Concordia University Chicago
ACI Member Partnership Case Studies: Concordia University Chicago
By Jane Buerger and Dara Soljaga
Author Biographies:
Jane Buerger, PhD, is a Professor of Mathematics at Concordia University Chicago.
Dara Soljaga, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Curriculum and a Language and Literacy Program Leader at Concordia College Chicago.
Professors Buerger and Soljaga were dean and faculty member, respectively, in the College of Education at Concordia University Chicago at the time of the project described in this article.
Abstract:
Concordia College Chicago partnered with three Berwyn schools, using funding obtained by ACI’s Center for Success in High-Need Schools through the U.S. Department of Education TQE-P Program. The project sought to redesign Concordia’s teacher education program to include an increased focus on multiculturalism and teaching in high-needs schools, plan activities to prepare Concordia candidates to teach in high-need schools, support teachers in local schools, and develop structures and obtain materials to sustain the activities of the project. Specific programs included supplying classes with iPods and using them for educational purposes, after school tutoring, programs for the Berwyn school teachers and related studies. As a result, a curriculum unit was developed for use in a new 18-credit certificate program as well as a proposed master of arts degree in educational technology.
Introduction
Located in River Forest, IL, Concordia University is a private, independent, faith-based university, accredited by North Central Association and NCATE. The original campus was established in 1864, in Addison, IL, for the purpose of preparing candidates to become excellent educators for the schools of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. The campus was relocated to River Forest in 1913, and the institution became known as Concordia Teachers College. More recently, Concordia, now known as Concordia University Chicago, has expanded its offerings to include degrees in the liberal arts, business, social work, and school counseling. The institution has broadened the scope of its education programs and now prepares and supports teachers for careers in both public and parochial schools.
In order to serve the growing graduate population, Concordia’s College of Education underwent a substantial restructuring. At this time undergraduate and Master of Arts programs in early childhood, elementary, and secondary education, as well as a K-12 program in special education, are housed in the College of Education. K-12 programs in physical education, art education, and music education are offered through collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences.
The graduate teacher education programs, most of which are offered in a cohort format, are currently housed in the College of Graduate and Innovative Programs. Each semester new cohorts are begun in Chicago and in the surrounding suburbs, and many teachers from public high-need schools enroll in these programs. Masters programs are available in reading education, school counseling, and educational leadership, as well as curriculum and instruction with an optional strand for ESL teachers. Doctoral programs are also available.
Project Overview
The university’s ACI Center project partnership activities focused on three schools located in Berwyn, approximately four miles from the Concordia campus. Two of these, Karel Havlicek Elementary School and Lincoln Middle School, are located in Berwyn North School District 98, and the third, Hiawatha Elementary School, is located in Berwyn School District 100. All three schools report a predominately Hispanic enrollment (76%-81%). Between 79% and 91% of the students are categorized as low-income. The percentage of students having limited English proficiency runs as high as 26%.
The goals for Concordia’s project paralleled those of the umbrella ACI Center Teacher Quality Enhancement grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Specifically, our project sought to:
1. Redesign Concordia’s teacher education program to include an increased focus on
multiculturalism and teaching in high-needs schools
2. Plan activities to prepare Concordia candidates to teach in high-need schools
3. Support teachers in the schools listed above and
4. Develop structures and obtain materials to sustain the activities of the project
Goals 1 & 2: Preparing Concordia candidates to teach in high-needs schools
During the five-year TQE project, it became evident that students benefitted from activities that took them into high-need schools and that participation was enhanced when the activities were part of the requirements for courses in the teacher education program. An early attempt to provide on-campus seminars drew only a small number of students. The program, called “Each One Teach One,” offered valuable information for pre-service teachers, but a major difficulty was trying to fit the sessions into already over-crowded student schedules. Once time was reserved specifically for providing course-related field experiences, participation increased dramatically.
In 2006, Concordia University established a partnership with the Karel Havlicek School to provide a spring after-school reading program. Concordia undergraduates who were enrolled in literacy 1, a reading methods class, went to Havilcek School one day a week for eight weeks. The college students tutored grades 4 and 5 children who were struggling with reading. The professor of the literacy class monitored the hour-long tutoring sessions as the teacher candidates presented and reinforced a variety of reading strategies with the young learners. The tutoring program began in 2006 with 25 teacher candidates from Concordia and 50 students from Havilcek. By 2008, the numbers had increased to 34 Concordia candidates serving 70 young readers.
