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Karen Robertson graduated from the Ohio State University in 1976 with a bachelor's degree in elementary education. Doctor Robertson served as both a faculty member and administrator at several universities before coming to

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Towson University in 1999 as Chair of the Department of Elementary Education. She currently serves as Associate Dean of the College of Education.

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These are her reflections. Doctor Robertson, thank you for sharing your teacher preparation and your subsequent career in education. This will help a great deal in enriching our understanding of

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teacher education at Towson University. And we'd like to start at the beginning. So the first thing I would like you to share with us is your early social context, where you grew up, what kinds of career

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aspirations you were thinking about and when you were deciding that perhaps you might want to become a teacher. Well, I grew up in a small town in Ohio called Shelby, Ohio. It's 70 miles south of Cleveland and 70 miles north of Columbus,

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so access to big cities. But this happened to be a really small town. I mean in the time I was growing up probably 12,000 people, but it has steadily decreased in population to now about 8,000.

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I was one of three children in the Robertson family. My sister Susan is four years older than I am and my sister Linda was 13 months younger than I was. So I went to Catholic school my whole one through grade eight and so

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did my sisters. We would walk to school, walk to and from school a mile, never backwards and in the snow. But we did walk to school and walked home from school, thought

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nothing of it. Felt very safe in the small little town where everybody kind of looked out for you. We used to play school a lot, so that was very much the beginning

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of my thinking that I would be a teacher. When I went to college, my dad was determined that you had to come out of college with something you could do. You know, there would never be a degree in philosophy or history

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or something, it had to be, you know, you're going to have a job when you come out. And at that time, this was in the 1960s when I graduated from high school in 1964, there weren't too many jobs open for

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women to think about. I mean, at that time period, I guess most women kind of had traditional roles still. And so I remember considering, did I want to be an

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administrative assistant or secretary? Did I want to be a nurse or did I want to be a teacher? And those seem to be the career paths that I could contemplate that seemed open to me, things that I might be able to do.

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And because I kind of fainted at the sight of blood, I kind of ruled out nursing and thought teaching would be the career for me. So right after high school, I went to Bowling Green State

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University in Ohio, and I was a major in elementary education and I was there for two years, at which time I was still so attached to my boyfriend from high school that I decided that maybe I would rather be married than finish college.

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And once again, there wasn't a real big push back then for females to do that kind of thing. College was not always the ultimate goal for most people and women in that in that time period.

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So I dropped out of college and I got married and my husband at the time worked for a faucet company, Moen Faucet Company, as a salesperson. And shortly after he started that job, they transferred him

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to California. Oh my heavens. So we all packed up, we moved to California. And when I was there, teaching was just definitely out of the

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question, considerably out of the question. Let me back up. Before that, after I got married and dropped out of college, I finished or I went back to college after I was married, went to a branch school of

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Bowling Green that was in Sandusky, Ohio, that was close to where we were living at the time. And at that time in the state of Ohio, they had a special licensing program called the Cadet Teaching License.

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And if you had finished some basic education courses and most of your methods courses, really amounted to two years of college with the right courses, then they would issue you a certificate to teach.

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And so I did that. I finished the required courses at this branch campus in Bowling Green, but had not earned a degree. But I did receive a teaching certificate from the state of

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Maryland, temporary, cadet. State of Ohio, right, in the state of Ohio. And so I taught there for two years. I taught third grade at the same school where I had done my

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student teaching. And that was pretty much a traditional path back then for teachers to get teaching positions is wherever you did your student teaching, you would also get a job

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there. So as part of this cadet program, you had to do student teaching and you had to do additional methods courses. That's right.

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Tell us a little bit about your teaching, your student teaching experience. Well, it was in one of the schools where I ended up doing my student teaching.

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So, and it was predominantly middle class school. Almost all the children there were of the same ethnic background, which is Caucasian. It was in a town, Vermilion, Ohio, and it's on the lake, it's on

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part of Lake Erie and it's known as a boating community. And so there were more affluent parts. But the school I was in, South Street Elementary School, happened to be more just middle class students.

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And so when I did a field placement there, it was more an observation. You go into the classroom, you took notes about what the teacher was doing, what the children were doing, and then

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you would have a time when you were in the college classroom to talk about that. But then student teaching was the real first time I remember doing any teaching on my own. Right.

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I may have done some in that practicum experience, but I don't remember it, but student teaching was once again at this school in Vermilion and it was in, I believe it was second grade.

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It lasted the whole semester, gradually took over. It's changed very little actually from some of the student teaching that I see going on today, you know, a gradual release model to the point where you were then

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teaching everything and then, you know, kind of easing out of it. Right. And so you did that for, you said 15 week or full semester. Right.

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And then I taught for those two years. At the same school? Yes, all of my experiences were at the same school for practicum and student teaching and my job. So it was just... So that was a comfortable transition, I guess.

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Very much. And your first... And the grade you taught was second? Or did you do the same grade as your student taught in? No, I student taught in second grade, but I got my

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teaching position in third grade. So I did third grade for two years and then my husband was transferred after that time. So when I went to California, there was no cadet teaching

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program there. They would not honor that certificate at all. Plus I would have had to pay in state or out of state tuition, which was a little bit more expensive than I could afford at

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that time. So for a while I didn't do anything related to education. And then I started working at a Montessori school with three- to five-year-olds, just sort of as a volunteer.

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I can't remember being paid for that. And I did some other volunteer work with the Cancer Society and some things like that. And then when the marriage didn't work out so well, we came

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back to Ohio. And that's when everything kind of fell apart. By then, you had children. I had two children.

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Heidi is my oldest, and at that time she was three years old. And my son Jay was six months old. And so we ended up back in Ohio, all of us, and my husband and I went our separate ways.

