ITQ RTWS

Renaissance Partnership Members

Middle Tennessee State University College of Education, College of Arts and Sciences
Metro Nashville/Davidson School System and Rutherford County School System
Bell South

Teacher Work Sample and Mentoring
Forty-five student teachers are involved in the Renaissance project this spring. A total of 105 cooperating teachers and 13 MTSU faculty have been trained in using the Teacher Work Sample (TWS) this academic year. This semester every Early Childhood student teacher is preparing a TWS. The science-mentoring program begun last semester is continuing under the direction of Dr. Laurie Katz.

Participation in the June and January St. Louis Meetings
Six new scorers (two classroom teachers and four teacher education professors) received training at the St. Louis meetings. Dr. Gloria Bonner, Dean of the College of Education and Behavioral Science, made a presentation at the June meeting describing the year-round planning process used at MTSU. Dr. Laurie Katz presented a report on her experiences with Arts and Sciences mentors at the January meeting.

MTSU Shares Project Information at National Conferences

Several professors participated in two presentations at the Association of Teacher Educators’(ATE) Summer Conference on mentoring and the TWS. Two more presentations will be made at the American Association of Teacher Education in New Orleans

Research Linking Teacher Performance to P-12 Learning

Research on collaborative leadership and cluster mentoring for preservice teachers was presented at the ATE Summer Conference. Another presentation detailed the use of Teacher Work Samples to document academic excellence and accountability was presented at the same conference.

A presentation will be made at the American Association of College of Teacher Education in New Orleans on the mentoring program developed by Dr. Laurie Katz using Arts and Sciences faculty. She has also submitted an article for publication based on her and her student’s experiences. Drs. Gloria Bonner and Tammie Brown will also present at the same conference.

Fall 2002 Update

Thirty-seven student teachers (11 Pre-K-4, 14 K-8, 6 Special Education, and 6 Secondary Education) were involved in the project during the Fall 2002 semester. A total of 44 mentors were also trained. The training for the student teachers consisted of an intense two-day workshop conducted by MTSU faculty involving all aspects of the Teacher Work Sample. The training for the mentors took lace on the MTSU campus on one of two Saturdays. During the semester further training in preparing sections of the TWS for the students in Early Childhood Education was held during one of their student teaching seminars.

Early Childhood Education student teachers focused their TWS on science. Dr. Laurie Katz arranged for the student teachers to request a member of the Biology, Chemistry, or Physics department visit their classrooms and assist in the development of the instructional units. Several of the faculty

An informational brochure was developed by the Office of Professional Laboratory Experiences describing the Renaissance Project and the purposes of the TWS. The brochure described the project, its purposes, the components of the TWS, the advantages of being a Renaissance student teacher, and how the TWS fits in with the Tennessee Framework for Evaluation and Professional Growth. Copies were distributed to the cooperating teachers, principals, as well as prospective Renaissance student teachers.

Four MTSU faculty visited Western Kentucky University to learn about their accountability system. Discussions have been forthcoming about implementing an accountability system using the expertise of the MTSU Instructional Technology Division.

Rewards and Celebration

The end-of-semester celebration was held at the MTSU Foundation House. The opportunity for Renaissance student teachers to meet for a final time and share their accomplishments makes this a very special event. The celebration begins with refreshments, continues with each student teacher introducing the cooperating teacher and university supervisor, and concluded with the presentation of a certificate and the honor cords to be worn at Commencement.

For Spring 2002, which is the third semester of the pilot project, MTSU has 23 student teachers that are involved in the implementation of the Renaissance TWS as a part of their student teaching portfolio. During the three semesters, a total of 55 student teachers representing Early Childhood Education, Special Education, Elementary Education, and Secondary Education have participated. On December 8, 2001, 40 university and PreK-12 faculty participated in training on the work sample. This brings the total number of mentors, supervisors, and cooperating teachers trained to 111. Training for all groups included investigation of the prompt and the rubric for the work sample, review of assessment strategies, and discussion of planning for diversity. The opportunity for professional and social interaction is a bonus, and many participants have made positive comments about the training.

