Interview with Thomas Proffitt

Thomas D. Proffitt graduated from Towson State College in 1969 with a bachelor's degree in history and secondary education. Doctor Proffitt worked in public education as a teacher and administrator for 21 years.

He came to Towson State University in 1990 and served as an administrator in the College of Education for 22 years. These are his reflections. Doctor Proffitt, thank you for sharing your thoughts about your

teaching here at Towson and your subsequent career in education. Yours will be a very significant contribution to our understanding of the evolution of teacher education at Towson University.

Where I want to begin is sort of with your early life, your social context, the point at which you thought perhaps you might be interested in becoming a teacher and then when and why you decided to come to what was then Towson State

College. Like many folks at the time, our family was my family was a root blue collar family. My father worked at Martin's Air, Martin's who built all the

airplanes, many of the airplanes for World War Two, grew up in the East End of Baltimore County in the Essex area. Neither my mom or dad graduated from high school. They always had larger aspirations for me.

But the key role model was an uncle who was the first in the Profitt side of the family to go to college and he became my role model as a teenager. He was close to our family, spent a lot of time with he and

his family and he had gone to Towson. He graduated in '50 but didn't teach right away because he got called up and served in the Korean War. And when he returned, he went to work and taught in Baltimore

City for 37 or 38 years. So that was really my role model for me to pursue a career as a teacher and the university, Towson State College at that time, was very good to me.

I attended, like many others, my undergraduate education was made possible through the thing that was called the teacher tuition waiver plan at that time, where if you agreed to teach for two years in the state of Maryland, your tuition, which was $100

a semester, $200 a year, was waived. And that's really what attracted me. My uncle was my model, but that also made it possible for me to pursue an education.

And I graduated from high school 1965, came to the university and spent four years here and again a different era, but at that time most folks went through and graduated in four years. All the friends that I started with, I finished with at

the same time. And at that time, were there a large number of students who were still in the teacher prep program? Did you get a sense of that?

Yeah. There was a large push to grow the number of teachers that were available. You know, I guess it was one of those population surges or

teacher shortage era. And we've been through many of them. But the tuition waiver was, again, one of those things to entice many folks to come into teacher education.

And a lot of my friends from high school who did attend university attended with the intent to become a teacher. I'd like you to talk a little bit, if you will, about your preparation at Towson.

Of course, you have the perspective, as we'll talk about later, about how things are being done currently. But could you tell us a little bit, especially about your education courses, whether they were primarily theoretical or

they were much more practical in nature? Combination of both? I started as a French secondary ed major... Interesting. ...and switched over to become a history secondary ed major.

So I took the history major with the education, the pedagogy courses tacked on, if you will, in order to achieve certification, which is very similar to what the secondary model is here.

Towson, it's always been a place where content was very important and one could get the... I only could get the major in an academic discipline.

There was no major in secondary education. I had many, many wonderful faculty members who model a great deal of excellent teaching, and they were the folks who you wanted to emulate as a classroom teacher.

The education training, if you will, the education preparation was both theoretical as well as very practical. The teacher that I admired the most was Doctor Geneva Ely Flickinger, who taught the Education Foundations at that

time. And she was just an outstanding teacher who challenged all of us to see teaching in a much more global way than in a very technocratic kind of a profession.

She's the one who introduced me to the concept of education as an investment in human capital, not as an expenditure, but as as an investment. It was the mid to late '60s and she stressed to all of us that

education was the ultimate, ultimate civil rights issue, not only of that day, but for the foreseeable future. And 50, 60 years later, we see the the wisdom in her prediction.

She was also one who stressed to us that there was no silver bullet for competence or expertise as a classroom teacher, that it took a great deal of discipline, practice, inquiry, attention to detail, use of professional judgement.

And I still remember her talking about that we needed to take the work seriously and not ourselves seriously. Her course dealt with foundational kinds of issues, philosophical foundations, economic foundations.

So it to a certain extent it was theoretical, but she was wise enough to always have some practical implications for what it was that we were doing. The course that I think was the most practical and for me the

most helpful was my methods course, which was the very first time that the methods course, at least this is what we were told, that the methods course was being taught off-campus at a nearby junior high school, Ridgeley Junior High, at that

time, and it was taught by a full time faculty member, Don Wesley. But each class that was at Ridgeley was after their school day and he would have an hour with Don Wesley and then an hour

with one of the social studies teachers at Ridgeley. So it had a theoretical, practical integration. Many of the courses, many of the sessions were actually team taught.