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And I was on my own trying to take care of two children, thinking, what am I going to do? How am I going to do this? And so for a while, I did some retail, you know, I was a clerk

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in a department store. And that was not very fulfilling nor financially rewarding. And so I took my transcript to a regional campus of Ohio State University that was like ten miles away from where I was

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living and met with an advisor there, her name is Doctor Shirley Heck, who talked to me about what courses I would still need to finish and that yes, I had to do student teaching again.

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So it was going to take me another year and a half to finish the program that I never did finish. And so then I talked with my mom and my sister volunteered to watch my children.

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I had so much support from my parents, my family, that they actually made it happen for me. But I did finish my undergraduate program at the Ohio State campus in Mansfield.

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One of the highlights of that experience was Doctor Heck, who ended up being more of a mentor, as much a mentor as a teacher. But we had a class with her, probably 20, 25 of us in this class, and she kept talking to us about the British school

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model of training elementary teachers and how they taught in, you know, British primary schools. And so we told her we would all like to just go and see for ourselves.

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And so she arranged it and I was able to go. And you went to London? We went to London and we traveled around there. She had a contact in the Ministry of Education in London.

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So that person set up conferences for us to hear people in various aspects of education in London and surrounding areas. We visited several schools both in London and surrounding areas

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and did some cultural things too. It was a month-long experience. It was fabulous. It was absolutely one of the highlights of my undergraduate

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career. I would think so. So when I finished there, I got a job in a small town close to Shelby. Shelby's a small town, and they play Willard, Ohio, in

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their football, you know, schedule and all that. So my job was in Willard. That was about 20 miles away from where I lived. And that was in first grade.

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And I was there for, let's see if I... Three years, two years maybe. At which time Doctor Heck, who kept coming in and out of my life, contacted me to see if I wanted to become a part of a

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graduate student program that they were beginning at Ohio State at the Mansfield campus so I could become a graduate student there. I would supervise student teachers and other students in

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clinical placements and work on my master's degree at the same time. I would have to quit my teaching job. So I told her I couldn't, I couldn't do that.

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I know no way could I financially afford it. And then I got to thinking about it. I thought, you know, I'm going to get a master's degree out of this.

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And so I'll find a way to make it work on that graduate assistantship, which which I did. So and then when I was there at the regional campus, many times we had to drive to Columbus for some of the classes

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because they didn't offer everything at the regional campus, which is too small. And there were a group of us from the school where I had taught that would drive down to nights a week and take night

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classes, two classes each semester until we finished everything. But we did, we finished our master's degree in two years' time, I believe.

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That's actually quite quickly. Right. And, well, there's some summers that we did, you know, more classes. Maybe it was longer than two years, more like three maybe. And that was in elementary ed?

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Yes. All my career is in elementary education. At Ohio State at the time, you got your degree in curriculum and instruction elementary education. Right.

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So you have a master's degree. I have a master's degree. But you don't have a teaching position. I don't have a, no teaching position. I'm out of a job.

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And so I'm thinking, well, I'm going back to Willard, Ohio, to one of the school sites there, and I'm going to be a classroom teacher again now with my master's degree. But when I was at Ohio State at the Mansfield campus, there was

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an instructor there. His name is Doctor Tom Weible, and you might know him because he ended up back in Maryland. He had come from Maryland.

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And I know he's back at College Park. I don't know if he's still there right now, but I have seen him recently enough to know that he was there within the last five years.

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But he was the one that said, you know, now what are you going to do? I said, oh, I'm going to go back to be a teacher. He said, are you sure you want to do that?

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I said, yeah, what else would I do? And he says, why don't you go on and get your PhD? And I said, I can never do that. I've got two kids. He said, so?

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I thought for the longest time I was pretty sure I couldn't do that. I just couldn't move. He was going, he had connections at the University of Iowa, which

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is where he had finished his PhD. And he said, I can get you an assistantship there if you want it. I know who to contact.

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I know they have assistantships. You're going to have to let me know pretty soon because they'll be gone. But if you want to do that, I'll work with you to make that

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happen. And so he planted that seed that took a while to take root. But because he told me there was this deadline, I really had to think about it quite seriously.

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And I did, I decided that I could do it. You know, if I never tried, I would've wished I'd always had done that. Right. And so I thought, what better way to get into a doctoral

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program than through somebody that can recommend you rather than doing it on your own. I still had to put together the packet and the GREs and all of that, but he made the contact.

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I applied for the graduate assistantship and was accepted. So I started at the University of Iowa. My grad assistantship was in the Early Childhood Education Center on campus and I worked as the head teacher of a class of

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two-year-olds. And I did that for two years and then... Did that give you the opportunity to put in place some of those things that you had observed when you were in

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England? Definitely. Because I know they have strong infant programs. Right. And so we did a lot of centers.

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The whole room was organized around the center approach. We did some circle time things. And it was a program that was as much like a daycare as it was an early childhood facility

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in that parents could bring their children early in the morning and they pick them up, I think 7:00 was when they closed. So it tried to accommodate students on campus who were in

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graduate classes. And it was an eye-opening experience, for one thing, because most universities are very eclectic with the faculty and the staff who are there,

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it opened my eyes to populations that I had never interacted with. In the very small town of Shelby, Ohio, there were no other minorities.

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There were no minorities. Everyone there was Caucasian, of course, some were Irish and German and in that variety, that diversity, but no other Hispanics or African American, black, nothing.

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Just no opportunity in going to a Catholic school. Obviously. It was just, you know, very homogeneous. Yeah.

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So that opened my eyes to the, you know, students in the classes with me were from very diverse cultures and the parents that I worked with and children that I watched were very diverse population too.

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And it was very much an eye opening experience, positive experience for me. So how long were you at the University of Iowa? I was there a total of five years.