This semester student teachers will identify a mentor after they determine what their unit for the work sample will be. This is a departure from identification of mentors by Arts and Science department chairs or deans. University supervisors will facilitate the meetings, and the change is expected to create a closer working relationship between mentors and the student teachers. Evaluation of this new procedure will determine its use next year.

In preparation for the NCATE visit in fall 2000, an accountability plan for the professional education unit was designed. Many of the requirements for NCATE coincide with goals for the Renaissance Grant to show performance data for pre-service teachers and to determine teacher's impact on student learning. The plan has been approved and is in the process of being implemented as we investigate other systems and begin to use an electronic database.

Qualitative data collected through interviews, questionnaires, journals, and observations will address several questions. One question we are studying is the change in PreK-12 pre-service teachers during the process of completing a work sample. Decisions that student teachers make related to such things as planning, determination of student learning, and accommodations and the reasons for the decisions are being studied. Evaluations of the TWS process, training, and mentoring are also being done. Analysis of data is currently underway.

The Planning Committee for the project feels strongly that we are involved in an important step in teacher education; because of this we have rewarded faculty and students for their participation and recognized their efforts in several ways. During the training sessions, food is always provided! Sometimes the food is cooked by Phyllis Davidson, our Director of Field Placement. At the end of each semester a get-together is held at our Foundation House where student teachers display their portfolios and receive certificates of participation. This is capped off as they receive blue, white and maroon cords to wear for graduation. Our cooperating teachers and university faculty are spreading the news of our student teachers so that cooperating teachers are asking for a "Renaissance" student teacher and up coming student teachers are asking to be apart of the project. As word spreads, we fee this new communication serves as a great public relations tool.

Nancy C. Keese, Educational Leadership
P. O. 356 MTSU
Murfreesboro, TN 37132
mailto:nckeese@mtsu.edu

Gloria Bonner, Dean of Education and Behavioral Sciences
P. O. Box 93, MTSU
Murfreesboro, TN 37132
mailto:gbonner@mtsu.edu

Phyllis Davidson, Director of Field Placement
P. O. Box 93, MTSU
Murfreesboro, TN 37132
mailto:pdavidso@mtsu.edu

Improving Teacher Quality Through Partnerships That Connect Teacher Performance to Student Learning

The College of Education at Middle Tennessee State University is one of 34 institutions across the United States, which are members of the Renaissance Group. The Renaissance Group requires active participation of the presidents, provosts, and deans of the member institutions, and all members have teacher education an integral part of the mission of the institution. Principles held by the Renaissance Group include the belief that teacher education is an all-campus activity, that the education of teachers incorporates extensive field and clinical experience, and that university faculty and practitioners are related professionals who share the responsibility for teacher preparation. Based on this sample of principles, the decision to implement a partnership with arts and science faculty, school practitioners, and education faculty was inevitable. In the spring of 2000, ten of the member universities received a five-year grant to investigate the link between student learning and teacher performance.

The portfolio that student teachers complete has been revised to meet the guidelines of NCATE, our accrediting agency. A component of the portfolio, which will be implemented through the grant, is the Renaissance Teacher Work Sample (RTWS). The RTWS is a curriculum unit with documentation of student teacher work, PreK-12 student work, context of the educational setting, learning gains of students, and reflection of the unit. Components of the work sample include the following:

A pilot of the RTWS was conducted with 8 secondary student teachers during the spring 2000 semester. Each student teacher was assigned to a mentoring team with an education faculty member, a discipline faculty member, and two cooperating teachers. The cooperating teachers (16 teachers) were selected by the instructional supervisors in Rutherford County or in Metro Nashville/Davidson County, which were the school partnerships for the first two years of the grant. All members of the teams were trained in the RTWS and the process by which it was created. The 8 student teachers received training on the creation of the work sample prior to student teaching.

In the fall semester 2001 all secondary student teachers (16 student teachers) in Rutherford and Davidson Counties who are supervised by the Department of Educational Leadership are participating in the grant. In addition to the secondary student teachers, student teachers in Special Education, Elementary Education, and Early Childhood Education (11 student teachers) were chosen to pilot the work sample in these areas. For this third year, Murfreesboro City School System has been added as a school partner to accommodate the addition of student teachers in the PreK-8 grades. Selection of the cooperating teachers and special training for cooperating teachers, supervisors, and student teachers was conducted as for the spring 2001 semester. Each student teacher has a mentoring team of education and discipline university faculty members and their cooperating teachers. In August the cooperating and supervising teachers (62 teachers) participated in two days of training on the RTWS. The student teachers also received two days of training and review on the RTWS and assessment.

