teacher scholarship programs, together totaling $6 million, for current and future education professionals who wish to pursue bachelor’s or master’s degree programs in the Teachers College.
National Academy of Education. Evaluating and Improving Teacher Preparation Programs: Commissioned Paper Series As part of the Evaluating and Improving Teacher Preparation Programs project, this commissioned paper series covers key aspects of teacher preparation and evaluation methods that support high-quality preparation and continuous program improvement.
NYTimes.
1) Lesson Plans and Teaching Ideas: Resources, strategies and ideas for teaching with The New York Times.
2) Troubled Student Loan Forgiveness Program Gets an Overhaul: The sweeping changes will help more than a half-million public service workers who had thought they were paying down their debt for years. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which sued the Trump administration over its management of the program, said the measures would bring “urgently needed relief” and “overdue changes” that would help at least 200,000 of the union’s members.
Santa Fe New Mexican. New Mexico’s teacher-prep programs face challenges amid surging vacancies Alternative pathways are associated with higher rates of diversity compared with traditional teaching programs, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics — but research from the Learning Policy Institute also shows that in Northern New Mexico, those finishing out alternative licenses often are underprepared. That lack of preparedness could be exacerbated this year as schools return to in-person learning through the pandemic…
U.S. Dept. of Education. U.S. Department of Education Announces Transformational Changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, Will Put Over 550,000 Public Service Workers Closer to Loan Forgiveness … U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “Teachers, nurses, first responders, servicemembers, and so many public service workers have had our back especially amid the challenges of the pandemic. Today, the Biden Administration is showing that we have their backs, too.”
The 74. A New Kind of Curriculum Night: Armed With Protest Signs and Data, Diverse Group of Minneapolis Parents Demands Better Reading Instruction for Their Kids The report, along with follow-up pieces documenting teachers’ lack of awareness and explaining why colleges of education cling to discredited strategies for teaching reading — such as having students guess at a word after looking at pictures in a book — made Hanford a household name at dinner tables around the country.
NEW YORK STATE
Press-Republican. SUNY Plattsburgh Teacher Education programs earn full accreditation. SUNY Plattsburgh’s teacher education programs have been accredited for a full seven-year term by the Association for Advancing Quality in Education Preparation.
University at Albany. SOE Earns National Accreditation of Graduate Education Programs The Association for Advancing Quality in Educator Preparation (AAQEP) has awarded full 7-year accreditation to the University at Albany’s graduate programs for school leadership, literacy educators, and special education preparation. The award includes a commendation for the literacy and special education programs (inclusive of the early childhood and childhood education programs).
NEW YORK CITY
Chalkbeat. NYC to eliminate ‘gifted’ test in overhaul of segregated program Under the new model, the city will train roughly 4,000 teachers and hire additional teachers already versed in accelerated learning to work in neighborhoods with historically little to no gifted programming, city officials said Friday. The new program, called Brilliant NYC, will start in the fall of 2022 and will be phased into first and second grade the following years.
NYTimes. New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program: Students who are currently enrolled in gifted and talented classes will not be affected. But the highly selective and racially segregated program will be replaced for incoming students. …the city will train all its kindergarten teachers — roughly 4,000 educators — to accommodate students who need accelerated learning within their general education classrooms.
Pix11. NYC DOE employees reassigned over vaccine mandates say students, schools are shortchanged They are vaccinated, trained specialists who say that a DOE policy related to the mandate reassigned them to schools to teach and to do other classroom educational tasks, even though they’re not classroom educators. Instead, they’re data analysts, social workers, guidance counselors, researchers and others who are connected to the DOE central office.
