Just a few days remain to apply for the 2016 Holocaust Institute for Teacher Educators (HITE), a week-long, all-expenses-paid professional development opportunity in June at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Applications close Friday, March 4!
AACTE member faculty are invited to apply through our online application. For more information, read this article or contact me at zvanhouten@aacte.org.
AACTE welcomed more than 2,050 participants to Las Vegas last week for its 68th Annual Meeting, focused on the theme “Meeting the Demands of Professional Practice: Tough Questions, Tough Choices.” Ed Prep Matters will feature coverage of various sessions in the coming days, but other content is available right now—so why wait?
Now through May 31, AACTE is accepting session proposals for the 69th Annual Meeting, to be held in Tampa, Florida, March 2-4, 2017. We also invite applications by May 17 for AACTE member faculty to review proposals.
The conference theme is “Acting as One: The Power of the Professional Community,” conceptualized as follows in the call for proposals:
As you join the nationwide conversation on the future of educator preparation at the AACTE 68th Annual Meeting next week, don’t miss your chance to interact with the Association’s leadership during the Town Hall Meeting. Members of the AACTE Executive Committee will take the stage to discuss topics of interest to the field and answer your questions on Wednesday, February 24, at 11:45 a.m. PST.
“The vision for having a town hall meeting was to get the members actively involved in the issues we are facing,” said Fayneese Miller, who served as chair of the AACTE Board of Directors during 2013-14 and is now president of Hamline University (MN). “How can we as a community begin to solve some of the questions? How do we work collaboratively? How do we ensure that a variety of different voices are heard?”
Take advantage of the opportunity to ask tough questions and receive candid answers from these current AACTE leaders on how the Association is working to support members in meeting the demands of the profession:
“Teaching is a high-stakes practice—there is no more powerful position to hold than that of teaching,” said University of Missouri Kansas City Professor Etta Hollins at her November 2015 TeachingWorks streaming seminar series talk. What’s more, Professor Hollins described coherence as a series of opportunities to learn teaching, “like glue” that makes the opportunities to learn teaching work.
Hollins’ statements capture the commitments that inform the 2016 TeachingWorks/AACTE “Preparing Teachers for Practice” strand of the AACTE Annual Meeting, including a warrant to work together on the problems of change, improvement, and coherence in teacher education. This year’s strand confronts critical obstacles to change in teacher education. We ask boldly: Can we as the profession of teacher education stand up and take charge of change? What—if anything—would you argue should be common in teachers’ preparation across programs? Are there things that we can agree are crucial for any beginning teacher to be committed to and be able to do? Is there a way to reach some common professional ground in ways that are sensitive to contexts and respectful of difference? Is there a way to do this that does not silence or dominate diverse perspectives? What would you argue must vary, and why? Can such difference avoid exacerbating inequality?
You still have time to apply for the 2016 Holocaust Institute for Teacher Educators (HITE), a week-long, all-expenses-paid professional development opportunity in June at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The deadline for applications has been extended until March 4!
AACTE member faculty are invited to apply through our online application. For more information, read this article or contact me at zvanhouten@aacte.org.
Be sure to also stop by the HITE concurrent session at AACTE’s 68th Annual Meeting in Las Vegas! The session (Education Under the Third Reich: A Case Study for the Ethics of Teaching) is scheduled for Thursday, February 25, at 10:30 a.m. in Grand Ballroom E. Add the session to your personal schedule through our Online Event Planner.
The annual National edTPA Implementation Conference will be held March 31 – April 2 at the Savannah Marriott Riverfront in Savannah, GA. The program planning committee seeks session proposals by Monday, February 15, from implementers of edTPA, the PK-12 community, and others involved in supporting teachers and candidates in using the assessment.
The conference, “Building Bridges to Highly Accomplished Teaching: From Preservice to Teacher Leader,” aims to include interactive sessions to share and develop practices, perspectives, and research aligned with the following strands:
As chair-elect of AACTE’s Advisory Council of State Representatives (ACSR), I invite you to join me in an engaging, thought-provoking, and solutions-oriented panel discussion about school-staffing challenges during AACTE’s Annual Meeting in Las Vegas.
