26 Mar2015
AACTE Breakfast Was Forum for Discussion
By Linda McKee
Nearly 300 educators from around the country packed a February 28 breakfast session at the AACTE Annual Meeting in Atlanta to get updates and ask questions about edTPA. The conversation addressed questions about regional scoring, the line between helping students and coaching them on their edTPA portfolios, and other issues.
First, though, teacher educators were congratulated for their role in edTPA’s progress. They also were reminded that for edTPA to be a meaningful assessment for educator preparation programs and teacher candidates, it must be about more than compliance.
24 Mar2015
By Kristin McCabe
The AACTE Learning Center now includes recordings of all six major forums from the 67th AACTE Annual Meeting in Atlanta. Anyone who was registered for the conference may log in to the Learning Center to view the videos and slides from the forums:
18 Mar2015
By Etta R. Hollins
Editor’s Note: Professor Hollins inspired attendees of AACTE’s recent Annual Meeting in Atlanta during the Speaker Spotlight Session. (View a video recording of her speech here, and read another version in this Hechinger Report piece, which includes the video she played during her address.) To follow up on her presentation, we invited Hollins to explore her topic in a series of blogs for Ed Prep Matters. This is the first post in the series.
The way teaching and learning teaching are conceptualized influences approaches and practices in both. For example, where teaching is viewed as an interpretive process, learning teaching also requires an interpretive process for constructing the habits of mind and deep knowledge of approaches and practices necessary for facilitating meaningful, purposeful, and productive learning experiences for students in different contexts, from different cultural and experiential backgrounds, and with different developmental needs.
17 Mar2015
By Kristin McCabe
Were you among the 2,025 participants in AACTE’s recent Annual Meeting in Atlanta?
There was so much to see and do that even those in attendance couldn’t do it all! Don’t worry—we have a variety of online resources that will help to fill you in and continue the conversation on “Advancing the Imperative.”
17 Mar2015
By Mark LaCelle-Peterson
Representatives from AACTE and member institutions joined thousands of other educators convening in Washington, DC, last weekend at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards’ star-studded second annual Teaching & Learning conference.
AACTE President/CEO Sharon P. Robinson spoke at a plenary session on preparing novice teachers, joining a panel that also included Linda Darling-Hammond (Stanford University, CA) and Terry Holliday (Kentucky commissioner of education), moderated by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.
16 Mar2015
By Amanda Bush
The discussion about developing and integrating high-quality teacher performance assessments across the continuum of teacher preparation was the highlight of several sessions offered at AACTE’s recent Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.
An audience poll during the AACTE Town Hall Meeting illustrated that most of us work in states that either have policies regarding performance assessments in place or are considering implementing such policies in the near future. It’s no wonder, then, that related sessions were well attended.
16 Mar2015
By Amanda Bush and Christine DeGregory
If any of these statements sound familiar, chances are good that you were at the AACTE Annual Meeting in Atlanta! Here are the top phrases we heard during the conference:
10 Mar2015
By Christine DeGregory
One of the things I appreciate most about conferences is how the small groups of teacher educator voices residing within our home institutions can join together with others to create an impressively large chorus—one whose collective power can provide needed volume and attention to important issues.
At the AACTE Annual Meeting in Atlanta, I was encouraged to have my quiet voice as a future teacher educator amplified, thanks to the company of so many colleagues who share my passion about creating a developmental continuum that recognizes, values, and utilizes the expertise of classroom teachers in preservice teacher preparation and induction.
10 Mar2015
By Donna Sacco
Throughout the AACTE Annual Meeting sessions in Atlanta, I was reminded of the lesson from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert. The imperative of ample, authentic practice as a foundation for professional mastery resonated across several conference presentations.
05 Mar2015
By Kristin McCabe and Deborah Koolbeck
On Tuesday, March 10, the U.S. Department of Education’s International and Foreign Language Education Office will host a free webinar to assist minority-serving institutions (MSIs) with applications for Fulbright-Hays grants. An additional webinar will be open to all audiences the following day.
03 Mar2015
By Matthew Wales
Now through May 29, AACTE is accepting session proposals for the 68th Annual Meeting, to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada, February 23-25, 2016. We also invite applications by May 15 from AACTE member faculty to review proposals.
The conference theme is “Meeting the Demands of Professional Practice: Tough Questions, Tough Choices,” conceptualized as follows in the call for proposals.
24 Feb2015
By Lucy Berrier
At this year’s Annual Meeting in Atlanta, AACTE is proud to partner with a local organization, Arts for Learning, to give back to the surrounding community. Look for the designated table beside the AACTE Resource Center outside the Conference Community Center.
Arts for Learning at the Woodruff Arts Center aims “to transform the lives and learning of young people through the arts.” It is an affiliate of Young Audiences, Inc., the nation’s largest source for arts-in-education services, and reaches preschool through high school students. According to its web site, the organization’s “performances, workshops, and residencies encompass a wide variety of art forms, genres, and cultural traditions in the visual, performing, literary, and media arts.” Arts for Learning serves more than 200,000 PK-12 students annually in hundreds of schools across Georgia, with targeted supports for classroom teachers to implement arts-integrated instructional strategies, particularly those focused on literacy.
17 Feb2015
By Kristin McCabe
In just 10 days, AACTE will be kicking off its 67th Annual Meeting. If you’re planning to join us at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis February 27-March 1, you have a new tool at your disposal: an online program book.
This program book provides an eye-catching traditional layout for the conference events and makes it easy to browse sessions, presenters, and the exhibitor list. Remember, AACTE is “going green” for 2015, so the program book won’t be printed this year.
17 Feb2015
By Tim Finklea
Sarah Brown Wessling, 2010 National Teacher of the Year
The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) has announced that 2010 National Teacher of the Year Sarah Brown Wessling will be a keynote speaker for the 2015 Spring CAEP Conference in Denver, Colorado. The theme of the conference, which takes place April 9-10, is Preparing Effective, Classroom-Ready Teachers: An Evidence-Based Approach.
In 2010, Wessling took a short break from her post teaching English at Johnston High School in Johnston, Iowa, to come to the White House to be named National Teacher of the Year. Wessling, a National Board Certified Teacher, has since leveraged this title to give her students and peers a voice.
10 Feb2015
By Omar Davis and Jacob Easley II
Are you a doctoral student seeking a tenure-track position? Or maybe you have a faculty post but would like guidance navigating the promotion and tenure process? Plan to attend a Tenure Academy in Chicago, April 15-16, being held as a preconference event of the American Educational Research Association annual meeting.
Presented by the National Association of Holmes Scholars Alumni (NAHSA), this second annual event will provide the latest strategies for navigating the tenure and promotion process.
