McKendree University
ACI Member Partnership Case Studies: McKendree University
By Julie A. Tonsing-Meyer and Joseph J. Cipfl
Author Biographies:
Julie A. Tonsing-Meyer, MA, is Program Coordinator for McKendree University’s Teacher Quality Enhancement Grant.
Joseph J. Cipfl, PhD, is Advisor to the President of McKendree University.
Abstract:
McKendree University developed the Metro-East Teleconferencing and Teaching Enhancement Program as the focus of its TQE grant obtained by ACI Center for Success in High-Need Schools, The project’s purpose was to expose McKendree’s teacher candidates to students and learning in high-needs schools so that they will become interested in teaching in high-need schools. The opportunities to learn in McKendree’s partnering high-need schools were multifaceted and included observing instruction in the classroom. The grant has enabled McKendree University to bring the high-need classroom into its methods and introductory teaching with technology courses via web conferencing.
Introduction
McKendree University is located in Lebanon, IL, within 25 minutes of downtown St. Louis, MO. McKendree has a student population of approximately 1,500 at its main campus. Established in 1828 by pioneer Methodists, McKendree is the oldest college in Illinois and the oldest in the nation with continuous ties to the United Methodist Church. First called Lebanon Seminary, the school opened in two rented sheds for an enrollment of 72 candidates. In 1830, Bishop William McKendree, the first American-born bishop of the Methodist Church, permitted the Board of Trustees to change the institution’s name to McKendree College. In 2007, McKendree College became McKendree University.
McKendree University offers programs in undergraduate and graduate preparation of education professionals that allow applicants to prepare for initial and advanced certification in Illinois. Teacher candidates may major in elementary education to teach in grades K-9 or in secondary education programs in business marketing and computing, English language arts, history (social science), mathematics, science (biology or chemistry emphasis), or social science (history, political science or psychology emphasis) for grades 6-12. Candidates majoring in music education, physical education, and visual arts may complete the special program for certification at grade levels K-12. Those majoring in special education have the option of completing the certification requirements for ages 3 to 21. Those majoring in the educational leadership advanced program have the option of completing certification requirements for general administrative (principal).
Teacher education at McKendree is based on the premise that the education of teachers occurs most successfully in the context of a liberal arts program; thus, a broad background of courses in general education is required of all undergraduate majors. Furthermore, candidates who are interested in a teaching career must develop the necessary skills through a sequence of professional educational courses in theory and methodologies. A series of clinical experiences in a variety of diverse school settings helps candidates to transfer college classroom instruction into practical teaching skills.
McKendree’s two project partner schools in the Teacher Quality Enhancement Grant were Belleville District 118, which serves the majority of the residents residing in the city of Belleville, IL, enrolling approximately 3,700 students in pre-school through eighth grade. The growing and diverse population is 56.5% white, 33% black, 6.4% multi-racial, 2.4% Hispanic, and 1.2% Asian. More than half of the population (53%) is considered low-income. The district made adequate yearly progress in 2008, and 86.5% of the students met or exceeded standards on the ISAT. The second partner was a large district with 10 schools serving almost 7,000 students residing in Granite City, IL. The population is 81.1% white, 9% Black, 5% Hispanic, and 4% multi-racial. The district’s minority population has doubled in the past ten years. More than half (52%) of the population is low-income. The district is making adequate yearly progress, and 71% meet or exceed standards on the ISAT.
Project Overview
To address the issue of distance between McKendree University and high-need schools in the region, McKendree University developed the Metro-East Teleconferencing and Teaching Enhancement Program as the focus of its project. The project’s purpose was to expose McKendree’s teacher candidates to students and learning in high-needs schools in the hope that they will become interested in teaching in high-need schools. The opportunities to learn in McKendree’s partnering high-need schools were multifaceted and included observing instruction in the classroom.
State-of-the-art web conferencing equipment for all partners was a key component of the Metro-East Teleconferencing and Teaching Enhancement Program. Each participating school was equipped with teleconferencing equipment, a television, and a mobile cart. Campus technology personnel and the project coordinator work closely with partnering school technology personnel to ensure proper technical support and maintenance. Teleconferencing allowed students and faculty to observe and process these observations together. More than 100 teacher candidates participated in web conferences each semester. The teacher candidates ranged from first semester freshman to first semester seniors. During each semester, teacher candidates would web conference with high-need classrooms approximately once a month.
McKendree University also developed a high-need school internship program through the project. A collaborative partnership was established between the university and the “Summer Bridges” program in the high-need schools in the Metro East area. Summer Bridges is a Title I funded summer compensatory program that serves East St Louis, Cahokia, Venice, and Madison Schools. Participating interns serve as teacher aides in East St Louis, Cahokia, and Granite City public schools.