And it gave us not only the theory, if you will, but the practical application of that theory. It was one of those times when we all knew theory was important and then we knew the theory informed practice.

But at the same time we learned a great deal of practice has to inform theory. And that course also allowed us the option... We could go an hour or two earlier, several times during the

semester, and actually observe in the classroom with the teachers that had been part of the instruction each and every week of the semester. And that was really the only observation experience that I

had before student teaching. In hindsight, that was probably a weakness. It worked out OK for me. But given where we are today, I think it would have been much

more helpful to have additional classroom experience at the time. But at the time that probably was pretty revolutionary. It was, I mean, and although the course wasn't team-taught, it

was a team-teaching situation. The teachers at the junior high, I think, were doing it just as a professional payback, if you will, and it really enriched my preparation.

So you did that in your methods course. When you got to your student teaching, can you tell us a little bit about that experience, where you taught, kind of the profile of that school or those schools?

Student teaching at that time was a ten-credit course and you could add, for ten weeks, and you could add additional weeks of experience and credits to what was called differentiated student teaching.

I ended up doing fifteen credits, fifteen weeks. I student taught at Dulaney High School, which was a very affluent high school, still remains one of the more affluent sections of Baltimore County.

And my mentor teacher was Al Henneman, who today is part of the alumni group, the alumni advisory for the College of Education. And Al was a young teacher then and it was all tenth

grade world history. We taught five sections a day and it was just a powerful experience. He was not an excellent teacher, but he's an excellent mentor and

did what I'm not sure all mentors did, but had me go and observe other teachers in the department. So I could see 9th, 10th, excuse me, 10th, 11th and 12th-grade students and different subjects and let me take over teaching

rather early. And it was the phase in where you picked up one class, then you would pick up a second class. And Al Henneman's theory was if you can do one class, you can do

lots of classes. So it was a wonderful experience. Like I say, it was fifteen weeks my fall semester of my senior year, and then I came back for an additional semester, the final

semester before I graduated. And Dulaney was recognized as probably the premier high school in the county at that time, had a great deal of of community involvement even in those days.

And the expectations for the students were exceedingly high, and the students lived up to those expectations. So by the time you finish that experience, how are you feeling about your readiness to become a teacher?

I think, like most college seniors, I already figured I knew everything and that I could walk into any classroom and be successful. But it was a very positive experience for me.

And I remember some of my peers not having quite as positive experiences. But that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to teach and I wanted to teach older students, high

school students, because all the historical knowledge I had was sure that they wanted just to absorb like a sponge. When I was first employed as a teacher the following year, which was fall of 1969, I was hired as an

eighth grade social studies teacher at Towsontown Junior High, which is now where Carver School for the Arts is located. And having spent fifteen weeks in a high school and then being hired

to teach in a junior high, which was a 7-8-9 grade bands in those days, I immediately discovered I was in a foreign country. And I had a great deal to learn about teaching

students rather than teaching content. Although I was mistaken and I thought that was what high school is going to be like. But still, it's where you have to be committed to the kids, not

the content. Again, while there were no formal mentors for new teachers, I was fortunate enough to have in Towsontown what they called either a big brother or a big sister for first year

teachers. And I had a big sister who was also an eighth grade social studies teacher who took me under her wing, thank goodness, and shared materials, her experience, her wisdom, and was

always an ear I could go to if I had an issue that I wanted to discuss. Laurie Davies was her name and she taught in Baltimore County at the junior high and high school for many, many years

before she retired and was an outstanding, outstanding teacher and key influence. And although we did not have teams in those days, we were very departmentally organized,

I taught with an English teacher, Nancy Weaver, who had many of the same students that I had. And she was another very strong influence on my first year. Looking back, I think that without the two of them, it

could have been a very rocky year. Nothing prepares you for your first year other than actually doing your first year. That was going to be my next question.

After that first year, what were your reflections on your readiness after your preparation at Towson? Do you... Was there anything that was particularly strong you felt coming into that served you well or...

I felt that I was well prepared pedagogically, planning, lesson planning, daily planning, long range planning. I had a wonderful preparation in U.S. history.

Doctor Joe Cox was the the person that really influenced me to go into, focus on U.S. history as part of my concentration. So I was well-prepared for what it was I was going to teach.

I was well-prepared in the the technical aspects. I think it's like any good plan, when a good plan meets reality, you have to be able to think on your feet. And I felt like I was able to do that, but I really needed to

know more about, again, these were junior high school 14-year- olds who are a unique group of folks. I needed more knowledge about their level of development, their stages of development.

