Posts Tagged ‘equity’

College of Education Awarded $1.5M Houston Endowment Grant to Prepare And Produce More Qualified Teachers of Color

Prarie View A&M University

Houston Endowment has awarded Prairie View A&M University’s Whitlowe R. Green College of Education (WRGCOE) one of the college’s largest grants in its 141-year history. The foundation is investing $1.5 million in the College to support PVAMU’s Educator Preparation Program, increasing the number of qualified teachers of color and preparing the educators for long-term success. The grant is part of $20M in funds the Houston Endowment awarded to several Houston area organizations committed to making racial equity and social justice in Houston a reality.

Join AACTE Webinar on Combating Racism: Critical Consciousness in Educator Preparation

Racial relations challenge and social or society race tension as two black and white human heads facing each other in crisis as they both burn as a society and social relationship troubleAACTE is honored to welcome three panelists from member institution Rowan University to lead its next webinar in the Combating Racism in Educator Preparation Series. For this installment, Monika Shealey, Shelley Zion, and Beatrice Carey, who are among those leading the creation and implementation of Rowan’s DEI certificate program, will teach participants to tune into their critical consciousness to sustain a lifelong commitment to addressing structural oppression. 

The Critical Consciousness in Educator Preparation webinar will take place on Monday, March 22, 1:00-2:15pm EST. In this interactive webinar, attendees will learn and practice several foundational strategies based on the certificate program modules. Whatever your role and wherever you are on the lifelong path of being a genuinely antiracist, abolitionist, and intersectional educator, you will benefit from this webinar as either a starting or reflective framework for the individual educator to live and promulgate these values through the field.

Equity-Minded Deans Discuss Leading During the Twin Crisis at #AACTE21

AACTE presented a Deeper Dive session on February 24, 2021 at its 73rd Annual Meeting, “Leading in the Time of Crisis: Responding to COVID-19 and Social Justice Movements.” This panel discussion, moderated by AACTE’s Vice President of Research, Policy, & Advocacy Jacqueline Rodriguez, explored the leadership responses of three education deans to the national and racial pandemic. Although the issues raised were not easy to navigate, each dean highlighted specific strategies and intentional efforts made at their respective institution, which demonstrated the keen ability to lead with justice, compassion, and action. In listening to their responses, I noted that each response matched one of John C. Maxwell’s quote for leadership success, “Everything rises and falls on leadership.”

Jacqueline Rodriguez described the deans as equity-minded leaders who start off with empathy and maintain their efforts through action.

Structures for Success: Supporting, Developing and Retaining Black Male Educators

Black male teacher working with students in the classroom

Learner-centered design (LCD) has become a key component of digital products and platforms; curriculum and lesson planning; and non-didactic pedagogical approaches. This paradigm foregrounds the needs of learners by meeting learners where they are. LCD proposes that all designed environments should be built around the goals, needs, activities and educational contexts of users. In essence, LCDs allow for the incorporation of the whole learner by using their preferences, strengths, weaknesses, and interests as assets that can be leveraged to strengthen learning experiences.

NASSP Seeks Feedback on Special Education and LGBTQ+ Students and Educators

A person drawing and pointing at a We Want Your Feedback Chalk IllustrationCalling all educators! Your review and your voice is requested. AACTE is proud to work collaboratively with the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) in the Learning First Alliance coalition. Our colleagues at NASSP, alongside their Board of Directors recently stated its intent to adopt two new position statements on LGBTQ+ Students and Educators and Supporting Principals as Leaders of Special Education—and your feedback is critical. Public comments are open now through March 31.

Federal Action Removes Long-Standing Obstacle to School Integration

This article originally appeared on the Learning Policy Institute blog and is reprinted with permission.

Janel GeorgeWhen Congress passed the mammoth $2.3 trillion federal funding legislation—the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021—last December, most of the press focused on the package’s much-needed COVID-19 relief funds and the narrowly averted government shutdown. But nested within the legislation is game-changing language that removes a long-standing obstacle to states and school districts fulfilling Brown v. Board of Education’s promise of eliminating separate and unequal schools. Effective January 1, 2021, there is no longer a prohibition on the use of federal school transportation funds to support school integration.

NCLD and Understood Develop Free Distance Learning Toolkit

Young woman sitting on couch working on laptop

At Understood and the National Center for Learning Disabilities, we have been working to understand the challenges that distance learning has presented to students who learn differently.

In response, we have developed a practical resource to help educators more effectively support students with learning differences, and in turn all learners, during distance learning. Today, we are eager to share that resource with you and the world at large in our new  “Distance learning toolkit: Key practices to support students who learn differently.”

New AACTE Report Tracks EPP Response to COVID-19 and Racial Injustice Crises

Fall 2020 Member Survey CoverIn October 2020, AACTE invited the chief representatives of its member institutions to complete a survey on how the twin crises of COVID-19 and racial injustice had affected their educator preparation programs and how they have responded to these crises. AACTE conducted a similar survey in April 2020, asking members about the immediate impact of COVID-19 on their educator preparation programs. A new report, released during the 2021 Annual Meeting, summarizes results from both surveys, tracking the evolving response of EPPs to these twin crises. 