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I think I did the Early Childhood Education Center for three years and then they either closed, I can't remember them closing, but I moved on to be a director or supervisor of student teachers and I did that for two

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years and then my assistantship was over. I could not apply for any more assistance after five years and I had not finished my PhD. I did have two children still who were traveling with me.

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And so I left there and got a teaching position at a small school in Nebraska. It was Saint Mary's College in Omaha, Nebraska. It's a Catholic institution.

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So I ended up back where I started from, and I was there for three years. And in that time period, I would work on my dissertation in the summers and my children would sometimes go back to Ohio and

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stay with my parents. So I can remember that final summer, they were there most of the time. And it was a big push just to get it done.

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But I did it. And what kinds of responsibilities did you have at Saint Mary's? I was teaching in the elementary education department.

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And at that point we taught a 15- credit load, including student teaching. And I might have fifteen student teachers to see. So I taught courses in reading methods mostly and then

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supervised student teachers who were in that area and they were placed all over, you know, not concentrated. So that was your second experience supervising student teachers, and were those experiences similar?

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Was the format for doing that pretty much the same everywhere? Pretty much. It's... The length of time they were in their classrooms may

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have varied a little bit but it's basically, you know, watch an intern or, well, they're called student teachers at that time, teach, give them some kind of written feedback, go back again

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and see them, see if they're making any progress. There wasn't so much interaction with mentor teachers at that time or I don't remember there being that much. But, you know, be sure you fill out the right form and at

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University of Iowa, you know, file it with the right person. And you were traveling to different schools then. Yes, very much.

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And you didn't, you weren't school-based as a supervisor. No, no. I may have four or five schools to go to, to see twelve or more student teachers and really thinking nothing of it,

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I guess. At that particular institution, Saint Mary's, there was very little pressure to publish. They wanted you to do some presentations and stuff. But to focus on writing was almost nonexistent.

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Right. Well, with a 15 credit hour load, it would have been virtually impossible. Exactly.

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Couldn't really. Yeah, there's no way. Yeah. And you know, it...

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You didn't think anything of it. I remember I was in my office or supervising in schools every day of the week. It was never like, oh, this is a day when I can stay home and do

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X, Y, and Z, grade papers or whatever some college professors can do when they're not in their office. And you had committee work that you had to, you know, serve on committees.

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And there were lots of events, you know, student welcomes and student graduations, all that I had to participate in. It was a very busy time. And you stayed there for three years.

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As soon as I got that PhD I knew I wasn't going to go back there. I wanted a little bigger institution for one thing, when there are only, like, there were like five people in the education department at Saint Mary's.

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And so that was like, you know, it was a little bit small. And so I applied for jobs and I ended up at the University of South Carolina at Spartanburg, which is a regional campus of a main institution there.

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And that department was bigger. And I was hired to teach both early childhood and elementary classes. And because I had majored in both elementary and early

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childhood in my PhD, then that appealed to me to teach those classes. I stayed there ten years and went through the ranks of assistant professor,

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then I was promoted to associate professor and full professor. And once again at that institution, the focus on writing, scholarly activity as far as publishing was not, it wasn't there.

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You know, they just didn't expect that. You had... I had pretty much same teaching load, fifteen credit hours a semester, but I had colleagues to work with. That made some of the work just a little easier.

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Oh, absolutely. If you were developing a new class or changing your class, you had someone to talk about with it. We were a very collegial group.

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That group in that particular department, the Education... College of Education, did lots of things together even outside of school, you know, celebrated holidays and so on together. So you knew each other socially as well as

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professionally. Did you teach... For the ten years, did you teach a variety of different courses? Yes, I taught children's literature, which was the first

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time I'd ever taught that course. And I know my first semester through it, I really struggled because there was so much of this material I hadn't read myself.

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Yes. But the second semester when I taught it, I was really ready for the class and ended up being my favorite class to teach. And I think a lot of the students there, it was their

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favorite class too. That was the group that nominated me for the teacher of the year at USC Spartanburg. Which you did receive. I did receive it.

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I actually... The students nominate and vote. They're the only... That's how that process works at that institution. So I guess enough education students voted for me that I

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actually won that award. Wonderful. So it was quite an honor to know that I had been there just a short amount of time. Absolutely.

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And I did make some really good friends there of the students. Some of them I kept in touch with quite a long time. You know, we would do things together too, parties.

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And I remember when Dolly and Kenny Blackwood had their baby, went to that christening, you know, those kinds of things. So, yeah. And how was teacher education done there?

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I mean, was the process still pretty much the same that... Were they doing time in schools before student teaching there? Well, I said before that this was a time that you could talk with colleagues about how can we do this class differently or

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let's try this or let's try that. And there were very few regulations at that time. So you could be creative. It was an NCATE accredited school, but NCATE wasn't quite

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the same as it is right now, I don't think, it wasn't as restrictive. And so my friend Linda Randolph and I decided that we were going to teach this reading and language arts methods.

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She taught the language arts part, I taught the reading part, and we were going to teach it together as a six-credit unit. And two days a week we were going to take those college students to schools to have them practice what they had been

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learning in the classroom so we can see them in action. And I know one of the local papers wrote about that because it was such a novel idea at the time that these pre-student teachers were actually out in the classrooms doing things.

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It was a very rewarding experience. And I think the students learned a lot in doing that. I know Linda and I learned a lot too about managing and making placements and finding all the mentor teachers and making sure

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everybody knew everything. And it was... We did all of that. There was no placement office. We did all of it.

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So, but pretty much it was methods courses and then they did student teaching. So we were trying to integrate some other pre-experiences in there for them.

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Wonderful. And after ten years... Well, the last two years of that ten-year experience, I served as the acting Dean of the College of Education there because our Dean had gone under...

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No, because he had been promoted to a Provost level as an interim. So he was an interim Provost and I was acting chair or Dean at that time.