We didn't have, quote-unquote, special education in the early '60s, late '60s, early '70s. We had basic education. And I was not well prepared to deal with the needs of the

students who had some kind of learning disability, even though they didn't use the term at that time. And that's I think where the practical, the first year experience taught me what I needed to do better the second

time around with students and throughout that first year, making sure that the materials were appropriate, my expectations were appropriate, and that I was focusing on the kids' needs rather than what I thought were their needs or my

needs. But you also had, as you said, strong support... Yes, I did. ...from unofficial mentor teachers. I mean, it's, the context of public schools is way

different today. Obviously there are formal mentors. There's, we know a whole lot more about how students learn, particularly students who have some kind of disability

or some special need, whatever the accurate term is. And that I think would have been something that I would, is a strong point of what we do today, a stronger point than then.

And again, it's part of the evolution of any profession. But like most professions, unlike most professions, teaching is where your first year, you start your first year and you're expected to be an expert when you have the same

expectations, the same number of students as the veteran teachers who have a whole repertoire of strategies at their disposal. And I had a beginning set of strategies, but you quickly learned to add to that.

I think they don't have a first day on the job lawyer try a case before the Supreme Court. You certainly wouldn't want a medical student fresh out of med school to be performing heart surgery on you.

But in education, that's the approach. It was the approach. It's been modified somewhat today, but it still adds to the challenge of the profession.

Absolutely. So you had a two-year obligation to teach, but you certainly didn't walk away from it after two years. I loved it.

It was wonderful. My wife also graduated at the same time and was teaching in Baltimore County. She was an elementary teacher and we both loved what we were

doing. Life was good, as they say. So I ended up teaching in Baltimore County for eight years.

And did you switch grade levels or subject? How long did you stay at Towsontown? I was at Towsontown the entire eight years and I taught eighth grade the first year.

The last three years I taught a split assignment between eighth grade and ninth grade, which I enjoyed. Was another curriculum for me to work with. And it was wonderful teaching some of the same students that

had as eighth graders as ninth graders, just to see their development and their growth. And again, we were fortunate at Towson Town to be in a setting where we had a great deal of community support,

strong administrators. And it was just a, it was a wonderful time, wonderful experience. But after eight years, you make a change.

I left Baltimore County after eight years and went to Harford County because at that time I was looking for another experience. And I became an assistant principal in the Harford County

Public Schools. That was part of it. Part of it was a couple of daughters that came along. Kathy was no longer teaching and it also meant some additional

income. Right. We were preparing for this, I was talking to Kathy, our first year we started at $6,500 a year and then it was one of those years where there were mid-

year raises. So in mid-year we went to $6,800. So first year income was $6,650 and that was wonderful when there were two incomes, again, it was a different era.

Many things cost less than they do now. But when it became one income, I was ready for a change and I really needed to do something to generate some more revenue. Absolutely.

So can you tell us, give us some information about the various positions you held as an administrator. And you stayed in Harford County then? I went to Harford County as an assistant principal, Bel Air

High School, which again was to change, having spent eight years in a junior high school since 1977. Bel Air High School was a two- building high school. I had 3,600 students, 190-some teachers and I think

in hindsight we did a pretty good job given the size of the student population and having students walking back and forth between two schools all day long. We were happy most of them made it between the two schools

rather than deciding to go somewhere else. And I was at Bel Air for one year because at that time the county was building a new high school they were going to open to alleviate the overcrowding of Bel Air.

So I was at Bel Air High School from '77 to '78 and then in '78 I went to Fallston High School, which was a new school, had just opened, and I stayed at Fallston High School for eleven years as an assistant principal.

It was a combined middle school- high school, even though it was called Fallston High School. And we had grades six through twelve, which was again a fascinating experience.

If you want to see the growth and development of children it's a wonderful place to observe students. I left Fallston High School in I guess it would have been '89. Tom, can I interrupt you ask you, in retrospect, what did you

think about that six through twelve kind of arrangement as opposed to separate high school? Even though it was a six to twelve, we made every effort possible to keep the middle school students separate from the high school because that was a concern of

the community. The high school was on a 7:30 to 2:30 schedule. The middle school was on an 8:30 to 3:30 schedule. There were separate times for the...

We had a single cafeteria. They had separate lunches. So, I mean, as much as is possible, they were physically separated.

There was one area of the building that was for the middle school. It was interesting to see the perceptions of teachers of different age students.

