Departments
by Nancy Gall-Clayton
On an ordinary day, a guest who walks into a classroom at Byck Elementary School might find Stephanie Blanton teaching subtraction to a group of six- and seven-year olds. At Lassiter Middle School, James Woods could be helping eighth-graders with science projects. Mean- while, at Fairdale High School, Kristen Buecher may be preparing a lesson plan for an upcoming class discussion of Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia.
Blanton, Woods, and Buecher aren't teachers yet. They are all students in teacher preparation programs at U of L's School of Education.
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A U of L teacher education student will log more than 650 hours in local classrooms-observing, tutoring, teaching, and assisting with school-wide change in preparation to become certified. U of L's philosophy and innovative approach to teacher preparation have won accolades from many. "Bar none, its teacher preparation is the best in the state," says Susan Leib, executive secretary to the Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board.
Milbrey W. McLaughlin, professor of education and public policy at Stanford University and co-winner of the 1995 Grawemeyer Award in education, "could not be more positive" about the school's teacher preparation program which, in her view, is a "national model." The student-centered focus of the elementary preparation program is so distinctive that McLaughlin says she "can walk into any elementary classroom in Louisville and know immediately if the teacher was prepared at the University of Louisville."
That commitment to solid preparation-among all of its disciplines-has earned the School of Education its reputation. The school has evolved significantly since its modest beginning as a one-person department within the College of Arts and Sciences. The establishment of a School of Education was a "lengthy and painful" process, recalls Bettie S. Weyler '50A, '71G. The former Alumni Association president served on a steering committee that persuaded the Board of Trustees to approve the school in 1967.
"It helped us grow a lot to say that we were a school rather than just a department," Weyler says.
As the school begins its fourth decade, its students, curriculum, and philosophy reflect not just changes in the world since its formation in 1968 but also fundamentally different ideas about the teaching profession and teacher preparation.
F. Randall Powers, who was dean during the first decade of the school's existence, chose service as the theme of his administration: service to students, teachers, school systems, and the community. In 1968, the school's faculty had just 14 members; only bachelor's and master's degrees were offered.
The completion of its own building in 1981 further solidified the School of Education as a place of prominence. Today, the school has eight departments, 80 faculty, and honors almost too numerous to count.
Raphael O. Nystrand, a former faculty member at the Ohio State University, accepted the deanship in 1978 despite friends' view of Kentucky as an educational backwater. A few months after assuming office, he told a Courier-Journal reporter, "This is a place that's growing. The fact that we have an urban mission is particularly exciting."
Nystrand, who will step down as dean this year, continues to see the school as an urban institution serving urban concerns. His views on the urban mission and collaboration carry over into teacher preparation. His vision of teachers as learners, learners as teachers, and everyone as equals reflects a related value of the school: parity. University faculty are not the "experts" called in to "fix things," he says. Instead, the role of faculty is to work as partners with teachers and administrators, to provide them with additional resources and collaborate on ideas for improvement. That requires faculty to spend more time in classrooms than in their offices.
"People in schools know some things we don't know," Nystrand explains. "We exist to work with the profession, and we could not be effective if we were not engaged."
One example of the dean's philosophy is the Center for the Collaborative Advancement of the Teaching Profession. A joint application by the university and the Jefferson County Public Schools led to the establishment of the center in 1987. It is one of only five Commonwealth Centers of Excellence and the only one in education. It develops and evaluates efforts to improve teaching. The School of Education is also a charter member of the Holmes Partnership, a consortium of research universities founded in 1986 for the purpose of improving teacher education.
The high quality of its teacher preparation programs also earned the school a three-year, $200,000 grant in 1997 from the BellSouth Foundation's Recreating Colleges of Teacher Education Initiative. The grant focuses on making the concept of "teachers as learners and leaders" a pervasive theme of the school's graduate level teacher education programs.
During its 1997 visit, the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) gave "exemplary" ratings for the design and delivery of the school's teacher education program and collaborative efforts. It also chose U of L as a site to train 100 accreditation team members the following year.
In response to NCATE's praise, State Senator David Karem sponsored a resolution honoring the school during the 1998 Kentucky General Assembly. Co-chair of the Public Education Task Force, which recently studied all phases of state education reform in the state, Senator Karem said, "'Excellence' is the first word that comes to mind when I think of the School of Education, its distinguished faculty, and its long history of collaborative work."
The school also has attracted attention as the only one in Kentucky that requires all students seeking a teaching certificate to earn a Master of Arts in teaching. The professional teacher preparation program provides a full year of field-based study and internship jointly supervised by practicing teachers and university faculty. The new program emphasizes cooperative learning, performance-based assessment, and action research.
The establishment of professional development schools (PDS) also marks the School of Education as a national leader. The 25 professional development schools in Jefferson County and three other counties serve students of diverse backgrounds and economic status, again promoting the school's urban mission.
A watershed event in the history of the state's public education-and in the way U of L delivers its teacher education-was the 1990 enactment of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA). Among its innovative measures are ungraded primaries, a standards-based approach to education, and an emphasis on writing.
U of L has already experimented with these and other KERA mandates at PDS sites and other schools. A program developed by the school's Department of Administration and Higher Education, for example, became the model for KERA's training and assessment centers for administrators. The school's Louisville Writing Project, which works to improve the writing skills of students, predated KERA by nine years. A variety of other projects continue to support KERA, including the Summer Portfolio Institute and the school's partnership with the Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative, which focuses on the professional development of teachers.
"KERA has played very well across the nation," says Nystrand. "It has renewed the view that teachers are professionals."
When U of L President John Shumaker announced the Challenge for Excellence, the university's 10-year academic improvement and research enhancement plan, the school was already engaged in numerous projects, including studies on such diverse issues as fitness, student diet, and academic and social development in ungraded schools.
Responding specifically to the Challenge for Excellence, the school led a collaborative effort which resulted in the recent establishment of an Interdisciplinary Center for Research on Early Childhood Issues and Initiatives. Faculty from the school and other university departments, as well as partners from community agencies and local schools, will jointly conduct and disseminate research about the education and development of young children.
This unique center will help U of L attain its goal of becoming a nationally recognized research university and further enhance the School of Education's reputation for innovation.
Nancy Gall-Clayton '80L is a Louisville free-lance writer, playwright, and attorney.