At first the Havlicek students were a bit uneasy as they were not confident about their reading skills. Although the teachers at Havlicek recommended that their students participate in the program, and the parents agreed to let their children participate, the students themselves initially were not enthusiastic about this opportunity. Nearly four years later, a greater number of fifth graders were enrolling in the program, either because the students themselves had a good experience as fourth graders or because their friends recommended the program. The Concordia professors heard the following comments from the young readers: “My Concordia teacher is very nice.” “We read stories that I like.” “My reading teacher talks to me and listens to me.” The teachers at Havlicek have told Concordia professors how grateful they were to have the after school reading program. The teachers not only appreciated the improvement in their students’ reading levels, but they were also happy about the students’ willingness to continue learning to read. At this time Havlicek continues to host after-school reading clubs and has added morning clubs as well.
The collaboration between Concordia and Havlicek has continued as a result of the requirements of Response to Intervention (RtI). Concordia teacher candidates enrolled in the college’s multiculturalism class are required to complete at least 40 hours of field experience over a ten week period. Before the candidates begin their field experience, teachers from Havlicek visit the Concordia class for an orientation period. Topics discussed include the duties of the candidates, the expectations of the classroom teachers, and the demographics of the school.
During the 2010-11 academic year, nearly 120 teacher candidates from Concordia participated in this field experience. The candidates work with small groups and individual students in the school’s yellow and red RtI tiers. The sessions, which are offered to all grades at Havlicek, focus on tutoring in literacy skills.
Goal 3: Support for teachers in high-needs schools
In 2006, Concordia used ACI Center partnership grant funds to purchase reading materials and to provide support for struggling readers. Hiawatha School was given money to buy books to support their reading program. The school district had already bought a new textbook series; in order to enhance the new reading program, Concordia provided leveled readers (small paperbacks) for the primary grades. These books help the young students master basic sight words by reading additional stories with controlled vocabulary. A report from a school administrator indicated that the books were “well-used.”
In another joint activity, Concordia professors, together with teachers from Lincoln Middle School, participated in a study, which asked the question: “How does iPod technology facilitate language acquisition skills in culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students?” This experience provided an opportunity for collaboration between professors from the College of Education, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the College of Graduate and Innovative Programs. The program also included contributions from the College of Education offices of field experience and instructional design, and three teachers, a technical administrator, and the principal from Lincoln School. Grant funding provided iPods, headphones, iPod socks, compensation for training the Lincoln teachers, and compensation for the teachers conducting the after school program.
Concordia provided three training sessions for the three teachers from Lincoln School and one technical assistant. These sessions included an introduction to how pod casts work and how to use a free software program to record the pod casts. Instruction was also provided to the technical staff on how to load the software onto their computers. The participants discussed course management strategies, as well as ideas for the development of lesson plans.
The Lincoln School teachers selected 15 students who needed the most help in English language acquisition. These students participated in an after-school program, meeting two days a week, and completed several podcast projects of their own design. One project, “Welcome New Students,” provided information that was also appropriate for the orientation of new faculty, staff, and administrators. The podcast presented information a new student would need to know about “who, what, where, when, why, and how” of Lincoln Middle School. A second project, called “Berwyn: Researching Our City” covered the various elements of who and what makes up the community, including famous people of Berwyn. Teachers and professors involved in these first two projects observed the enthusiasm with which the students embraced, acquired, and applied research skills.
Throughout this pilot program, the Lincoln School teachers and technology staff expanded their views of how various technologies like the iPod can be used in lessons for both English Language Learners and grade level proficient students. In turn, the Lincoln School teachers are now able to articulate these strategies to current and future students, administrators, staff, and community members and to train additional teachers for future iPod projects. An important contribution made to Lincoln Middle School by the iPod project was the establishment of a link on the Lincoln Middle School website that could be used to view the two pod casts. This link showed the entire community tangible evidence that addresses the research question, “How does iPod technology facilitate language acquisition skills in culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students?”
The culminating activity for the project was a late afternoon open house, which gave the ESL students a chance to demonstrate their new skills to teachers, parents, and professors from Concordia. Even though some of the parents were not able to communicate in English, their pride in the accomplishments of their sons and daughters was obvious. Classroom teachers were amazed because children who had little English proficiency in September were happily teaching the technologically-challenged adults how to use iPods in April.
Goal 4: Sustaining the Project
During the summer of 2008, a multi-disciplinary faculty team consisting of three professors from the College of Education and two professors from the College of Arts and Sciences, collaborated on an ACI Center sponsored summer action research project. The professors developed and administered a survey designed to gauge self-perceptions of all full-time faculty currently teaching at Concordia University regarding the degree to which they make their students aware of how particular forms of cultural capital are valued. As part of our current curriculum transformation project, the inquiry examined existing paradigms of cultural capital and instructor awareness related to content teaching and general attitudes conveyed to pre-service teacher candidates.