Again, this was the late '70s into the '80s. There were a number of issues with drugs. So we'd have teachers who would be upset because a sixth grade student had thrown a snowball against a solid brick wall and

other teachers were bringing students down because they were selling drugs. Fortunately, we didn't have a lot, but we had some, like any high school at the time, if I had my ideal situation, they

would be in separate schools. It's an enormous age span. And developmentally. It is. And even even within each of those age spans, the

diversity is very, very broad. So I do think that students are better served in separate facilities. And it made for interesting administrative work because you

spent instead of half an hour each morning working with buses and arrivals, you had to double your time in the morning, you had to double your time in the afternoon. The middle of the day, a couple hours was consumed by six

different lunch shifts. So it became, it was an administrative nightmare in a lot of ways scheduling that kind of a school because, again, you were staffed as always by the number of total students.

We had teachers who would teach both middle and high. Most of the teachers would, many of the teachers would come at 7:30, leave at 2:30. Some of the teachers came at 8:30, left at 3:30.

Some of the teachers came mid schedules and taught both high school and middle school schedules. But it worked. It worked very well.

It was a very successful high school. The students, I thought, received a very strong education. And so. for you to continue... After I left the high school and I went to the central office as a supervisor of personnel

because again, after 12 or 13 years, I was looking for a different experience and I had been urged by a couple of folks to to pursue this position. So I did, and working in the central office was not the

experience that I had hoped for. Well, what kinds of responsibilities did you have as supervisor of personnel? There were two of us.

My responsibility was for all the elementary schools in the county. So my responsibility was to hire all the new elementary school teachers and then some of the special areas and to perform all

the HR functions, if you will. It was not only the induction, hiring and induction of new teachers, but working with teachers on personnel kinds of issues.

I visited all the elementary schools, and I think there were probably 38, 39, twice a year, met with teachers at, again, different day and age at that time. For teachers who want to pursue additional education, a master's

degree, they had to file a plan. The plan had to be approved. And that was one of my responsibilities. So I often met with teachers when they're trying to chart out

what it was that they wanted to do for their future education. And then it was as teachers left us the school system for whatever reason. And I chaired a lot of interview teams as we selected

new administrators, elementary school principals and assistant principals. I had a rather quick induction into the budgeting process for the school system because HR handled a lot of the personnel

budget, which at that point I enjoyed, but it wasn't what I wanted to do after I was there. It was a different environment than a school-based environment and I found that environment not to be a warm environment.

So I started looking around. I had gone back to school in the early '80s and started working my doctorate because one of the things I had in the back of my mind at some point in time was not only going to the central

office, but perhaps looking at a Superintendent-level kind of position or I'm looking at higher education. So. So somehow we missed your master's degree.

You must have been doing that while you were teaching. I did the master's degree the summer after I got out of Towson. Joe Cox, the history professor, was the one that said, start your master's

degree right away. And he, I assume he knew these people, but he often encouraged me to go to Morgan at that time, because there was this new field that was just opening up called Negro

History, the term of that time. And Ben Quarles, who was at Morgan, was probably the leading historian in that area. So I went and over talked with Ben Quarles and started at

Morgan, I guess 1970, and then finished 2-3 years later, whatever it was, '73 I guess. And at that point the field was rapidly growing and rapidly being recognized.

And there was an opportunity offered to go to College Park as a graduate student, work on my doctorate in history at that time. But that was when a new house came along and the first daugher.

So that wasn't in the works at the time. Interesting choice of a master's degree. How do you think that informed your teaching? I learned a great deal about how history is written, how history

is presented, and how history is perceived. And that was one of the things that Doctor Cox always talked about. He's the one that introduced us to the concept of historiography

and how history is written in the reflection of the cultural times. And took a course in intellectual history and again in how external forces shape how history is perceived and

particularly how it's written. And then as the cultural forces, the intellectual currents of the time change, history gets rewritten to reflect a newer version of of a previous era.

And in most of the history courses that I had as an undergraduate, until I got into Doctor Cox's course and also Doctor Bell, who taught the first course here in Negro History, most African Americans were absent from any historical

texts that were used. And that was one of the things that Morgan was so noted for in terms of presenting the, as Paul Hardy would say, the rest of the story.

Because there was a great deal of impact in our history by folks who were unrepresented in most textbooks at the time. And that was something that because it was emerging at that time, Baltimore County was also starting to look at it.

So it was not, it was never represented too much in the formal curriculum at the time, but we had a great deal of flexibility in how we presented it. And what was the profile of Towsontown?

