Press release

SUNY Cortland Launches Professional Development School with Cortland District

CORTLAND, NY (02/23/2009; 0928)(readMedia)-- SUNY Cortland students have been working closely with children at the five elementary schools in the Cortland Enlarged City School District since last fall, a sign of the new partnership between the district and the nearby college that prepares teachers.

Educators at SUNY Cortland and the district have formed the SUNY Cortland Professional Development School (PDS) to increase student learning as well as enhance preparation of a future education workforce for preschool through high school-aged children.

Since the fall, 66 college students have participated in one of three separate projects at Barry, Parker, Randall, Smith and Virgil elementary schools.

"Professional Development Schools have been around for a long time, but we are new to the game," said SUNY Cortland Lecturer Karen Hempson, a faculty member in the Childhood and Early Childhood Education Department and the SUNY Cortland PDS coordinator.

The National Council for Accreditation in Teacher Education (NCATE) encourages teacher education institutions to launch PDS collaborations with pre-school through 12th grade level schools in order to meet curriculum standards, Hempson noted.

A PDS offers a nontraditional approach to clinical preparation programs, according to NCATE's Web site. In Cortland, the collaboration brings SUNY School of Education students into elementary, and eventually secondary, school classrooms for hands-on field experience, Hempson explained.

"The project aims to increase student learning through the establishment of a learning community involving school teachers, college-based faculty, teacher candidates, and students as well as administrators both from area schools and the College," Hempson said.

The main goals of the projects are to provide pre-service teachers with a more authentic classroom experience, give school faculty an opportunity to engage in applied research with college colleagues, provide an opportunity for college faculty to have access to a real world environment to bridge the gap between theory and practice, and ultimately to boost student achievement, Hempson said.

A faculty mentor from either the College or the school is available inside the schools to advise the college students, who range from undergraduates who haven't yet completed their required semester of student teaching to working teachers who are completing a master's degree requirement.

"PDS involves the use of graduate studies, 100 clock hours of observation or even a semester of student teaching, all different aspects of teacher education," Hempson said. "So the teachers and coordinators for the projects use different approaches. The PDS projects are not all done the same way."

Susana Davidenko, an associate professor in the College's Childhood/Early Childhood Education Department, has teamed up with four teachers at Randall and Barry schools for a project called Mathematics Partnership, currently involving 50 students. The program places her teacher candidates in first, fourth and sixth-grade classrooms to learn how to teach different math strategies, Hempson explained. Davidenko created and coordinates the project involving two classes of juniors completing 100 hours of fieldwork over two semesters. The project focuses on different strategies to teach math within the curriculum to both teachers and teacher candidates while classroom teachers work closely with the teacher candidates and the children.

"This collaboration of classroom teachers and pre-service teachers with Professor Davidenko creates an opportunity for children to learn math in different ways," Hempson said. "It also enables teacher candidates to explore approaches that involve thinking alternative thinking strategies."

David Smuckler, an assistant professor in the Foundations and Social Advocacy Department, and Kimberly Rombach, an assistant professor in the Childhood/Early Childhood Education Department, are working with Parker Elementary School teachers on a project called the Unified Teaching and Learning Initiative (UTLI), which integrates a special education teacher, a general education teacher, and one college student in each of those fields. Two students are participants this semester.

"As a regular education student teacher, I enjoy seeing the collaboration and dual teaching in an inclusive classroom," observed Sarah Fetcho, a senior childhood education major from Scotia, N.Y., and a participant in the UTLI project. "Working in a regular education classroom environment with both regular ed children and those with special needs is really helping me learn about differentiation in the classroom."

"Having a partner at the same level as me really put me at ease on my first day of student teaching," added Fetcho's UTLI partner, Amy Schimpf, a senior inclusive special education major from Orchard Park, N.Y.

A third initiative involves 14 teachers in the district's Cortland Reading and Writing Collaborative project. Phyllis Litzenberger, a literacy specialist, oversees the program to instruct Cortland teachers on strengthening literacy instruction and teacher decision-making. The teachers receive graduate credit from SUNY Cortland. Litzenberger and the class also receive updated research from William Buxton, associate professor of literacy, who serves on an interim basis as the College representative.

Randall School is training five classroom teachers how to help every child achieve basic literacy, even those from underprivileged backgrounds, according to Litzenberger and Randall Elementary School Principal Clifford Kostuk.

"We have many children needing more exposure to literacy tasks, not less," Kostuk said. "We've seen a lot of change here, and it's just what we wanted."

"The children are all immersed in different literacy tasks according to their knowledge level, while the teacher can focus, uninterrupted, on working intensively with one small group at a time," Litzenberger said. "Each child can find something they can be successful with."

"My hope is to draw from the expertise and resources on campus for these projects," added Hempson, who envisions reaping many dividends from the cumulative projects. "We hope to have SUNY faculty enrichment, teacher candidate enrichment, school teacher enrichment and, ultimately the child will benefit from this program. We want to bring all these people together.

"Until we began the PDS, our programs were paralleling with those in the schools rather than intermingling. For example, I teach social studies pedagogy. Unless I have a special relationship with a school or with some teachers, there really isn't anything in place allowing us to collaborate. This PDS allows for this collaboration."

SUNY Cortland is currently working to form similar partnerships with other regional school districts.

"Our plans are to expand the three existing elementary professional development school projects and we are actively seeking new projects at the secondary level," Hempson said.

With that in mind, the program organizers recently completed a survey of secondary SUNY faculty and junior high and high school teachers, conducted through the College's Institutional Research and Assessment Office.

"SUNY and the Cortland District combined resources to launch these programs," Hempson said. "We received a SUNY Critic-Teacher Award, which gave us the seed money to begin the program. It's money that state colleges are allotted for every teacher candidate that graduates."

She envisions the project will eventually line up outside funding to sustain the projects. Toward that goal, the program's administrators are working closely with the College's Research and Sponsored Programs Office to seek external grants or awards.

For more information about the PDS project, contact Hempson at (607) 753-4209 or karen.hempson@cortland.edu.