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And after doing that for a couple of years, I sort of thought I liked that, the administration part of it, and that I would like to continue doing that. And so I applied for a job and left Spartanburg, South Carolina to go to

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Denver, Colorado to Metropolitan State College of Denver, where I was the Dean of the college that... It wasn't a Dean of a college because the department was housed in a larger unit, but I was the chairperson of early childhood

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elementary special ed departments. So it was similar enough to a Dean, I guess. And I thought, well, this will be a growing experience. I'll learn some things about administration.

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I still get to teach, which was a good thing. And that experience was not real positive. What I've... I worked with some very dedicated college faculty, some of whom are still friends, but also some very

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poorly prepared college instructors, and I couldn't change their ways. I couldn't make them show up on time to class. I couldn't make them show up when they were supposed to teach

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instead of canceling classes. I just, I never quite changed the culture there and I'm not sure they were happy with me for trying to do so. It just got to be an uncomfortable place for me after

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a while. And so then I left and came here, came to Towson. So I do have a traveling past. And you came here as chair of Elementary Ed.

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I did. And you've had experiences in a variety of different places. So this gives you a broader understanding of some administrative things, but equally important curriculum and

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instruction for pre-teachers at the elementary level. Would you tell us a little bit about what Towson was offering in terms of their teacher education program when you came, and maybe if that's changed over time, how that's different or

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certainly how that was different from or not different from the schools that you had been associated with before? Well, the thing that attracted me to Towson was the fact that they were involved in professional development

00:30:21.940 - 00:30:37.730

schools. And that was a big thing when I came here thirteen years ago now, professional development schools were sort of just taking off. And when I had, when I left Metropolitan State College of

00:30:37.730 - 00:30:52.070

Denver, we had been involved in the John Goodlad National Network for Educational Renewal project. And so we did professional development schools there. It was a little bit of a struggle because it was a new

00:30:52.070 - 00:31:05.720

concept. But when I taught, I taught my methods course in a public school and the students went there, you know, for their class and for our practicum experience.

00:31:05.720 - 00:31:21.640

So we were trying to implement the model the best way we could. We had several meetings on our campus, but also with faculty who were doing professional development schools at the University of Denver.

00:31:22.040 - 00:31:32.000

And they're on the same physical campus. So, you know, you just walk across campus, there tou were at the at the graduate level at the University of Colorado.

00:31:32.000 - 00:31:50.320

So we all had shared ideas about what works in professional development schools, how we were doing it. There were conferences where people from the National Network for Educational Renewal came to campus and talked.

00:31:50.320 - 00:32:05.720

We read books, we had book studies related to that. It was just a really enriching and rewarding experience because it seemed to me that that would be the best way to prepare future teachers is to put them out there with children as

00:32:05.720 - 00:32:20.060

early as you can and as often as you can. And so when I came here, of course, Dennis Hinkle and Tom Proffitt could talk about nothing else but professional development schools and how they had this model at Owings Mills

00:32:20.060 - 00:32:28.600

Elementary School. So I thought, well, this would be a good fit because I already know professional development schools. I have a concept.

00:32:28.600 - 00:32:43.600

I don't know how Towson does it, but I have the concept of how it should work and what should be involved. And so when I came here, I think they just had the one PDS, right, one PDS, but there were several state grants, teacher

00:32:43.600 - 00:32:57.930

improve, teacher quality improvement grants, teacher quality enhancement grants that allowed money to develop additional PDS sites. So when I was the chair of elementary, we developed a new

00:32:57.930 - 00:33:12.990

site in Howard County, and that one is still operating, and one in Harford County, and I think there was a second one in Baltimore County. But that was the thing that I saw that was kind of new and

00:33:12.990 - 00:33:28.630

cutting-edge at that time is that I could come with my knowledge about PDS. It ended up being a different model, but the ideas are still the same, that students are prepared in a classroom more

00:33:28.630 - 00:33:42.280

authentically than they would have been had they just done student teaching and that's it. Right. But a much bigger program probably than you had seen before.

00:33:42.280 - 00:33:57.610

I mean, I think especially elementary education at Towson is probably among the top 20% in terms of size nationally, maybe in the top ten. It is a large program, certainly the largest in the state if I'm

00:33:57.610 - 00:34:03.880

not mistaken. I believe so. I don't know how large College Park is, but I'm quite sure we're bigger than they are.

00:34:03.880 - 00:34:20.400

I think so. It was a very big department. Yes. So you're orchestrating this on a much larger scale. Right. Could you talk a little bit about PDS, sort of key points and

00:34:20.400 - 00:34:40.690

maybe what you regard as the key or essential elements in a successful teacher education program that uses that model? Well, I did work in a PDS here in Towson for five years when I stepped down as the chair of the elementary department for

00:34:40.690 - 00:34:51.270

a while. And I thought, well, I need to find out what this is all about because faculty who were there complained about the workload, that it's very burdensome, that they don't have time to do

00:34:51.270 - 00:34:58.960

anything else. And if you're expecting me to do any scholarly activity and be in a PDS, I can't do it. So I figured I needed to see what it was all about.

00:34:59.440 - 00:35:12.920

And so my PDS was in Howard County and I live in Baltimore County, north of campus a little bit. And so the first thing that you realize is that being in a PDS is time consuming.

