Educators collaborate on inservice training

A growing collaboration between UUP and its K-12 counterparts means strength in numbers for teachers, college faculty and their students.

That was the message delivered Nov. 18 by UUP President William Scheuerman, as he addressed hundreds of NYSUT members in Albany at the 21st annual statewide conference on inservice education. NYSUT is UUP’s statewide affiliate.

The conference was sponsored by NYSUT and the New York State Education Department, and drew several dozen UUPers who have been working with K-12 programs through SUNY schools of education at their campuses.

Scheuerman, who also chairs the AFT’s Higher Education Program & Policy Council as well as NYSUT’s Higher Education Council, spoke to a theme of growing interest at the conference: cooperative efforts between higher education and K-12 in which both groups benefit from shared knowledge and experience.

Such cooperation is already taking place at many levels throughout SUNY, as faculty in SUNY schools of education work with local public school teachers, and students in education majors venture out into schools for practical classroom experience at increasingly earlier stages during college.

“Why we’re here today is to talk about the power of reform, the power to make our profession more effective,” Scheuerman said. “We share common goals and mutual interests. Our goal is that school — whether it’s kindergarten or pre-kindergarten or higher education — provides an atmosphere that is intellectually stimulating.”

Scheuerman warned, however, that educators must overcome obstacles to reach their best combined effort. The culture of higher education today focuses on “sexy” programs such as advanced technology, and the mindset of administrators is not keyed toward practical, hands-on training of the kind that teachers-to-be need. And many universities, including SUNY, are losing full-time faculty through attrition.

“Of course, there’s a role for part-time faculty, but when you have part-time faculty dividing their time teaching at three or four institutions, the students are getting shortchanged,” Scheuerman told the enthusiastic audience.

Carolyn Williams, a former UUPer from Empire State College in Albany who is now an assistant in research and educational services at NYSUT, coordinated the portions of the conference dealing with the collaboration between higher education and K-12.

Several workshops successfully focused on that theme, said Antonia Cortese, NYSUT’s first vice president.

“I think it’s important to have faculty for higher education come and join their K-12 colleagues, because we do have a higher education goal, and that goal is to see students succeed,” Cortese said.

Omanii Abdullah, a poet and UUP member from SUNY Morrisville, also spoke at the conference. Abdullah regularly holds poetry workshops in elementary schools and youth centers, and said that instilling a love of writing in the K-12 years carries into the higher education years of a young person’s life.

“If you just give them a free rein, they start writing, and you can start bringing other things into play,” Abdullah said. “They will find they have a love for writing and then they will blossom into other things beyond poetry.”

— Darryl McGrath