Towsontown was a rather affluent junior high school. Being in Towson, county seat, that sort of thing. It was a small African American population, primarily came from East Towson.

So I would say the school was probably 95% white, I'm not sure, 5% all minorities. But it was, again, a rather affluent community of parents who wanted good education for their children,

who valued education for their children. And at that time when you left Towsontown, I guess it was Towsontown originally were the two junior highs in the area and perhaps Dumbarton, and I'm not sure if Dumbarton was open at that

time or not. And then everyone went to either Dulaney or Loch Raven High School. Getting back to where you were before, in your role as

supervisor of personnel, you probably had ample opportunity to, well, you're hiring teachers. And so I want to explore a little bit with you the criteria you used when you were looking at teacher candidates.

And I'm not certain if down the road you were also evaluating teachers, in-service teachers. I evaluated teachers. I evaluated teachers in my role as an assistant principal. And I was fortunate to work with some very good

administrators when I was in Harford. And they were involved at that time in some training for administrators and HR folks with Selection Research Incorporated.

And it was a private agency that did a lot of work in a private as well as public fields and created these teacher perceiver interviews is what they were called. And it was the things that one could look for and try to derive

from an interview with a potential teacher or an in- service teacher in terms of where their focus was. There were a set of structured questions that all new teachers, all applicants would be asked.

And the idea was try to peel the onion a little bit to find out more about the inner workings of these people, you know. And the intent was to find out if their focus was actually on the children that they were going to be teaching

or if their focus was on themselves. And one of the questions that we always used when we were interviewing new teachers was, and it was one of those very benign questions, do you want your students to like you?

But it had a powerful undercurrent to it. And there were things that you were looking for because everyone says yes. No one ever says no, I don't want my children to like me.

Everyone said yes, but it was a question of why yes. And the underlying theory was you wanted children to like you because if they liked you, they would be more motivated to succeed and therefore they would be better learners rather than I

want them to like me because I'm very knowledgeable or I'm a good person and all that's all well and good, but all the questions and the entire ten of the evaluation process was looking for the impact on children.

And even today that's come full circle. We see a great deal more of that, but that's where we were 20-some years ago in terms of your potential as a teacher was your your commitment, your desire to help children learn,

not to be a good teacher. You were a good teacher because children would learn, not because you're just a good teacher. So there was a series of questions and it was fascinating

to go through the training and then to see it actually play out in practice. When I, when we used the teacher perceiver interviews,

and it was, I'm sure, created by some very insightful psychologist and a few very insightful educators, but it was a standardized tool that made a great deal of sense and I think helped us select better teachers for the children with whom we

were working. And and so in retrospect, well, you decided that or you observed that this actually worked? Effectively? Yes, it worked.

It worked. The teachers that we hired, principals seemed to be very pleased. We had a very low attrition rate and, again, that was only there.

Well, I guess it was closer to... Because I left Fallston before the end of the year. I was probably there 16 to 18 months. So we got to see some of the teachers hired go through at

least their first year. And then, as I said, we would go to the school to meet. Twice a year we always met with the new teachers and, again, made

sure they were on track, but also to go over other kinds of benefits, including tuition support for graduate education, making sure they were thinking about the appropriate benefits package, looking at the potential for some tech

sheltered annuity planning for their own economic benefit. So it was an interesting job and being in the schools and working with teachers was very interesting. The atmosphere in the central office not so much.

So you were thinking, I could certainly be involved with teachers or in the preparation of teachers. One of the things I did for probably four or five years, even as a school-based administrator, as in many

systems, there was a great deal of recruiting that went on. So I did some recruiting for the school system and traveled to a number of places, including Towson, my alma mater, and met a lot of the folks here at that time.

I worked very closely with Fran Bond and Greg Bryant, who planned a lot of their career fairs for the students. And so I got to know some of those folks. And when I was here the last time Fran Bond told me about the

vacancy that was going to come about in the, at that time it was called the Center for Applied Skills and Education. Doctor Bryant was in there as a one year appointment, but was going to be moving on to the elementary ed faculty and she

encouraged me to apply. So I did apply for the position and came for two interviews, I believe. Jim Lawler was the chair of the search committee at that time and Jim had actually worked in the case office

as it was referred to. Right. He knew the inner workings. The Dean of that time was Jim Binko, who had also worked in that office and knew the inner workings.

And they offered me the position and I started here on July 1, July 1, 1990. And I've said to Jim Binko on more than a few occasions, I owe my career to him because he had enough confidence in me

to offer me the position. Well, that part of your career. That part of my career, yes. You had already served in a variety of capacities. And that was very helpful.