00:35:14.080 - 00:35:28.420

Depending on where your PDS is located and where you live, you have hours that you spend just getting there. And since I had to travel the beltway from my home to these schools in Howard County, one of them was in Laurel, which is,

00:35:28.420 - 00:35:41.220

think of, like, the southernmost part of Howard County that you can go to. And so I was like, OK. You would have to plan like an hour and fifteen minutes each direction because you're there when everybody else

00:35:41.220 - 00:35:52.890

wants to be on the beltway. So that's the first thing that you notice is how much time you spend just getting there. And then when you get there... In my situation, I worked with

00:35:52.890 - 00:36:05.800

three different schools. And so the goal of PDS is that those schools collaborate with each other to offer activities across the three sites that would be beneficial to teachers,

00:36:06.400 - 00:36:22.150

all teachers in the building mentor teachers who are working with interns and interns. And so you realize that getting three schools who are quite diverse themselves to have the same vision for what

00:36:22.150 - 00:36:40.200

professional development should be for teachers and when to deliver that is tricky. And then how to engage the students in those activities when they have classes that they have to take on campus also is

00:36:40.200 - 00:36:52.660

problematic. So you are negotiating things with a variety of people, groups of people. Right. One of the schools I worked in, the principal had embraced the

00:36:52.660 - 00:37:04.800

idea of the PDS, but she herself didn't want to be involved in it. And in Howard County, you... Every PDS should have steering committee meetings, and those meetings would take place once a

00:37:04.800 - 00:37:16.120

month. Once again, the idea would be that all three schools or representatives from all three schools would be there. It needed to be the principal and maybe two or three teacher

00:37:16.120 - 00:37:29.050

representatives because we were going to make decisions about what would happen in PDS sites. You know, how would the interns be introduced? Would there be a breakfast or a tea or a school tour or

00:37:29.050 - 00:37:35.920

whatever? What kind of professional development did we want to offer? And what day was it going to be and who was going to host it and

00:37:35.920 - 00:37:43.940

who was going to do the food? I mean, just sort of routine, mundane decisions, but they had to be made. And if you didn't show up and your school wasn't represented,

00:37:43.940 - 00:37:52.580

then you didn't know what was going on. And this particular principal didn't want to be a part of that. She would send, sometimes, an assistant principal who

00:37:52.580 - 00:38:00.800

sometimes came, sometimes didn't. But the interns were always there. There were always representatives from each school for the intern.

00:38:00.800 - 00:38:14.940

So they'd be the ones that had to go back and tell the principal what we're doing in the professional development school, which is a little bit of an awkward situation. It's interesting that part of a PDS in a county would be with a

00:38:14.940 - 00:38:28.080

school that had a principal who didn't want to participate. One would think that that would be a first step. And she did. I mean, we, when we sat down with her and said this is what

00:38:28.080 - 00:38:42.270

PDS is all about, which is one of the steps you take when you're trying to develop a PDS, they have to buy into it. And she was very accommodating, very willing. In fact, when we thought maybe we would put that school on

00:38:42.270 - 00:38:52.240

hiatus for a while, she was adamant that we would not do that. So she wanted the PDS at her school. She just didn't want to be a part of it.

00:38:52.440 - 00:39:01.360

But that's not the normal situation. The normal situation is that everybody is very supportive and very agreeable. We did have our steering committee meetings.

00:39:01.880 - 00:39:14.320

One thing I found out is that you have to be sure that people on the steering committee are willing to talk, to speak out, share their ideas, because if everybody just sits there and they're really quiet, then nobody really makes a decision.

00:39:14.680 - 00:39:24.900

And that happened a few times. So the composition of the steering committee was very important. But the overall... One of the overall goals of a PDS is the

00:39:24.900 - 00:39:33.200

immersion of the teacher candidates, the college students in the school. And that happened. That was a very positive thing.

00:39:33.200 - 00:39:47.770

They were there for all the teacher conferences, for back-to- school night, for the week before the children come when teachers are setting up their classroom. So they did have a richer experience as a teacher

00:39:47.770 - 00:40:00.680

candidate in those classrooms. I would think so, certainly coming when the teachers start back right in the fall is markedly different from some old student teaching

00:40:00.680 - 00:40:17.390

models. You come in after everything's set, the room's set up and pretty much the teacher has the kids organized and on task and... Right. You never see how that whole classroom management is established and

00:40:17.390 - 00:40:29.600

all the materials they have to get ready at the beginning of a school year and, you know, the name tags and the principal coming and giving you a new name and switching children in and out.

00:40:29.600 - 00:40:45.800

And so it was very, I think, eye-opening for the interns and that, like, it's a lot of work. You don't just go into your classroom and it's ready to go. And when do students go into PDS?

00:40:46.360 - 00:41:00.260

This is not just in the semester in which they're going to student teach. It's the semester before. That's the model currently. When I came here and Owings Mills was the only PDS that was

00:41:00.260 - 00:41:14.510

operating, the students actually did all of their elementary ed major courses in the PDS. So that would have been four semesters and that relied on people from the math and science department sending their

00:41:14.510 - 00:41:26.940

instructors to the school. I think that's sort of, well, it kind of fell through at that point because I'm not sure they understood the purpose of PDA. It was always hard for them to be a part of the conversation

00:41:26.940 - 00:41:37.760

just because they're not part of College of Ed. And then it was too many people involved. And how could we maintain that model over several other schools if we set different sites?

00:41:37.800 - 00:41:50.140

Because staffing, I mean, there's a limit to the number of people that you can put in a PDS and still teach classes on campus. And so the model changed to be just the last two semesters.

00:41:50.140 - 00:42:02.160

And that's called the professional year. Yes, it is, yes. And so do you think that that's a reasonable model now? It seemed as though

00:42:02.160 - 00:42:15.880

the other might have been sort of ideal, but not manageable or... Well, I think it's better than just doing your final semester in student teaching. That's much better than that.

