May 13, 2004
PA State System of Higher Education program introduces future teachers to urban classrooms
Contact: Kevin Hensil, khensil@passhe.edu
Urban schools often have a hard time attracting enough qualified teachers to fully staff their classrooms. In fact, the worst teacher shortages in the state and nation are in inner-city schools.
Many new teachers, especially those from rural and suburban communities, do not consider working in city schools, often because they have had very little life experience in urban settings.
The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) is helping to change that through its Philadelphia Urban Seminar, a program offered in conjunction with the School District of Philadelphia for two weeks each May as a way to introduce pre-service teachers – education majors in their freshmen through senior years – to the unique challenges and opportunities inner-city classrooms present.
“PASSHE is committed to helping improve the educational opportunities available to all Pennsylvanians,” said Chancellor Dr. Judy G. Hample. “Even as our institutions have grown to serve a broad academic mission, teacher education remains at the core of what we do. We consider it our obligation to respond to the specific needs of the Commonwealth. Today, the Commonwealth needs more highly qualified teachers in our urban classrooms.
“The Philadelphia Urban Seminar is an exciting response to that need. By offering our students the opportunity to become fully engaged in city schools and city communities, we believe more of these future teachers will consider urban schools as a place to begin their careers.”
PASSHE students who participate in the Philadelphia Urban Seminar are placed in district schools, where they are paired with cooperating teachers who have been identified by their principals as models of good teaching. The students observe and assist the teachers in their classrooms, and teach mini-lessons themselves. They also participate in a variety of community service projects during their two-week stay in Philadelphia.
“It is essential to the education of the 200,000 students enrolled in the School District of Philadelphia to have highly trained and qualified teachers,” said James Nevels, chairman of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission. “I thank the Philadelphia Urban Seminar for partnering with the district and look forward to working with the State System as we seek to attract the new teachers we need.”
“Our goal is to have a certified teacher in every classroom,” said Paul Vallas, CEO of the School District of Philadelphia. “Last year, through our Campaign for Human Capital, we broke new teacher recruitment and new teacher certification records. And this year, thanks to the real world experience the Philadelphia Urban Seminar provides, we will do even better.”
The Philadelphia Urban Seminar program was started almost a decade ago in order to help address the urgent need in the Commonwealth for more qualified teachers in urban schools. For many of the students who participate in the program, it represents their first experience with big-city life, according to Dr. Larry Vold, associate professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and program coordinator.
In the past, the program involved only a few of the PASSHE universities, which each year sent from 50 to 75 students to Philadelphia to participate in the seminar. This year, more than 250 students from 12 PASSHE universities are taking part. The students have been placed in more than two dozen elementary, middle and high schools in the district’s Central East and North regions, which include some of the district’s most racially diverse and economically distressed neighborhoods.
Among the goals of the Philadelphia Urban Seminar is to help the participants to become more comfortable in an urban setting so that when they are ready to do their student teaching, they will consider an assignment in an inner-city school, according to Vold. Ten years’ worth of experience indicates the program is working, he said.
“Many leave the experience much more confident in themselves as teachers and have the attitude that, ‘I can do this,’ ” said Vold. “Over the years, more and more of them also are saying, ‘I want to do this.’ ”
The expansion of the program will provide many more future teachers with the valuable experience that officials hope will result in even more wanting to make the choice to teach in Philadelphia or in another urban school district in the state.
The School District of Philadelphia will offer an incentive to students who participate in the Urban Seminar and then choose to do their student teaching in the district. Those students will receive an $1,800 stipend from the district to help pay their housing costs during their semester-long student teaching assignment.
With more than 104,000 students, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education is the largest provider of higher education in the Commonwealth. Its 14 universities offer more than 250 degree and certificate programs in more than 120 areas of study. Nearly 400,000 PASSHE alumni live and work in Pennsylvania.
The state-owned universities are Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester Universities of Pennsylvania. Branch campuses are located in Clearfield, Kittanning, Oil City and Punxsutawney. PASSHE also operates several regional centers, including the Dixon University Center in Harrisburg. The regional centers are part of the Educational Resources Group, which is responsible for coordinating statewide programming.