A Planning Committee consisting of education faculty, discipline faculty, PreK-12 teachers, and system supervisors has been meeting since April 1999. This group has made suggestions and helped plan the schedule and procedures for the pilot. They will continue to meet and provide oversight and guidance as the project expands. Some things, such as schedules for observations and communications, were monitored during the spring semester for decision regarding the best procedures for the future. There will continue to be a need for decisions as the project progresses.

At Middle Tennessee State University, instructional supervisors/directors in the two school systems who had agreed to be partners with the grant were contacted and asked to have a questionnaire completed by supervisors and teachers in order to determine the greatest areas of needs. The results led us to designate foreign language, mathematics, English, and science as the subject areas at the secondary level for our initial development of the teacher work sample. The supervisors also were asked to recommend two people from their system to become part of a planning committee.

In addition to the school systems, the deans of Liberal Arts and Basic and Applied Sciences at MTSU had agreed to be partners in this initiative. Once the discipline areas were identified, the chairs of these four areas were asked to recommend teachers to work with us on the Planning Committee and to help supervise student teachers in the future. All of those recommended enthusiastically agreed and a Planning Committee was formed.

During the fall of 1999 and the spring of 2000, other coordinators for the components of the grant were identified and participated in training in Iowa, Oregon, and St. Louis with representatives of the ten institutions. The coordinators are the Institutional Coordinator, the Assessment Coordinator, the Mentoring Coordinator, the RTWS Coordinator, and the Communication Coordinator. Other Department of Educational leadership faculty members were asked to be members of the Planning Committee.

Once the Planning Committee had been formed, they began to meet for orientation to the project and the teacher work sample to work out issues such as how the student teachers who would pilot the work sample in the spring of 2001 would be selected and trained, and to share information gained at the meetings of the ten institutions. The school system supervisors selected high school and middle school teachers in the four subject areas to become cooperating teachers for the student teachers. These cooperating teachers and the university faculty members of the Planning Committee will form the mentoring teams for each of the student teachers. Each mentoring team will consist of two cooperating teachers (one for each placement), an education faculty member, and a discipline faculty member.

In order to become more familiar with the teacher work sample, training for the Planning Committee and the cooperating teachers was conducted in September, 2000. Approximately twenty-five people participated in the two-day training. The participants completed questionnaires to guide with future decisions and possible revisions for the teacher work sample.

Presently, student teachers to pilot the teacher work sample in the spring 2000 semester have been identified through recommendations of faculty and student teacher applications. November 9, 2000, the student teachers met with the Dean of Education, the Associate Dean of Education, the Chair of Educational Leadership, the Director of Field Placement, and the Assessment Coordinator of the grant for an explanation of the benefits of their participation in the project. Benefits such as more support and training for creating their portfolio for the student teaching experience and the opportunity to work with cooperating teachers who had been trained in the teacher work sample were discussed. On November 29, student teachers met with their mentoring teams at Antioch High School in Nashville. The student teachers participated in training on the teacher work sample January 8-10, 2001, and the mentoring teams met with them on January 11, 2001, to coordinate and plan their activities for the coming semester. The student teachers expressed their appreciation for the training and their feeling of being very prepared. Everyone’s reactions were very positive, and we moved forward with the pilot of the teacher work sample. Field notes, observations and evaluations, and E-mails are being used to collect data on the experience of the participants.

The Planning Committee will continue to meet to review information from the pilot, to make revisions in the process, and to plan for broader implementation in the future. We expect to have twenty-five student teachers and mentoring teams in the program each semester next year and will include early childhood, elementary education and special education majors. These other areas of the teacher education unit are monitoring our progress and progress at the other institutions for implementation with their student teachers. They plan to visit Western Kentucky University and meet with faculty who are working with the students in the same majors.