On Tuesday, February 23, at 1:45 p.m., ACSR will host the major forum “A Regional Lens to Addressing Teacher Shortage and Distribution by Subject and Location,” focusing on factors contributing to the western region’s teacher shortages and to the inequitable distribution of effective educators. (You can add the session to your personal schedule in the Online Event Planner).
The editors of the Journal of Teacher Education are pleased to be organizing our annual major forum for AACTE’s 68th Annual Meeting. This year’s session, “Equity, Access, and the Digital Divide: Challenges for Teacher Education,” will be held Wednesday, February 24, 9:00-10:15 a.m. (Be sure to add it to your personal schedule in the Online Event Planner!)
Our goal is to bring together representatives of stakeholder institutions and organizations to discuss how AACTE members, working together, might effectively respond to the challenges teachers face in using technology to meet the needs of all students despite the inequities posed by the digital divide.
Tomorrow is your last chance to register at a discount and to book your hotel room at The Mirage Hotel for the AACTE 68th Annual Meeting! Complete your conference registration by 11:59 p.m. Eastern on January 27 and save up to $40.
Next month, AACTE will hold its 68th Annual Meeting February 23-25 at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. Be there to experience the full lineup of conference activities around the conference theme, “Meeting the Demands of Professional Practice: Tough Questions, Tough Choices,” supported by four strands:
As the Every Student Succeeds Act rolls back the direct federal involvement in improving student achievement and hands over much of that authority to states, lawmakers throughout the country will be examining a range of issues related to PK-12 education during their 2016 legislative sessions. One of the most pressing concerns on many states’ lists is teacher shortages.
At AACTE’s 2016 Annual Meeting next month in Las Vegas, a three-part series of panel discussions on the topic has been organized with the help of the Advisory Council of State Representatives:
Now is the time to apply for the 2016 Holocaust Institute for Teacher Educators (HITE), a week-long, all-expenses-paid professional development opportunity in Washington, DC, in June. Applications are due February 15!
This year, for the first time, the event is open to interested faculty members from any AACTE member institution. HITE is supported by a long-standing partnership between the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and AACTE. If you or a colleague is interested in applying, don’t delay—complete your application today!
You spoke, and we listened! Many of you have asked AACTE to add programming to the Annual Meeting for education deans. This year, we are pleased to do just that when we host a Deans Academy for education administrators during the Annual Meeting in Las Vegas.
This set of sessions, scheduled for 1:45-4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 24, has been put together by member deans and staff at AACTE for the purpose of providing meaningful information, space for dialogue, and an opportunity to explore solutions to the problems of practice inherent in leading schools, colleges, and departments of education.
Event apps for conferences are no longer a novelty. Businesses and associations everywhere are adopting this technology to facilitate interaction with their audiences—and AACTE is no exception! In response to member requests, and to keep AACTE’s meetings up to speed with industry standards, the Association now offers a custom-designed online Event Planner with full mobile functionality.
“We developed the Event Planner to help our members better manage their time and receive real-time updates during AACTE events,” said Alexandr Gumbar, AACTE’s director of information technology, who created the platform 2 years ago and recently completed its mobile version.
The online planner takes the place of a printed conference program. A digital planner is not only more environmentally friendly than a printed one, but also more accurate: It can nimbly reflect the latest scheduling changes to provide the most up-to-date information during the event. AACTE’s application also guides you around the conference, assists with creating your agenda, notifies you of important announcements, and facilitates your feedback through surveys.
To discuss Nevada’s persistent teacher shortages and what local educator preparation providers (EPPs) are doing about it, AACTE will partner with member institutions for a press conference in advance of the 68th AACTE Annual Meeting. The event will be held Monday, February 22, at 2:00 p.m. PST on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Severe staffing shortages in Clark County, Nevada’s largest school district, have been making national headlines and spurring emergency policy changes to boost numbers in the local teaching workforce. The press conference will address how the state’s EPPs, and those in similar contexts around the country, are addressing the crisis.
Officials from Clark County School District, nearby university-based colleges of education, and AACTE will discuss factors contributing to the local shortage as well as efforts to alleviate it. The following panelists have been confirmed to date:
