Posts Tagged ‘events’

The Value of AACTE’s Annual Meeting: A Testimonial

AACTE is pleased to share excerpts from a testimonial by one of the 2019 Annual Meeting attendees, Tracy Spesia of the University of Saint Francis in Joliet, IL. In a letter to AACTE President and CEO Lynn M. Gangone, Spesia shared how the AACTE Annual Meeting has consistently influenced and brought value to her work as the edTPA coordinator at her institution:

“It was a professional and personal pleasure to attend the 71st AACTE Annual Meeting in Louisville. This annual conference’s tremendous impact on me, and the ripple impact it has had on my college and community, is clear.  I actually have the documentation to prove it! 

In 2010, I accepted the full-time position of Field Experience Coordinator (and Partnership Liaison) at the University of St. Francis. In 2012, my dean asked me to assume the edTPA coordinator position. The toolbox needed some new tools. By a stroke of luck, the AACTE annual conference was in nearby Chicago in spring 2013, and the dean suggested I attend to learn more about edTPA.  I had never heard of AACTE. I had no idea what edTPA was about. I had never really attended a professional conference.  This opportunity marks such a turning point in my career.

Advance Your Leadership Skills at AACTE Academy, June 23-27

Are you a new dean or department chair – or are you simply looking to advance your career as an academic administrator? The AACTE Leadership Academy covers essential topics, from managing finite resources to creating effective development and public relations programs, while helping to cultivate a supportive network of peers.

Register now for AACTE’s Leadership Academy, June 23 – 27 in Pittsburgh, PA at the Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel. 

At AACTE’s Leadership Academy, you will

  • Learn to articulate critical components of leadership, including styles, motivations, and a commitment to diversity and inclusivity, as they pertain to your own practice as a leader.
  • Build a comprehensive understanding of the multiple roles and functions of your appointed position, particularly in an individual institutional context.
  • Strengthen key leadership skills, enabling you to more effectively serve as both a team leader and member, manage time, develop inclusive environments, foster and promote diversity, resolve conflicts, and facilitate change.
  • Engage in discussions, via small-group settings and collective sessions, to forge networks with other professionals in similar leadership positions.

Diversified Teaching Workforce Institute and Teacher Diversity Research Award

The Third Annual Diversified Teaching Workforce (DTW) Institute will convene on February 21, 2019 at the AACTE Annual Meeting in Louisville, KY. The Institute will convene a group of national leaders at colleges and universities across the United States to spotlight and explore innovative efforts for addressing racial/ethnic teacher diversity across five key areas: recruitment and retention, teacher preparation, mentorship, induction and professional development, and advocacy. Recognizing the need to create spaces within professional networks to discuss and unpack the challenges and possibilities for increasing teacher diversity, the institute offers presentations on current research, opportunities to converse in working groups, and panel sessions focused on best practices from teacher preparation and teacher diversity pipeline leaders. A brief overview of potential panels at the Institute include:

Marvin Lynn Joins #AACTE19 Opening Keynote

AACTE is pleased to announce a second participant in the 71st Annual Meeting Opening Keynote. Marvin Lynn of the Graduate School of Education at Portland State University (PSU) will join Marilyn Cochran-Smith of the Lynch School of Education at Boston College for the general session, Friday, February 22, 2019. Lynn brings his extensive experience in teacher education to this thought-provoking discussion on accreditation, assessment, and other facets of teacher education accountability.

Lynn is the dean of the Graduate School of Education at PSU. He is an internationally recognized expert on race and education and the lead editor of the Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education. He serves as an editorial board member of several journals, and has published more than two dozen research articles and book chapters. At PSU, Lynn works closely with an outstanding and diverse faculty and staff to advance the national profile of high quality academic programs while further building and strengthening relationships with local schools.

AACTE TAG Awards Grant for K-12 Professionals to Attend Co-Teaching Conference

The AACTE Co-Teaching in Clinical Practice Topical Action Group (TAG) has awarded two scholars with funds to attend the 2018 National Conference on Co-Teaching, which is being held at St. Cloud State University in Bloomington, MN, October 24-26. The awardees, Brenda Harrison and Rhonda Mannon, are education professionals at the Ceredo-Kenova Elementary School in Wayne County, WV, who have collaborated with Marshall University over the years to implement a Professional Development School (PDS) model of educator preparation that incorporates co-teaching in clinical practice. The funding was made available from an AACTE grant to support the activities and projects of the TAG.

To learn more about the work of the TAG awardees, I invite you to attend the National Conference on Co-Teaching. The conference will examine co-teaching between pre-service and in-service teachers during the student teaching experience and how it enhances the induction and mentoring of teacher candidates, as well as enriches the practice of veteran teachers who have found new energy in teaching and working with students.

Jump-Start Your Dissertation at Holmes Retreat

Please get me through the academic year … and I promise that I will write my dissertation during the summer! is a common refrain among doctoral students who are in the throes of their dissertation work. It seems there is not a single doctoral student or candidate who hasn’t bargained with the “dissertation gods” to finish their dissertation research.

Well, summer is here! Sadly, we are already halfway through the academic break, and soon you’ll have to face the questions: How many pages have you written? How many chapters are completed? How tight is your methodology? Have you exhausted the literature? Are your research questions appropriate? Is your dissertation research IRB-worthy? Are you currently on your dissertation committee’s radar? Have you done everything that you need to do in order to graduate in the fall or spring?

Engage With edTPA at Quality Support Workshop

This event is cancelled until further notice.