I mean, this certainly was something that you brought to the position in the case office. I had experience of teaching, both experienced teaching at junior high,

I worked in a high school and in a middle high school as an administrator. Personally, I worked with all the elementary teachers. So I had K-12 experience and a lot of the personnel workers had

overlaps with the case office, particularly all the work and certification. And while I was in that role, one of the other things that my colleague and I did, we did placement for student teachers.

So I had some experience with that on a limited scale compared to the size of the university's operation. So it was a good preparation I had for the expectation for that specific position. Good fit.

It worked out. In the meantime, in terms of your own professional development, you were working on a doctorate? No, I had my doctorate.

I received my doctorate in '84 from College Park, University of Maryland, College Park. And what emphasis did you pursue in that degree? That degree was in what was then called educational policy

planning and administration. And it had two tracks within. One was an administrator track and one was a curriculum track. And the curriculum wasn't in the title and my emphasis was on the

curriculum side. [no dialog] ...plans, reality intrudes and I ended up going down the administrative side of the track and I came at the university in that role and spent five years as a director of the

Center for Applied Skills and Education. And what kinds of responsibilities did that job... That office at that time had... Primary responsibility was to be the conduit for the university to the K-12 world.

So we did all the placements for all of the field experiences as well as student teachers, clinical experiences for the entire university, not only for the College of Education, but the way that the university had organizes teacher education

program. We did all the K-12 fields, art, music, dance, phys ed, health. We did speech pathology placements, we did audiology placements.

And Towson's always been the biggest provider of initial certification students, but also has been the largest provider of the administrative specialty fields, if you will, school administrators, librarians, speech pathologists, audiologists.

So I got to work with all of the school systems in the metropolitan area. As well as some of the statewide groups that had a role in teacher education.

I was included with the... Jim Binko included me with the leadership group of the college, the chairs group. So I got a chance to interact with all the chairs and the faculty and get a good grounding in the

realities of each of the various programs, each of the various majors at the university at that time. We did job fairs for our students. As I said before, we had a day, two days when recruiters

would come in each year in the spring from all the school systems, both in Maryland as well as nationally. And there was a group called BACOST, I think was what it was called, the Baltimore Area Committee on Student Teaching.

That was one of a Mid-Atlantic consortium where out-of-state recruiters would come and just work the circuit and recruit at various places, including the university. And again, at that time there were a lot of jobs.

I arrived here at a good time because enrollment and teacher education had started to decline pretty precipitously in the early '80s, only because there were no jobs at the time. The K-12 population had leveled off.

And then in the late '80s it started to increase again, so that again the demand for teachers were growing. When I arrived, we were doing probably 200 student teachers a year, and that ultimately went up in those five years to over

700 student teachers. Oh, my heavens. So it was a very rapid growth. And today, again, things have leveled off a little bit. We're about 600 student teachers a year now.

So it was an exciting time. I learned a great deal, worked with a lot of wonderful folks. The Dean changed in the early '90s and there was the beginning

of this new movement called professional development schools nationally and started in the late '80s with the Holmes group at some of the land grant institutions just started to emerge and we started looking into it here in '92

when the new Dean came along, he was very interested and gave us the green light. We hired some new faculty from other institutions who had some experience with this, and that was the start of what became a

pretty exciting initiative for the university. And actually three... In '95, it became a statewide mandate. So we were ahead of that curve by a couple of years. And I do think that was probably the single, that change in our

programming probably was the single largest impact on undergraduate initial teacher certification since I've been here. And literally we went from, as with my own experience, students

being, if you will, dropped into a student teaching placement for 12 weeks to a year-long minimum of 100 days immersion in a public school setting. And is that how you would characterize PDS in 25 words or

less, is that it's a total immersion? That's exactly what I would say. It is a total immersion in the day-to-day reality of public schools.

Our students start the day the classroom teachers return, not when the university students return, much to their chagrin sometimes because they'll actually start 6, 8, 10 days earlier than their friends.

But that is one of the experiences that they report to us is very powerful for them because it gives them an insight into what happens before the students walk into the classroom.