The research was phase one of an ongoing project to understand professor appreciation for and infusion of cultural capital perspectives into education coursework. Preliminary ramifications of professorial awareness of cultural capital include, but are not limited to, heightened consciousness for future teachers of marginalized/urban students. The initial findings were presented at the annual American Educational Studies Association (AESA) conference in Savannah, GA on October 30, 2008 in a presentation entitled “Class Secrets: Uncovering Cultural Capital Awareness on Campus.”
As part of the effort to develop structures and obtain materials to sustain the activities of the project, the College of Education purchased a variety of books and other materials to support the preparation of effective urban educators. All of the major academic publishers are represented in the extensive library of educational literature. The collection includes high-quality children’s literature in multiple languages, instructional support materials and works of theory and scholarship. All the materials bear a label identifying the use of ACI Center partnership funds for their purchase. Hopefully, all faculty members, pre-service teachers and practicing teachers will use these materials in their day-to-day work supporting urban or high need students.
A part of the acquisition involved an expansion of the university’s holdings of children’s books published in Spanish. Given the exponentially growing Spanish speaking population in high-need schools, having an additional 34 book titles will help undergraduate pre-service teachers who work with linguistically and culturally diverse populations develop lessons that utilize a bilingual approach. For young children, an important approach to learning a new language is reading to them in their first language. As a result, the child’s first language is reinforced and language development becomes additive and not subtractive. The child is better able to construct meaning in the new language by having a better scaffold in their first language.
Project Outcomes
A number of factors have been instrumental in the College of Education’s assessment of how Concordia programs are serving high-needs schools. Our involvement in the ACI Center project came during a time when the University began offering graduate programs in urban schools and when a number of new professors, many with urban experience, joined the faculty. The result is an increased awareness of the needs of urban schools and a commitment to serve the children and teachers in those schools. Other benefits include the collaboration between three of the university’s four colleges as a result of the iPod project and the summer research program and the addition of the Urban Teaching Resource Center housed in the education building.
At this time the most significant changes in Concordia’s curriculum have occurred in the required field experiences and in the topics covered in the undergraduate multicultural education class. The goals of the multicultural education class, taken by all undergraduate education candidates, have been revised to include topics on teaching in high-need schools. Although not directly related to the Center partnership projects, the fact that the curriculum and instruction M.A. program now includes a course, Socially, Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Learners: Perspectives for Practitioners, is evidence of the increased level of awareness of social issues in urban schools.
The continued partnership with Havlicek Elementary School and with the other schools in Berwyn is evidence of the positive impact that the grant activities have had on Concordia’s relationship with the surrounding communities. At the end of the 2007-08 school year, 240 middle school children came to Concordia for a visit. Although this activity was not directly connected to the grant, the College of Education and the university admission office worked together to give the children a chance to see what it might be like to attend a private college and perhaps to see themselves as future college students.
An unexpected outcome came as a result of the iPod project. Because of the training involved for both the Concordia University and Lincoln Middle School teams, a curriculum unit was developed for use in a new 18-credit certificate program as well as a proposed master of arts degree in educational technology. The educational technology certificate is primarily designed for practicing teachers or for individuals in graduate level teacher preparation programs. In addition the Concordia instructional design team led a session on the use of iPod technology in elementary schools at the university’s annual reading conference.
Project Sustainability
This project has been extremely valuable for the College of Education in that the professors seem united in their desire to design activities that will give all teacher candidates a chance to experience urban school environments. Perhaps this would have happened anyway, but the grant gave extra incentive to begin projects that are immediately valuable and also sustainable in the future.
Now that the field experiences at Havlicek are part of the requirements of Concordia’s multiculturalism course, students can see their work as part of an ongoing program, rather than as a series of unrelated school visits. Because Concordia students come from a wide geographical area, it is sometimes difficult to convince the candidates (and their parents) that travel in urban areas is safe. By providing experiences in which university professors accompany the students into the city, we hope to change the students’ impressions and perhaps convince them that the urban schools provide a challenging and rewarding place for them to enter the teaching profession.
The activities above describe how Concordia candidates are being prepared for service in high-need schools. Because of changes in leadership and in university structure, it is difficult to predict what the future will hold for Concordia’s involvement with high-need schools. The recent exponential growth of the graduate cohort programs has allowed the College to serve a greater number of teachers in the Chicago Public Schools, as well as high-need suburban schools, and a group of younger professors are bringing an increased awareness of social issues. We can hope that the connections formed and the lessons learned from our Teacher Quality enhancement grant will continue to influence programs offered by Concordia University Chicago.