Key findings include the following:

Sarah Mia Obiwo Recognized with 2021 AACTE Outstanding Dissertation Award

Sarah Mia ObiwoAACTE is pleased to announce Sarah “Mia” Obiwo as the recipient of the 2021 AACTE Outstanding Dissertation Award for “Bringing Clarity to the Construct: A Content Analysis of Disposition for Urban Teaching and Learning.” The author completed her dissertation for the Ph.D. at Georgia State University, and she currently serves as assistant professor of early childhood education at the University of Memphis. She is being presented with the award at today’s virtual AACTE 73rd Annual Meeting Awards Forum.

Call for Articles and Columns: ‘Education in a Pandemic Age: Evolution or Transformation?’

The Journal for Success in High-Need Schools, is seeking articles and columns for its Volume 16, Number 2, Issue theme – “Education in a Pandemic Age: Evolution or Transformation?” 

The COVID-19 pandemic is the latest and by far the most severe of several pandemics (e.g., HIV, SARS, MERS, Ebola) global society has experienced in recent decades. COVID-19 has dramatically affected all sectors of education and society, including teaching and learning; how schools are structured; student, teacher, and parent/family relationships; and has thrust eLearning front and center in all aspects of education.  In shuttering virtually all schools and colleges and with nearly all students “sheltering in place,” COVID-19 transformed, at least in the short term, the trajectory of the decades-long evolution of online and distance learning.  As teachers scramble to develop their classes online and schools struggle to make technology more widely available, families must adjust to new realities with children at home.  Already there are wider impacts on work, leisure, and family life, not to mention jobs, careers, social organization, governance, international relations, and the global economy.  The timing and magnitude of these changes are open to speculation, but it appears that at some level they will be long lasting, even as the duration of COVID-19 and the likelihood of future pandemics on our complex, highly interactive Earth society are unclear.

Six Minority Serving Institutions Transform Teacher Preparation by Explicitly Infusing Equity into Programming

Branch Alliance Institutions

Educator preparation providers (EPPs) at six minority serving institutions (MSIs) across the United States selected to participate in Branch Alliance for Educator Diversity’s (BranchED) National Teacher Preparation Transformation Center will undergo an immersion process aimed at producing highly effective and diverse teachers.

 

Institutions comprising BranchED’s National Teacher Preparation Transformation Center’s Cohort 2 include Alabama A&M University in Huntsville, AL, Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles, CA, Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas, University of La Verne in La Verne, CA., Virginia State University in Petersburg, VA, and West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas. The pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade (PK-12) school district partners for these respective institutions also participate in the Transformation Center.

Improving Practices in STEM Teacher Preparation TAG Meeting

Invited Speakers Talk About Courageous Action

TAG FlyerThe call to action to engage our collective consciousness by resisting hate and restoring hope through courageous action is now. After the summer of racial reckoning, institutions have re-examined mission and vision statements for what many consider a watershed moment with “talk of transformation, roadmaps, and “action steps” toward sweeping curricular reforms (Bartlet, T, 2021). The Improving Practices in STEM Teacher Preparation (IPSTP) Topical Action Group (TAG) likewise responds to the call by reimagining TAG activities and engaging members to reflect, reimagine, and take action through STEM teacher education. 

To start the work for envisioning courageous action, the IPSTP TAG has invited scholars to share their work in socially just and equity-sustaining STEM practices. The invited speakers include Angela Calabrese Barton of the University of Michigan, Edna Tan of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Tanya Maloney of Montclair State University, and Kathleen Schenkel of San Diego State University.

CREA Call for Applications Extended

Consortium for Research-Based and Equitable Assessments

AACTE recognizes the challenges that many of our members are facing because of the recent winter storms. We believe that your safety and well-being are most important. As such, we are extending the application deadline for the Consortium for Research-Based and Equitable Assessments (CREA). The new deadline to apply is March 5 at 11:59 p.m. EST.

We appreciate the overwhelming interest that have been expressed to join the Consortium and hope that this extension will provide much needed respite to those impacted by widespread power and utility outages, and other challenges to their everyday needs. Given the new deadline, all applicants will be notified of their application decision on March 22, 2021.

Please direct any questions about the Call for Applications to me at wjames@aacte.org.

Looking at the Pipeline, Institutions Producing Black and Brown Teachers

Leslie FenwickFindings show that in the public school system nationwide, only 7% of teachers, 11% of principals, and 3% of superintendents are Black. In the following Yahoo Finance Live video interview, AACTE Dean in Residence Leslie Fenwick explores this topic. She discusses the impact desegregation of public schools has had on the decline of the Black teacher pipeline and what steps should be taken to reverse the trend. 

Watch the video.