AACTE is excited to announce a series of sessions at the 2018 AACTE Quality Support Workshop focused on inquiry-based implementation of edTPA. This strand of sessions, facilitated by an edTPA representative and an experienced user of the assessment, is among several choices of concurrent workshops on offer August 2-4 in Columbus, Ohio.

mel-horton kellie-crawford

The three edTPA sessions will be led by Mel Horton, associate dean at Sacred Heart University (CT), along with Kellie Crawford from Evaluation Systems Group of Pearson. Part 1 is for experienced edTPA users as well as those who are new to or interested in learning about edTPA. Parts 2 and 3 build on the first session and are designed for more experienced edTPA users.

The first interactive workshop will begin with an overview of edTPA constructs as sources of candidate evidence related to equitable teaching practices within a multiple measurement assessment system. You will get to:

What I Valued at AACTE’s Quality Support Workshop

This event is cancelled until further notice.

When I decided to attend the AACTE Quality Support Workshop last summer, I was a faculty member and assessment coordinator in a college of education. Armed with an already solid understanding of the principles and practices of assessment, I was not sure how much I would get out of attending the workshop, but as the sole representative from my institution, I registered anyway and made the trip to Minnesota. Over the next 3 days, my expectations were shattered, in a very good way!

The workshop was well organized and provided the opportunity to learn from engaging plenary session speakers and included multiple sessions covering a variety of topics related to assessment and accreditation. There was time and planned activities that allowed for ample opportunity to engage in dialogue and collaborate with others who share similar responsibilities at their institutions. It was through these opportunities that I found like-minded people who were tackling the same kind of work for educator preparation providers (EPPs) around the country.

Can We Stop Telling Faculty to Only Focus on Writing for Scholarly Outlets?

This column originally appeared in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education and is reposted with permission. The author was a panelist during AACTE’s Holmes Summer Policy Institute on June 4. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.

ramon-goings

Last week I had the opportunity to talk to current and aspiring doctoral students who were attending the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) Holmes Summer Policy Institute. Throughout the session titled “Linking Research to Policy: White Papers, Blogs, and Social Media,” I joined several panelists to dialogue about the importance of leveraging social media as an outlet to get your research exposure outside of the ivory tower and into the hands and screens of practitioners and policy makers.

Who’s Who? Preview AACTE Workshop Facilitators, Topics

When you attend AACTE’s Quality Support Workshop, you don’t just sit back and observe–you roll up your sleeves and work! See who’s coming to Columbus, Ohio, August 2-4, to help you develop action plans for your own program and dig deeper into the issues that matter most to you.

During the first half of the event, everyone will work on their quality assurance plans in a series of three 90-minute sessions. You’ll follow one of two tracks–choose Track A if you’re just getting started with a quality assurance plan, or Track B if you want to revisit or refine your approach. Track A will be led by Carol Ryan of Northern Kentucky University and Joe Lubig of Northern Michigan University. Track B will be led by Kathy Bohan, Cynthia Conn, and Suzanne Pieper of Northern Arizona University.

Invitation: Holmes Dissertation Retreat, July 26-28

holmes-retreat-2018

AACTE Holmes Scholars and other graduate students are invited to sharpen their research acumen at the annual Holmes Dissertation Retreat and Research Symposium, July 26-28 at Rowan University (NJ). The retreat supports the research, academic, and professional development of doctoral students through 2½ days of workshops, relationship-building activities, and peer-to-peer and student-to-faculty engagement.

A combination of plenary and smaller concurrent sessions will cover topics such as writing an annotated bibliography, quantitative and qualitative research methods, developing measurable questions, mentor/mentee relationships, reading/dissecting research articles, publishing research, academic etiquette, time management, scholar identity, and training for Holmes Program coordinators.

AACTE 2018 Washington Week Recap

Oregon teacher educators meet with U.S. Representative Kurt Schrader (second from left) during AACTE’s Day on the Hill.

Last week, AACTE members, chapter leaders, and partners convened for the Association’s annual Washington Week events in Arlington, Virginia, and on Capitol Hill. United under the theme “Your Voice Matters,” participants joined in one or more of the three signature events: the State Leaders Institute, the Holmes Summer Policy Institute, and Day on the Hill.

State Leaders Institute

Day on the Hill: An Intern’s Perspective

AACTE intern Samuel Santos (second from left) joined this New York delegation June 6 at AACTE’s Day on the Hill.

My summer internship with AACTE started during the 2018 Washington Week, and I had the privilege of not only witnessing the week’s events but also accompanying members on their congressional visits during Day on the Hill.

My fellow interns and I were each paired with different scholars who took us along with them and acted as our mentors during the Hill visits June 6. I was paired up with Jacob Easley II, dean of the Graduate School of Education at Touro College in New York City. Along with other members from New York State, we spent most of the day meeting with representatives, senators, and their staff to advocate for AACTE’s current legislative agenda.

Keynote Speakers Announced for Quality Support Workshop

Dean Renée A. Middleton of Ohio University
Superintendent Paolo DeMaria of Ohio Dept. of Education

AACTE is pleased to announce two keynote speakers for the Quality Support Workshop in Columbus, Ohio, August 2-4: Renée A. Middleton of Ohio University and Paolo DeMaria of the Ohio Department of Education.

The heart of the Quality Support Workshop is a series of hands-on sessions focused on quality assurance, continuous improvement, and performance assessment. Participants work with expert facilitators to develop their own quality assurance plans and other program-specific solutions to problems of practice. At the Ohio event, attendees will have a choice of concurrent workshop sessions in six time slots spread across 3 days, interspersed with group work time, a gallery walk, and office hours with facilitators.