accountability and using wall chart data to track progress for students, so you beter know how to do that,” says Price. “We’ve tried in our preparation program to iden- tify the new skills required of school administrators and provide that level of training and development. It’s really key to any aspect of school improvement today to have those skills, and I think we do a prety good job of imbu- ing that in our students.”
A
nd while collegiality may take a back seat in most instructional improvement schemes, it’s front and center at Eastern. “Te way you bring about improve-
ment in your school is to develop a culture in the building that recognizes the importance of collaboration and collegiality, examining your craſt, talking about best practices, sharing good teaching experiences,” Price says. “We get our students to understand the process involved, starting with vi- sioning, then developing a strategic plan to align resources to make that happen, using data to measure progress, and so on. We want our students to grasp how important it is to gather good data about their schools and use it to inform decision-making.” Eastern did not become the number-
one producer of educators in the state (and possibly in the nation, depending on the defi- nitions used by whoever does the counting) by accident. “Nearly all of our education faculty have terminal
degrees,” says Maylone. “We don’t typically hand off our courses to graduate assistants, as you may some- times see at other universities. Professors here sit on a three-legged stool: teaching, scholarship and service. When we apply for advancement or tenure, we have to show that we have atended to all three of those legs, but teaching first. “And we have a sense of social responsibility here.
Issues of social justice are ingrained throughout our course work. We want our pre-service teachers and administrators to pay atention to students’ social, eco- nomic and cultural contexts.”
One major route to such awareness is through plenty
of field work. “We get our pre-service teachers out into the field for more than just student teaching,” Maylone says. “If course work is not applied quickly and in a meaningful way, whatever is learned is likely to be lost. Tere have to be frequent opportunities for our students to go out there and get their fingernails dirty with real activities. We know that’s a trend and we like to think we’re leaders in it.” It’s a trend that the W. K. Kellogg Foundation
Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellowship pro- gram seeks to accelerate, and Eastern’s track record with that approach helped it become one of six Michigan public universities and five school districts to share in a grant that supports training new math and science teachers to work in what are diplomatically called “hard-to-staff” middle and high schools. “Tat’s one reason we got the grant
here,” says Malone, who directs the pro- gram at Eastern. “Tey knew we were tuned in to that need. Te Wilson Foun- dation requires its fellows to do 50% field work, and we’re happy to run with that. It’s an expensive proposition, but Woodrow Wilson is a Petri dish for ways
to do it more efficiently in the future.” It also helped that one of Eastern’s re-
quirements for teaching candidates is that they gain teaching experience in an urban seting in order to, as Price puts it, “get students to understand the unique challenge of teaching chil-
dren in that environment and also encourage them to take jobs where they’re urgently needed.” What undergirds Eastern’s philosophy could be
described as nurturing an antidote to what Price calls “our penchant for quick fixes and short-term solutions. “It’s a very frustrating time to be in education,” he
says, “because it seems like policies are being driven by external considerations, with professional educators leſt out of the loop. Te perception is that they’re part of the problem, with litle or nothing to offer in the way of solutions. We’re trying to develop leaders who can lead in effective ways, and I think we’re doing a prety good job of that.” 3
Eastern | WINTER 2011 17
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