High Impact Practices Grant

Undergraduate students (teacher candidates) enrolled in the C.R.E.A.T.E.  program in the College of Education and Human Services experience an innovative teacher preparation curriculum organized into four rotations. C.R.E.A.T.E. stands for Curriculum Redesign Effort Advancing Teacher Education: this program is a redesigned licensing program intended to improve early childhood, middle childhood, and special education- teacher education and it is based on a collaborative, integrative, clinical model for teacher preparation.

 

In their sophomore year, undergraduate teacher candidates embark upon their professional trajectory when they take EDB 241: Rotation & Seminar I: the first course within the C.R.E.A.T.E. program’s rotation-based curriculum.

 

EDB 241: Rotation & Seminar I is organized to include seminar and field-based/ service learning experiences. In my section of EDB 241 in Spring 2018, I will hold seminar classes at CSU in order to engage with educational theory and scholarship, and field-based experiences at Thomas Jefferson International Newcomer’s Academy (a PreK-12 school in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD)). Beyond engaging students in field-based/ service learning, students will engage in diversity/ global learning. The central goal of this course is to nurture students’ (teacher candidates) understanding of how the local and global social context shapes students’ experiences in schools and development of a critical consciousness (an awareness of how power dynamics operate in society and an orientation to social justice).

 

Thomas Jefferson International Newcomer’s Academy is a unique school within CMSD. For students who have just arrived in Cleveland (as immigrants and/ or refugees) from other countries and Puerto Rico, Thomas Jefferson International Newcomers Academy provides a welcoming learning environment. The school offers rigorous English as a Second Language (ESL) intervention classes and a comprehensive academic program to help students graduate and go on to college and a career. The school also supports students and their families in navigating the Cleveland context and learning different customs and institutional practices that are present in the U.S.

 

Small groups of CSU students will be placed in classrooms in Thomas Jefferson International Newcomer’s Academy: they will engage in a variety of activities, from tutoring small groups of PreK-12 students, to completing tasks for teachers, to creating and facilitating lessons. This field/ service learning experience is designed to support their understanding of what it means to be a teacher in an urban environment. In the unique context of Thomas Jefferson International Newcomer’s academy, students will also engage in deep analysis and reflection of how race/ ethnicity, immigrant/ refugee status, social class, gender, and other dimensions of identity and difference shape experiences of education. Because the population of students at Thomas Jefferson International Newcomer’s Academy is globally diverse, students will reflect upon how global issues and events shape students’ experiences in diverse contexts, including Cleveland.

 

These high-impact practices will cut across the semester: themes of diversity and global learning will be present in the scholarship that we engage with and in the service learning experiences that the students reflect upon.  Students will be in Thomas Jefferson International Newcomer’s Academy two times per week (for two hours at a time) for the middle eight weeks of the semester. Each experience at Thomas Jefferson International Newcomer’s Academy will be split into two hour-long blocks. The first hour will involve a meeting in the cafeteria, where students and I will discuss the readings assigned for the day and connect our analysis of those readings to our observations in Thomas Jefferson International Newcomer’s Academy. The second hour will be comprised of students working in/ with their assigned classrooms/ teachers. In order to orient students to change occurring in Cleveland and the global dynamics contributing to this change, a staff member from Global Cleveland will come in to our class in the second week of the semester to talk about dynamically changing immigration dynamics in our community.