Literally before that time, particularly if you student taught in the spring semester, you could go into a classroom in February, late January, early February into a first grade classroom and find a group of

well-behaved 6-year-olds sitting in their desks. Those were not the same 6-year- olds that walked through that classroom door back in September. So there was a piece missing in the preparation

for a lot of our students. But being there from day one with classrooms, in classrooms that were nothing but bare walls and working with a mentor teacher to set the classroom up and really have it prepared for

students to be engaged in all of those pre-opening of school activities with other teachers and the administrators to be engaged in the planning that was going to go on and went on throughout the entire year really was a quantum

improvement, qualitative improvement. Quantum qualitative improvement in the preparation of our initial certification students. Literally being there the entire year and seeing

students grow from that 6-year- old who walked through the door on September the first to that same 6-year-old nine months later was a powerful experience in child development. And again, it's where the theory met the reality.

It also had a great deal of influence in our teacher education program because our students went out in cohorts accompanied by university faculty member who would live with them, if you will, in the professional development school

for the entire year as well. So our faculty also got a larger dose, if you will, of the day-to-day reality of curricular changes, of instructional changes that were occurring in a public school, which they could come

back and again used to inform the on campus instruction. And at that time in Maryland, we were undergoing some pretty radical reforms for the day of the Maryland school. Maryland State Performance Assessment Program had just

started in '90, '91, replaced later on by the Maryland School Assessment Program. And while our faculty knew about them, living in a school with them on a day-to-day basis really strengthened their

instruction. So that I still attribute as the single largest impact to improve our program since I've been here. And that's still mandated in the state of Maryland.

It is still mandated. It has ebbed and flowed a bit because of the nature of it, which also involves summer planning by our faculty with the teachers in their school.

It's a more expensive effort, although I go back to what Doctor Ely Flickinger said. I don't see it as expense. I see it as an investment, but at the same time the resources

have to be there. Given the last four or five years and the economy, it's been difficult for many higher institutions to continue to fund it to the extent that they would like to have funded it.

The state has provided some money on a couple of occasions, but it's been two years here, two years there. There's never been any kind of embedded funding to carry this forward. Doctor Lorien, who's the current Dean

of the College of Education, to his credit, several years ago he did work out a deal where the university now provides the College of Education with a couple hundred thousand dollars of funding annually to support this

initiative, which doesn't cover all the cost, but it's better support than we had prior to that because we can count on it and enables the plan to go forward with the schools and the school systems.

School systems have found it to be a good investment also. And the reason for that is we have some research in our state as well as across the nation that this experience attributes to a much higher retention rate for beginning teachers than the

traditional teacher education programs. Can you talk about that a little bit? My understanding is this is a serious issue for school systems everywhere.

Teacher retention is a challenge for all schools, all school systems across the entire country. A lot of the research shows that between, in the first five years, as many as 50% of teachers leave their profession.

And there's lots of reasons for that again, and Richard Ingersoll at the University of Pennsylvania has done a lot of research in this field. And many of the reasons are not only personal reasons, but

structural reasons within the schools. So the preparation gets one ready, but the reality of the school setting sometimes is challenging even for the best- prepared beginning teacher.

So there's a lot of reasons why folks leave the profession. All professions experience retention problems or use the term attrition, and attrition is a very, very expensive problem for school systems.

Most of the national studies that hang a figure on attrition from Maryland says it costs Maryland about $44,000,000 a year because of what they consider to be lost investment. We invest in a new teacher.

We provide a lot of professional development for the new teacher. It costs money to hire them. It costs money when they leave. And then if folks are leaving, or rather if there's a

great deal of churning, you don't have stable school faculties building stable relationships with students in the communities. So they attach a lot of figures to this and some of

it's just lost. What's the... Opportunity cost, I think is the term that the economists would use. So we here at the university did two retention studies.

The first one tracked 87 students that all went to work in the same school system across the first five years of the profession. And when we came out with was a an 80% retention rate after five

years, which is a really strong indicator they were well prepared. Several years later we did a second retention study, but these were, because we didn't have any more traditional

programs to compare it with, these were all students had been prepared in a professional development school model and it was 191 students that we tracked.

And we tracked them in five school systems, not just a single school system. And again, the retention rate was around 79 to 80%. So we know that the model worked in terms of increasing the

retention rate. School systems see that as a huge benefit, not only in terms of economics, but also because you're stabilizing faculties and building ongoing relationships in those schools

as well as with the school communities. And it's hello Johnny, I had your older sister, Karen, and I'm good friends with your folks.

So the expectations are well-known in advance and that in terms of the school culture is a critical ingredient for success. And was that true across school systems pretty much?