00:42:15.920 - 00:42:31.350

But I think for a lot of interns, before they get there, they think they want to be a teacher, but when they find out how much work it really is, they're not so sure. If there'd be some way to give them an experience a little bit earlier

00:42:31.350 - 00:42:43.530

than that. So if they decide education was not for them, they could change their major without waiting 'til the semester before you're going to graduate or the semester that you're going to

00:42:43.530 - 00:42:57.080

graduate. And that's what gets really tricky for the interns that we have right now is if we don't think they're going to make it so much as a classroom teacher, it really

00:42:57.080 - 00:43:11.660

doesn't show up until either that first semester they're in a PDS or their final semester, which comes right after that. And that's so late for them. They already have close to 100 credit hours and a change of

00:43:11.660 - 00:43:20.640

major on campus requires, you know, several other courses in a major. At least. So it requires them, like, another year and a half or so depending. So....

00:43:21.080 - 00:43:27.640

But, so, that's hard. Yeah. Don't you have to make your commitment, though, to elementary ed fairly early in your career?

00:43:28.320 - 00:43:38.270

I mean, this isn't something where you do 30 credits and that's a major. Right. Right. So, after freshman year on campus, students are

00:43:38.270 - 00:43:51.480

declared education majors and they're accepted into the major at the end of their second year here. Normally. You know, if they start in another major, it's going to take them a little bit longer.

00:43:52.080 - 00:44:05.320

We're very prescriptive with the classes that they have to take, whether that's good or bad. Well, and much of that is required by state mandate or accreditation. Exactly.

00:44:07.960 - 00:44:25.070

It just is amazing, though, if they have to start in their sophomore year, that of course they're kind of tied into this in a major way before they actually get to that those first experiences when they might decide, hey...

00:44:25.070 - 00:44:27.520

This is not for me. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah.

00:44:27.640 - 00:44:39.840

And so that would be a very difficult thing for any program to negotiate. Well, the students do have field experiences, but they start with half a day a week as soon as they're accepted into

00:44:39.840 - 00:44:48.140

the major. And they're usually placed in classrooms with other interns or teacher candidates. So it doesn't give them the real flavor of I'm in charge and I

00:44:48.140 - 00:44:59.760

have to manage this whole group. It couldn't because it's just too early in their experiences. But I don't think they know at that particular time that they either don't want to do it or it's not what they thought.

00:45:00.080 - 00:45:10.700

And then the following semester they have two half-day experiences. One's to teach science and one is to teach math. And once again, because they're in there with several other

00:45:10.700 - 00:45:19.640

interns, it's sort of like, I'm still not the one in charge. I'm not totally responsible. I can rely on somebody else for the lesson plan. All I have to do is teach it.

00:45:20.320 - 00:45:36.080

It's still not as authentic as, you know, when you're in student teaching and you're the one, eventually you become the one that has to do all the planning and the grading and the managing and the, you know, meetings and all that

00:45:36.080 - 00:45:47.800

stuff. So, and I don't know, maybe it's not possible to give them a flavor for the real thing too early. It's just hard.

00:45:48.240 - 00:46:01.540

Now, currently, students are required to take a national exam related to that. Can you tell us a little bit about Praxis and when that happens? They have to take Praxis One, which is a

00:46:01.540 - 00:46:16.200

test that tests them on their basic knowledge in reading, writing and math. And they have to pass that with scores set by the Maryland State Department of Education before they come into our major.

00:46:16.720 - 00:46:31.260

So it's usually at the end of all their general education courses or now core curriculum courses. We tell them to take it as early as they can. They really could take it as a beginning freshman because they

00:46:31.260 - 00:46:47.100

should know the material. The, I don't know if it's written anywhere, but the spoken idea is that it's a test that's geared at the high school level with beginning algebra concepts and decimals and adding,

00:46:47.100 - 00:47:01.270

multiplying, and dividing of fractions. So things that they should know so that if they don't pass it, then they can take it again. The state allows them to take it as many times as they need to to

00:47:01.270 - 00:47:10.080

pass the test or a portion of it. What percentage of the students pass it? I mean, it sounds like it's not a particularly difficult or challenging exam.

00:47:10.400 - 00:47:24.210

It isn't, but some of them are... Some of them are tricked by the reading part, which is... And the writing part. So reading information and interpreting seems to be very

00:47:24.210 - 00:47:34.700

difficult for some students. They can read and regurgitate, but they can't interpret so well. And then in the writing part, they have a writing sample where

00:47:34.700 - 00:47:47.580

they have to write to a prompt, and then they also have sample questions about writing. So there'll be a passage with some portion of it underlined and they have to, multiple choice, you know, this is

00:47:47.580 - 00:48:00.880

correct or incorrect, it should be this or that or whatever, and that, the writing part sometimes stumps them. So it's just an interesting phenomenon that it's a basic skills test,

00:48:00.880 - 00:48:18.000

but we do have several students who can't pass it and occasionally, although this is not the norm, some students who don't pass it after five or six attempts. People coming out, I had one advisee who took it seven times and never passed it.

00:48:18.400 - 00:48:26.960

And every time I would say maybe you need to think about a different major. No, I'm pretty sure this is what I want to do. I've always wanted to be a teacher.

00:48:27.440 - 00:48:42.830

I'm going to try again. She just did change her major last semester to family studies. So that's the first test. The second Praxis comes... It's not a mandate at Towson, but in

00:48:42.830 - 00:48:54.040

order to be certified in the state of Maryland, they have to show passing scores on Praxis Two tests, and those are two separate tests. One is in content knowledge.

00:48:54.040 - 00:49:09.160

They ask you questions from reading, language arts, math, science, and social studies that you might have read in current events or from courses that you took in the core curriculum or general education.

00:49:10.160 - 00:49:20.560

Some concepts that you may have taught to children in school, but it's basically an understanding of their own knowledge. It assesses their own understanding.

00:49:21.000 - 00:49:36.680

And then the second is a pedagogy test where they have to write to prompts about how you would design a lesson based on information that they give you or if they give you a scenario, what does this say about children and how

00:49:36.680 - 00:49:47.120

would you group them? And what would be your next step in instruction? And when do students have to take that? The second pedagogy? They, well, they take both.

