Educating the Educators

Pre-Service

“We are heading into an age in which jobs are likely to be invented and made obsolete faster and faster. The chances of today’s college kid working in the same jobs for the same companies for their whole careers are about zero. In such an age, the greatest survival skill you can have is the ability to learn how to learn. The best way to learn how to learn is to love to learn, and the best way to love to learn is to have great teachers who inspire.”1 — Thomas Friedman, The New York Times

Suggested Reading Rafael Heller and Cynthia Greenleaf. Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas: Getting to the Core of Middle and High School Improvement. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education, 2007. Stephen Sawchuck. “Literacy Experts Design Content-Specific Reading Strategies.” Education Daily, April 19, 2006.

In Knowledge to Support the Teaching of Reading: Preparing Teachers for a Changing World, Dr. Catherine Snow writes that, “preservice teachers use their pre-training experiences in education as a lens or filter through which they view the information and experiences offered to them in teacher-education programs.”²

So it is not surprising that so many teachers view their job as teaching the subject to which they have been assigned, rather than helping students learn to read to understand this subject, or helping students use the experience of reading about the subject to learn to “learn to read” about other topics they encounter in future grades or jobs. “Currently, the preparation of middle and high school teachers typically focuses on their specific content knowledge and pedagogy. Most teacher preparation programs require only a single course in reading for prospective teachers- a reflection of licensure requirements.”³

What can be done to enhance preservice training programs so they broaden nascent teachers vision of their roles in educating the youngsters in their charge, and increase their ability to teach “reading to learn” as well as their subject area?

The National Governors’ Association (NGA) recommends strengthening teachers’ licensure and preparation requirements:

“To build the capacity of educators to teach to literacy-infused standards and provide targeted intervention, states will have to strengthen teacher licensure requirements and preservice training simultaneously. Licensure requirements should guarantee that teachers who meet them are adequately prepared to teach reading and writing in their content area. This will arm educators with knowledge about how students’ diverse literacy needs can be supported in every class and situation. Currently, the preparation of middle and high school teachers typically focuses on their specific content knowledge and pedagogy.”

Carnegie Corporation’s Advancing Literacy subprogram aims to strengthen preservice training in teaching adolescents to read to learn, thereby “seeding a new field” of researchers and practitioners focused on developing enhanced competency in reading and writing skills.

In 2004, the subprogram created an Adolescent Literacy Preservice Initiative, which invited select teacher preparation programs to develop innovative instructional materials, build up a cadre of adolescent literacy researchers and enrich existing secondary school literacy programs.⁵

Grantee Spotlight The New Teacher Center One of the first teacher preparation programs selected by Carnegie Corporation to be part of its Adolescent Literacy Preservice Initiative was The New Teacher Center at the University of Santa Cruz (www.newteachercenter.org). This Center is committed to “improving student learning by supporting the development of an inspired, dedicated and highly qualified teaching force.” According to New Teacher Center Director Ellen Moir: “The New Teacher Center model taps the expertise of exemplary veteran teachers who are released full time from classroom duties and trained to mentor novice teachers.” As part of the Adolescent Literacy Preservice Initiative, Carnegie funds will enable the New Teacher Center to gather and analyze baseline data on the adolescent literacy preparation and skills of 330 beginning teachers. In addition, the New Teacher Center will engage members of five to ten institutions of higher education to develop specialized training to assist middle and high school mentor teachers in their understanding of adolescent literacy. The work will allow for preliminary planning for a Mentoring for Adolescent Literacy training for mentors at the University of California, Santa Cruz and provide a model to better align preservice education and induction programs in the areas of literacy and pedagogy.

The first wave of invited teacher preparation programs will form the basis of an Adolescent Literacy Preservice Consortium, which will promote the nationwide teacher-to-teacher sharing of instructional designs, innovative data collection instruments and lessons learned via Web-based exchanges and meetings of representatives from all of the selected programs.

Carnegie Corporation will invite a second wave of teacher preparation programs to participate in the Adolescent Literacy Preservice Initiative and Consortium in the Fall of 2006 and Winter and Spring of 2007.

Next: Induction Section

Resources for Educators


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