Teachers learning how to teach other teachers will be the order of the day on Wednesday and Thursday as a group of Osborne Fellows meet at Clifton Hills Elementary School for training with expert teacher Diane Sweeney.
Ms. Sweeney, director of Coaching Initiatives at the Public Education & Business Coalition, is the author of Learning Along The Way: Professional Development by and for Teachers. Ms. Sweeney’s work reflects a longstanding interest in how adult learning translates to student learning in the classroom, officials said.
Participants in the two-day “learning laboratory” will meet as a group on Wednesday morning to discuss effective teacher coaching practices. That afternoon, one-half of the group will observe a lesson being taught to a second grade class at Clifton Hills elementary school, and then will discuss the implications for both the host teacher and their own teaching practices.
The other participants will conduct the same exercise on Thursday morning with a fifth grade class, followed by a “de-briefing” for the entire group in the afternoon.
“If a teacher learns how to improve her teaching, it helps her students. If she teaches other teachers what she has learned, it helps her whole school – and potentially the entire district,” says County School Superintendent Dr. Jesse Register. “Workshops like this one will allow the good things happening in our urban schools to grow, to have an impact on the rest of the district, and to sustain the great progress that we are seeing.”
The Osborne Fellows program is a joint venture of the Public Education Foundation, the Hamilton County Department of Education, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, the Weldon F. Osborne Foundation and the BellSouth Foundation. The program provides a master’s degree in urban education to a select group of teachers who are currently teaching at urban schools in Hamilton County.
Officials said, "Learning to recognize that low-income urban students often face hurdles that more privileged students do not, graduates emerge with an understanding of urban children – who they are, where they come from, what their culture is, and how they learn. This understanding goes a long way toward making Osborne Fellows more effective teachers."
Fifty-one Hamilton County teachers are enrolled or have graduated from the Osborne Fellows program.
“Teacher retention has historically been a real problem at these urban schools,” says Leslie Graitcer, Osborne Initiative Coordinator for the Public Education Foundation. “The Osborne Fellows program helps stabilize these schools by giving teachers the skills to help urban children succeed, and by asking them to commit to staying at an urban school for at least four years after they complete the program. Now, we are seeing much lower teacher turn-over at these schools.”
A dinner celebration will follow the two-day learning laboratory at Clifton Hills. The event will celebrate the graduation of the second class of Osborne Fellows, and will induct the 2006-08 class. Diane Sweeney will be the keynote speaker for the event Thursday from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Chattanoogan.
The Public Education Foundation is a private, non-profit organization "dedicated to improving student achievement in Hamilton County."