During a three year period, more than 25 teacher candidates were introduced via pre-participation training to the culture of poverty and African-American families. This preparation was reinforced through a bus tour of the communities and some of the summer school sites. Extensive time was devoted to training the teacher candidates on Ruby Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty. Outside reading assignments included excerpts from Jonathan Kozol’s book, Savage Inequalities. A comparative analysis was conducted to ascertain the current state of high-need schools. During their service as teacher aides, candidates became acquainted with students, teachers, administrators, and parents in the high-need schools. They witnessed the effects of poverty on students and families. They learned about the family and cultural dynamics and traditions of the African-American experience. Brown bag luncheons were held on campus as dissemination opportunities for teacher candidates to showcase their experiences for teacher education faculty and students, along with arts and sciences faculty.
Project Outcomes and Impacts
Prior to the project, the teacher preparation program at McKendree encountered difficulties in placing students in diverse settings and high-need schools. Even though the university is geographically near the St. Louis metropolitan area, the nearest high-need schools are more than 20 miles away. Teacher candidates, many from small towns in the immediate area, were not comfortable traveling to these schools, and their class schedules did not easily allow for the necessary time for travel and meaningful classroom experience. Thus, teleconferencing appeared to provide a win-win learning opportunity.
Project partner classrooms participated in four or five web conferences each semester to discuss teaching methodologies and pedagogy with teacher candidates and McKendree education faculty. Arts and sciences faculty members were available as subject area experts for virtual visits to classrooms. Candidates were able to benefit from reflections of their fellow peer observers, as well as from education and arts and sciences faculty expertise. Through these means, the desktop teleconferencing network allowed collaboration for improving preparation of new teachers for high-need schools, the enhancement of mentoring skills for practicing teachers and school administrators, and increased learning for K-12 students.
Great strides have been made in our collaboration between teacher education and arts and sciences faculty. This collaboration includes faculty members from the Psychology, Business, and Computer Science departments who engaged in several projects including research. For example, the Psychology department initiated a collaborative summer research project with teacher education colleagues on preparing teacher candidates to become culturally competent through an exploration of the theory of racial identity development. Members of the group researched topics on cultural differences and reported their findings to the group.
There have been changes in the mindset of faculty members working with this project. Faculty members have become more cognizant of opportunities to assist these high-need schools however possible. For example, there was a need for developing hands-on mathematics curriculum in Granite City. Participating education faculty offered to help design and present professional development to the elementary and middle school teachers in the district. When an in-service teacher asks for help with math, science, or reading, we explore options to assist, including developing on-site projects involving our teacher candidate students.
The transformation the project caused started to unfold. Students from lily-white backgrounds who lived within a 20-mile radius of campus were being brought into direct contact with people who are very different ethnically and culturally—a dramatically new experience for all involved. On the whole, candidates responded well to this exposure and became interested in issues related to high-need populations. They developed a fuller understanding of the high-need school environment. After participating in web conferencing, teacher candidates began to request that their field placements and student teaching take place in the participating school districts. Teacher candidates started to apply and be hired as teachers in the participating school districts as well. The literature is helpful in learning about high-need populations abstractly, but the learning experience is much more powerful through direct contact with high-need settings, either through actual or web-casting classroom visitations. The more our candidates experience, understand, and discuss high-need issues, the more comfortable they will become with high-need populations.
When data was first gathered through the project’s web-based evaluation system, we found that at least 70-80% of the McKendree candidates who applied to work in high-need schools had prior experience participating in project web conferences. The field placement requests suggested the importance of a a three-dimensional experience in leading to the candidate’s decision to teach in a high-need school. Observing poverty and the needs of students first-hand clearly is important, along with learning in the campus classroom and having the web-conferencing experience. Even though the teacher candidates had the prior experience of seeing and talking with the classroom teachers through web conferences, it was not until they were placed in the actual classroom that they truly understood what it is like to teach in a high-need classroom. High-need schools are difficult for our candidates to visualize; yet physically going to a high-need school and housing projects really hit home. Our purpose was first to expose our candidates to high-need schools and then to increase their desire to teach there. Students are now requesting placements in high-need schools, recognizing that they are out of their usual comfort zones in doing so. As a result, we are also starting to see an increase in students wanting jobs in high-need schools. Clearly, the project has made a difference in how our students view high-need schools and students.
We believe our candidates are becoming more informed about teaching in high-need schools. They are less fearful about working in the high-need school environment and are becoming more motivated to do so. In addition, our university faculty members are less fearful about visiting high-need schools. The reflections of one teacher candidate starkly portray the candidate’s transformation through the project:
Watching the web conferences has changed my attitude completely in many ways. Before the class started, I was terrified and would have never considered teaching in a high needs school, and now I recently interviewed to be a teacher’s aide for the inner city school program. I was very much prejudiced and scared of the area before I saw the children in the classes. To my surprise, they were well-mannered and respectful to their teacher and were eager to learn. Now, with the teleconferencing and the upcoming field experience, I would now like to spend a few years teaching in an inner city high school to primarily help the kids and try to help them to develop for their upcoming careers and lives. I want to be the teacher for them that my high school teachers were for me, caring individuals that were always there for me.