00:49:47.560 - 00:49:58.490

Praxis Two is composed of both of those tests. And so they have to have both of those before the state will give them a license to teach. So they could actually do that after they graduate if they want

00:49:58.490 - 00:50:06.950

to. They could. They're all encouraged to do it, of course, right before student teaching or internship starts or sometime during if the summer

00:50:06.950 - 00:50:20.090

intervenes there between their two placements and PDS to do it then. Do you have a sense that this is a useful tool? Well, for the longest time, I didn't question it and I

00:50:20.090 - 00:50:32.280

thought, OK, the state's mandating it. It gives you some baseline information. But a couple years ago our department got involved in this thing called the Teacher Performance Assessment

00:50:32.280 - 00:50:48.150

Consortium. And it's a group that's come from the state of California, because California had a similar test called the performance assessment for, I forget what it's called, it's called PACT,

00:50:48.150 - 00:51:03.400

I forget what the initials stand for. But they wanted to take that whole idea nationwide. And so the developers at Stanford University took what they did in California in the PACT test, worked with people

00:51:03.400 - 00:51:14.840

from state departments of education and other faculty around the United States to devise a similar test. But they called it the TPAC. Well, TPAC is a consortium.

00:51:14.880 - 00:51:34.070

The TPA is the teacher performance assessment and in that assessment students actually have to design lessons that they would teach, continuous lessons, three to five in a row, so, on a topic, and they have to show how they planned those

00:51:34.070 - 00:51:48.120

lessons. They respond to commentaries, to questions, and they write five to seven pages about how did I plan this lesson? And then they have to talk about how they planned the assessment

00:51:48.120 - 00:51:59.420

for the lesson. Both the assessment of the children, what are the children going to do to show me that they've learned what I taught them, and the assessment being how well did I do in this

00:51:59.420 - 00:52:04.160

lesson? Did I accomplish my goals? What will be my next steps? What could I do differently?

00:52:04.160 - 00:52:14.640

What should I do differently? They also have to talk about the instruction. So they videotape themselves teaching these three to five lessons.

00:52:14.640 - 00:52:27.840

They choose one 15-minute segment and then they have to analyze how they did with the instruction. You know, did I call on all the children in the group? Did I ask a variety of levels of questions?

00:52:27.840 - 00:52:40.470

Did I elaborate on their answers, if they were going in the wrong direction? Just any kinds of things like that. And they have to submit that to be reviewed by a scorer who has

00:52:40.470 - 00:52:55.840

been trained with an instrument that's come out of Stanford University. So they use a, I think 11-item rubric, 11-page rubric, several items on it, and then they're given a passing score.

00:52:55.840 - 00:53:11.260

It used to be one through four. I think they've changed the rubrics now to be one through five. And theoretically, if you're using this to license a candidate, you would have to have a cutoff score so that you

00:53:11.260 - 00:53:28.120

knew that teacher had the basics of being able to teach in a classroom. And I find that more authentic than answering a multiple choice test about my knowledge and then given scenarios that I may never

00:53:28.120 - 00:53:42.350

have run into or may never run into again to have to write to. Right. I think the teacher performance assessment is more valid for showing the skills that teachers actually have that they're going

00:53:42.350 - 00:53:57.840

to use in their classroom. But it does have a few drawbacks. But, you know, I think that's more valid. This summer, an opportunity presented itself.

00:54:01.480 - 00:54:16.640

The College of Education at Towson had a failed Associate Dean search and you were asked to take on that responsibility in an acting capacity. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

00:54:16.680 - 00:54:30.260

I mean, I know you're very early into this. Very early, right? So the opportunity did arise. I was encouraged by a couple faculty or staff people at

00:54:30.260 - 00:54:40.320

Towson to apply for the job when it was announced. And I said, no, I'm not going to do that. I didn't feel that I had the qualifications based on the way the ad was written.

00:54:41.760 - 00:54:56.930

And then when the search failed and my name was suggested as an acting Associate Dean, it was like, oh, my goodness, I don't... Once again, I don't know if I can do that. That seems to be my recurring theme in my life is like, I'm

00:54:56.930 - 00:55:11.550

not sure I have the confidence in myself to do it. And then I thought that it might be better that someone from inside do the job than someone that they might bring from outside, even in a temporary position, because it's very

00:55:11.550 - 00:55:27.950

difficult for someone coming from the outside to get up to speed with all the nuances in the College of Education. And I did know the Dean because I'd worked with him fairly closely as a chair and we had a fairly good working

00:55:27.950 - 00:55:41.010

relationship. And I thought I could work with him in this position. And there were a few things that I wanted to try to have an impact on him to begin to implement in the College of

00:55:41.010 - 00:55:51.150

Education. TPAC being one of those. I would like to see other departments be involved in that because I do think it's going to become bigger than it is right

00:55:51.150 - 00:56:02.930

now. And a couple of other things that I thought, well, maybe I could be helpful. And so when he offered the position and I said yes, but I

00:56:02.930 - 00:56:17.880

wanted to try it if I could. So our arrangement is that for this semester, we're going to try it, see how we work together. If at the end of the semester, I'd like to go back to being the

00:56:17.880 - 00:56:35.360

chair, I have that opportunity or if he would like to find someone else to do the job, he has that opportunity. So right now we're just we're trying it out for size. And you're going to be very involved in probably pre-service

00:56:35.360 - 00:56:47.400

accreditation, that piece. Yes, and that's going to be a big task. But right now I'm serving on an NCATE State team at the College of Notre Dame.

00:56:47.400 - 00:56:59.960

So that's helping me see all the documents that have to be put together and what a team might be looking for in the NCATE report. So I think I can be helpful in that regard.

