Oct. 7, 2003

Indiana State University awarded $3.985 million grant
to enhance teacher education program

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — Indiana State University has been awarded a $3.985 million grant by the U.S. Department of Education to enhance its teacher education program. [PDS news site]  [related quotes]

The five-year grant is part of a $6 million project that gives the university and schools in the ISU Professional Development Schools Partnership the resources to transform the teacher education programs to more clinically-based programs, getting education students more involved in the learning experience while furthering the professional development of teachers already in the field.

The ISU PDS partnership is a collaborative program between ISU and 20 schools in Indianapolis Public Schools, the Vigo County School Corp., Clay Community School Corp., South Vermillion School Corp., and Southwest Parke Community School Corp.

“Ultimately, this helps us to address standards in the state,” said ISU president Lloyd W. Benjamin III, “to help raise standards, but also to address the maintenance of teachers, the retention of teachers, of good quality teachers in our schools. In the end, I think it’s a great benefit to Indiana.”

“It’s win, win, win,” Suellen Reed, superintendent of the Indiana Department of Education, said of the ISU PDS partnership. “Students who aspire to be teachers get to work with real students and real teachers in a classroom setting. The college professors get a chance to be in the classroom and they’re up on what’s going on with real kids. And the teachers get that opportunity to interact and share ideas with the professors. It’s good professional development for our teachers because it makes them even better teachers. But the kids are the biggest winners of all because they have that little extra help and attention.

“I love PDS schools. I think it’s absolutely what we need to be doing.”

The grant will offer the ISU PDS program ways to work in three primary areas:

• It transforms teacher education into an experiential learning, clinically based program. Aspiring teachers will be given a deeper and enhanced knowledge of the content they will be expected to teach; not only do they hear that information, but they are expected to engage in that information.
  

• It offers a richer school environment for children, one that supports all children by strengthening the way in which schools help children learn, and these enriched school environments will become the clinical settings for the pre-service teachers to become involved in their study of teaching. School faculty develop new methods for engaging students with particular learning difficulties by collaborating to solve problems.
  

• It aids in the professional development of public school teachers and university faculty by forming learning communities and provides ways for these collaborative learning communities to contribute to the knowledge base and student improvement.