Yes. It's true across all school systems and it ranged from some school systems from mid '70s to mid '80s. But it was, for that 191 student cohort that we tracked, it was

about 70, I think I want to say 79.6%, but we'll, we'll round up to 80%. So we're very pleased to see that the earlier cohort as well as a later cohort of students, the data was was

consistent. That's where we looked at it as an investment rather than as an expenditure. Absolutely.

And exciting that it did not matter which school system which also says it does not matter which kids. And we tracked it in all the metropolitan area schools, Baltimore metro area school system.

So it'd be six systems in reality. Wonderful. And we had good results. Again, there were smaller cohorts in some systems than others because some systems are small, hire fewer teachers. And again, Baltimore County, again, was

the the single largest hire. But we also did Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, Carroll County, Harford County and Howard County in addition to Baltimore County.

Pretty convincing evidence. It was very convincing evidence. And it's also effective because not only of the length of the experience in the immersion, but also the on-site presence of a university supervisor.

And that has presented some challenges because if the students are in the field a minimum of 100 days a year, university supervisors are also in the field. And one of the things we haven't really worked out very well is

how that experience works for tenure-track professors who have other obligations in terms of their own tenure and promotion. But we've hired a number of folks who in other institutions

be called clinical faculty, we call them lecturers here, who have served very well in that role. Well, is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you would like to share?

At the beginning of each of the years we do an orientation, if you will, for the outgoing student teachers. And one of the things that we've stressed to them each of these years, and I've done a number of these, was, you know,

I sat in one of those orientations myself in 1968. And although so much has changed in 40-plus years, many things haven't changed. And that's parents still want the best for their children.

They want you to make them smart and make them good. Doesn't make any difference their race, ethnicity, gender, geographic origin, nothing. The expectations, the desires of parent for their children to be

successful are still the same. The context of public schooling has changed dramatically. The demands on public school has changed dramatically. And these are things everyone are well aware of.

So one of the things that we try to stress to our students again, is that if you're looking at this as a profession, the number one thing that you have to get to immediately is a commitment to the students.

Teaching is not about you. And we really would prefer rather than focusing on the teaching, that you'd be focusing on the learning. And that's the commitment to your students.

So no matter who you are or what you are, your measure of success is the success of the students that you teach. And there's nothing more rewarding than seeing some of those folks that you taught many years ago come back and tell you

how appreciative they were and are of your efforts as a teacher in preparing them to be successful. That's difficult. And it's probably difficult for me too, as a 22-year-old, to

really grasp that this is less about you and more about the students. You want your graduates to be confident in their ability, but the confidence has to translate into things in the classroom and

work for children, not for them. If their kids are successful, then they'll be successful. They'll be seen as successful. But it is the most rewarding and challenging and

frustrating, frustrating profession of all. Well, and that's really sort of our last question to you is what would you say to someone who was considering teaching as a profession?

That you have to be fully committed to the children. You have to be fully committed to the profession. It's not a nine-to-five job. In the old days, perhaps we still say this.

I don't mean to offend the folks in this profession. These are not banker hours, and our beginning teachers are graduates, when we get information back through a graduate

survey, many of them talk about the rigor of the first year, and you're not prepared for the rigor until you have to do it. The PDS experience gives them a lot of insight and understanding of that.

But there's always a mentor teacher with them. Even though they do a great deal of quote-unquote independent teaching, when the classroom is your teaching, you have full responsibility,

the time and effort that it takes to be successful is far more than I think our folks really grasp. They hear it, we talk to them about it, their mentor teachers talk to them about it.

Their administrators when they're in their professional development school experience talk to them about it. But until they're there and it's their real world, they don't have a full grasp of it.

At the end of that first year, when they look back, they can look back with so much pride and most of them are very, very, very successful. So it's understanding that that first year, probably their life

is their classroom. And that successful beginning is is critical to what's going to occur in future years. But again, it will be the most rewarding thing

you've ever done in your life, the most frustrating thing you've ever done in your life. And I don't think any of us who have been in the profession for any length of time would trade it for anything else.

Nevertheless, the context is rapidly changing. The public support seems to ebb and flow and we're hopeful that this next generation of classroom teachers will be able to move into those classrooms and be very, very successful with the

students that they'll teach. We hope so. Absolutely. I have grandchildren going to be in this class.

There you go. And we have some confidence that that can and will be. Absolutely.

I think, I mean, looking at what our students are able to do during their professional year, their professional development school year. It's amazing how proficient many of our students are already, and

it does give you a great deal of confidence that they're going to be great classroom teachers. Wonderful. Thank you, Tom. Thank you.

It's been a pleasure.