00:57:00.120 - 00:57:16.560

And when is that happening for the College of Education? Our site visit will be, we hope, at the end of October in 2014. So it's close, but, it's really close.

00:57:16.560 - 00:57:25.320

It seems far away when you say 2014, but it's not far away at all. Not when you're trying to do a study of the magnitude that NCATE requires now.

00:57:25.360 - 00:57:40.270

So it's big. Is there anything that we've forgotten that we haven't talked about that you think is an important issue or was an important piece of your professional development that

00:57:40.270 - 00:57:49.680

you'd like to share? I can't think of anything. It'll come to you. At three in the morning.

00:57:49.760 - 00:58:08.720

I should have said, oh, I should have said, yes, exactly. Well, my final question to you is a simple one. Given your accrued wisdom about being an elementary teacher and the preparation involved, what would you say to young

00:58:08.720 - 00:58:25.770

people who would be interested in becoming a teacher? Well, we hear a lot of young people say I want to be a teacher because I love children. And although that's a starting point, it won't make you a

00:58:25.770 - 00:58:35.020

successful teacher by any means. There are many other things you could do and still love children. So I think they have to understand what teaching really

00:58:35.020 - 00:58:51.040

is all about. And in my case, what I wished had happened for me before I even started the teaching profession was that I had more knowledge about a variety of backgrounds of children.

00:58:51.400 - 00:59:05.970

I came from that very isolated, strictly white community in Shelby, Ohio, where everybody watched out for everybody else's children and your parents were diligent and, you know, you just,

00:59:05.970 - 00:59:20.550

I'm not going to say you didn't misbehave, but, you know, you understood discipline and usually reacted to that. So when I first went into classrooms where not all the

00:59:20.550 - 00:59:35.340

children were the same background or not all parents had the same expectations for their children, it took a while to realize that, you know, because they don't do things the way you did things doesn't mean they didn't care for their

00:59:35.340 - 00:59:50.830

children or love them or have high expectations for them. And I think if you can learn that early, that not everybody is going to be like you in a classroom. What I see a lot of our potential teacher candidates

00:59:50.830 - 01:00:07.040

thinking is that they want to go back and teach in the school where they came from, and those are not going to be where the jobs are going to be for them. Plus, the children who need the best teachers are not always in

01:00:07.040 - 01:00:19.790

those schools, you know, where the discipline is really easy and the parents are very supportive and every child comes with all the materials. And if you're not accustomed that that's not always the

01:00:19.790 - 01:00:30.600

norm, I think you could be a little surprised by the teaching field. So even though you might love children, maybe you've taught Sunday school at your church or whatever, but try to put

01:00:30.600 - 01:00:42.580

yourself in a situation where you're interacting with children who come from backgrounds quite different than that. So you really are more sure of it. You really want to teach all children and then to think

01:00:42.580 - 01:00:55.120

really seriously about children who need the best teachers. And are you willing to go there, be a teacher in those difficult areas? It's a lot of work.

01:00:55.480 - 01:01:06.240

It is a lot of work. I remember, one story comes to mind that when I was teaching first grade in Willard, I had this little girl in my class, Kathy Hicks, and she was absent a lot.

01:01:06.280 - 01:01:15.770

And she wasn't really making a whole lot of progress in my first grade class. And I wanted to talk to her parents. And so the first time was you would send a note home for them

01:01:15.770 - 01:01:23.720

to come to conferences, send a note home. And this was for all, just general parent teacher conferences. And the note never came back.

01:01:24.840 - 01:01:34.160

So then I sent another note to say I'd still like to talk with you. The note never came back. I think there were three or four attempts that I made in writing

01:01:34.160 - 01:01:44.040

and I never got a response. And so the thinking could, probably in my mind at that time was, like, I don't even think these parents care. You know, they're not responding.

01:01:44.040 - 01:01:58.910

They're not coming in. And then I learned that Kathy's mom and dad didn't read, so I was sending all these notes home that they couldn't read. And why I didn't pick up the phone and call to ask them to

01:01:58.910 - 01:02:09.160

come in, I don't know. I guess it was the writing of the note was easy or something, but I never thought about that. I never, that never even crossed my mind that the reason they

01:02:09.160 - 01:02:21.290

weren't responding is that because they couldn't read the notes I sent. And when I finally learned that, I felt really bad, I think, for the thoughts that I'd had about the parents, plus, you

01:02:21.290 - 01:02:30.880

know, the fact that, you know, some children do live in homes like that. So that's one of those experiences where it just never crossed my mind.

01:02:31.440 - 01:02:46.480

So that comes with experience, I guess, too. But it's like, whoa, that was quite the story. So that's another, I mean, this whole issue of it's not going to be your, the first grade class you were in, right?

01:02:47.000 - 01:03:00.140

This, even if you go back and see a first grade class in your school, that's right, probably is going to be markedly different. Could be very, very different. And if you only want to teach children who are like you are, I

01:03:00.140 - 01:03:11.160

think you should find something else to do other than teaching because it's not going to be that way. Going to be lots of different backgrounds to work with, in languages,

01:03:11.160 - 01:03:21.560

now, that's become one of the big things too of the students who don't speak English when they come to school. Anything else that you would say to someone who is interested in teaching?

01:03:21.560 - 01:03:34.210

It's a hard job. It's not a nine month job and summer's off. You have to understand that. It can be extremely rewarding and if it's a good fit for you, it will be the best thing you've

01:03:34.210 - 01:03:43.360

ever done. You have to be a person who wants to give. Teaching is a helping profession, you know,

01:03:43.480 - 01:03:50.600

it does give back as much as it gives. But sometimes you don't know that for a long, long time. Yeah. Yeah.

01:03:51.640 - 01:03:54.720

That'd be it, I think. OK. Thank you very much. Thank you.