Our partner schools appreciate our efforts, and their staff members value what we are attempting to do. Anytime we partner with them, we have a positive experience. Cooperating teachers are non-threatening and eager to work with technology. They enjoy working with our teacher candidates and help significantly to mold candidates to be better teachers. These experiences affirm our candidates’ reasons for going into teaching. Our partnering schools and their classroom teachers are becoming more technologically-aware as a result of being provided with desktop computers equipped with web cameras. The computer equipment follows the teacher for the duration of their involvement in the project. Teachers received training on equipment use, technology support, and a graduate tuition stipend (3 credit hours) or monetary stipend for each semester of participation. In addition, professional development opportunities have been available for these partner schools. An enthusiastic third grade teacher declared:
I have found that using the web-conferencing makes me more aware of my teaching style. The class is excited to know that university students are watching us, and they always enjoy “being on TV.” I hope that the students at McKendree will find it has given them some insight into life in a real classroom. Our school has the highest percentage of low-income students in Granite City. These students sometimes have needs that go beyond what a typical teacher might have to do. The students might come to understand that being a classroom teacher is more than opening a teacher’s manual and having summers off.
Interviews with the teachers and administrators in the high-need schools where interns served as teacher aides resulted in a consistent pattern of praise for the level of assistance provided in the classroom by the interns. The teachers were encouraged to use the candidates for instructional purposes, and all of them did so. Candidates presented full class instruction as well as small group instruction. Candidates participated in student assessment and instructional planning. The internship coordinator who conducted site visits spoke to the candidates and the teachers on a weekly basis and ensured that candidates were participating in meaningful instructional activities. At the conclusion of the internship experience, 10 of the 14 (71%) interns expressed interest in teaching in a high-need school, compared to eight (57%) who expressed this interest before the internship.
An additional highlight of the project involved the teachers and students in Belleville District 118 using the web conferencing equipment to talk with an astronaut while the astronaut was based at the international space station. Faculty also made a presentation about the Metro-East Teleconferencing and Teaching Enhancement Program at an international venue. McKendree University was invited by the ED-World Media Conference to present their model in Vienna, Austria, and as a result of the conference presentation, several international contacts were established.
Lessons Learned
This ACI Center partnership grant has enabled McKendree University to bring the high-need classroom into our methods and introductory teaching with technology courses via web conferencing. This application of technology has many far-reaching implications for our students and faculty. These glimpses into high-need classrooms have encouraged our education candidates to think broadly about education and actively seek employment upon graduation in high-needs schools.
Developing trust between McKendree faculty members and the LEA classroom teachers has been critical to the success of this project. Without mutual trust, it would be difficult to convince classroom teachers to allow such open and transparent access to their work.
Many of the lessons learned over the life of this project stem simply from getting the technology right. McKendree project staff members observed and sampled countless outside vendors and web-conferencing technologies before settling on an infrastructure to support this project in a way that was both effective and manageable. Faculty members are confident that both the McKendree and LEA information technology departments are now fully capable of sustaining and maintaining the technology involved in managing web-conferencing in their classrooms.
Project Sustainability
On-going funding and continued willingness to participate remain constant challenges for the future of this project. So long as we have classroom teachers who are willing to provide access to their classrooms, we plan to continue this project.
The largest challenges associated with the project involved technical issues. Determining which type of web conferencing equipment would work best for two-way conversation presented an enormous issue. At first, a basic web conferencing microphone and camera were used. This produced a very pixilated view, and the sound quality was terrible. It was difficult if not impossible to hear children in the back of the classroom. The web camera was stationary, which produced a limited viewing range. Two-way communications were impossible to conduct. In addition, buffering issues were present. Coordinating two totally opposing technology departments was another challenge. Gaining the trust of the technology coordinators at all locations was another hurdle. Asking for the internet connection to be open and not always secure was difficult. Finally, a web conferencing technology was located that made possible acceptable two-way communication, excellent sound and picture quality and a camera that could be handled and moved remotely.
We would like to expand the reach of this project to include web conferences with classrooms located in other countries. The technology is now in place, and the IT staffs of both our LEAs and the University are finally well established to manage the system. This will become a focus for the project next phase of development.
References
Kozol, Jonathan. (1991.) Savage inequalities: Children in America's schools. New York, NY: Harper Collins.
Payne, Ruby. (2005.) A framework for understanding poverty. Highlands, TX: Aha! Process, Inc.
