UMBC Stresses More Time in Schools, Strategies for Working in Poor Areas
By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Sara Berlin remembers the preparation she received for the biggest challenge of her life, teaching autistic kindergartners and first-graders in a poor Baltimore County neighborhood school.
As part of her studies at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Berlin spent long hours in classrooms, learning as much as she could about the students and their families.
"I learned that teachers do not teach alone but instead become partners with their students, their families and their community," said Berlin, 22.
There is a need for teachers who know how to reach out to parents who lack the confidence or know-how to contact school officials, educators say. There is also a need for teachers who understand the challenges of teaching children with learning disabilities or those whose family income qualifies them for federal lunch subsidies.
And with those needs has come an emphasis on getting student teachers into classrooms earlier -- and more often -- and making sure they're placed in schools that have had success in raising achievement among learning-disabled or poor students. Stephanie Knight, an educational psychologist who trains teachers at Texas A&M University, said her students learn best from veteran teachers "who don't see diversity as a disadvantage but see it as an opportunity."
This focus on preparing teachers for working with poor, urban students has become a particular priority at UMBC, where President Freeman A. Hrabowski III routinely takes visitors up to the roof of the main administration building and points to the Baltimore skyline 10 miles to the northeast. Berlin's school, Westowne Elementary, is in Baltimore County but is right on the edge of the city. About 28 percent of its students are poor. It is in the sort of neighborhood where many UMBC-trained teachers work.
The university is part of a movement to accelerate student teaching, which usually in the past has not begun until the last part of a student's senior year. Berlin, by contrast, was a sophomore when UMBC first put her in a classroom. "That is truly where I learned the most because it was hands-on," she said.
For teachers in training, said Diane Lee, vice provost for undergraduate and professional education, "there needs to be more time in the schools, not just in the college classroom." She said UMBC trainees get at least 100 days inside schools before earning their teaching certificates.
Despite the confidence such experience has given new teachers, there is little information on how much it improves teaching. "I think the research is entirely ambiguous," said Frederick M. Hess, resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Giving teachers the ability to raise achievement in low-income neighborhoods is still seen as an art, not a science.
James A. Alexander, executive director of the nonprofit Inner-City Teaching Corps in Chicago, raised the further issue of widespread inability among educators to consider teaching in poor neighborhoods. "Most schools of education do not spend enough time preparing their teachers for inner-city environments because they do not often think their graduates will teach in inner-city environments," he said.
It might be, some experts suggest, that good teachers are effective anywhere and that basic training should not be so focused on a destination. "Some would say that the initial training and education for those who are going to teach in such a school is basically the same as every other teacher," said Sarah Hopkins Finley, Virginia's deputy secretary of education. But "beyond initial preparation, ongoing professional development geared to a teacher's specific needs is important."
Several groups that focus on improving teaching say there is enough information on what does not work to develop a long list of additional skills needed for teaching in poor neighborhoods.
Tom Carroll, president of the Washington-based National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, said his staff has concluded in a memo that schools with mostly poor students need "well structured, mentored induction that ends sink-or-swim induction of new teachers. Inexperienced teachers are too often given the most challenging classrooms of students in the toughest schools. Their induction into the teaching profession is often a hazing ritual."
"As a result," the commission staff memo said, "the typical low income school has high teacher turnover, the highest percentage of inexperienced and uncertified teachers and the fewest accomplished teachers in the district. The teacher dropout rate in low income schools is often higher than the student dropout rate."
Some of the debate over preparing teachers for low-income environments centers on Teach for America, a nonprofit group that since 1990 has sent more than 12,000 recent college graduates with no more than a summer of training into classrooms in low-income areas. The program is popular in some financially strapped school systems because the recruits are bright and enthusiastic, and because those systems can't find enough credentialed teachers to fill their classrooms. Teach for America corp members rarely have full credentials.
A recent study showed that students with credentialed teachers did better than students with noncredentialed teachers, whether or not the educators were in Teach for America, leading critics to question the program's effectiveness. Teach for America says that more than half of its alumni, who sign up for two years, are still working in education and that 34 percent are teachers. Some former members, the organization says, have created inner-city schools, such as the 38 schools of the Knowledge Is Power Program.
Administrators at UMBC point to Berlin as an example of what can be done if a young educator is given a chance to get into the classroom early and build her skills.
Berlin graduated from Oakland Mills High School in Columbia. The UMBC program first placed her with 3-year-olds at the Catonsville Presbyterian Family Child Care Center, where she observed the teacher and students.
This initial observation period is important in preparing future teachers for classes in which they will have to deal with a wide range of abilities and learning styles, UMBC educators say. Students visit the same classroom once a week, three hours at a time, for at least 15 weeks and then write a report that is often 50 or 60 pages long.
"From the very beginning, we are trying to help our students develop a critical eye," Lee said. They note, among other things, how the young students are grouped, which students are not paying attention, which are creating disturbances and how the teacher handles that.
Berlin's next assignment as an undergraduate was in a special education pre-kindergarten class at Edmondson Heights Elementary School in Baltimore County. That experience, she said, "truly solidified my desire to teach special-ed."
When asked what she thinks about teaching learning-disabled children in an urban neighborhood, Berlin said, the words sound strange to her. "I know it sounds like a cliche," she said, "but I truly don't think about that very often. I figure that every population has issues that go with it, and I love the challenge that this population brings."