The audience at the NYSABE 2005 Annual Conference—Rebeca Maedrigal and Ivonne Torres, PS165-teachers in the middle
Teachers College, Columbia University and the NYC DOE's Region 10 School District (thereafter SD) have a formal relationship known as the Professional Development School (PDS) partnership. The PDS partnership entails the involvement of TC Faculty in research, supervision, and staff development in 3 of the six schools comprising the PDS partnership. These include four elementary schools, one middle school and one high school. Most of these schools have bilingual or dual language programs.
The Principal Investigator, Dr. Maria Torres-Guzman, has designed and implemented bilingual and dual language programs in Region 10 for more than 18 years. PS 165, one of the PD schools, is a public school with a student population that is more than 70% ELLs and a eleven-year history of a language program serving English and Spanish speaking children. Dr. Torres-Guzman initiated a collaborative relationship with PS 165 that was formalized within the College PDS in 1996. Through this collaborative relationship both school personnel and university professional work toward improving teaching practice for ELLs, empowering the teachers to be an integral part of school decisions, and training future bilingual teachers. The QTPELL Project proposes to expand the partnership in supporting the study groups to develop material for teacher preparation, including publishing articles, making presentations at professional meetings among other activities including making periodic contributions to the project website. Because of the strong PDSrelationship of the Program with PS165 it provides the model for developing a formal partnership/relationship with PS184 and for developing workshops for other teachers of ELLs.
View video about study groups and PS165 (requires Quicktime Player.)
In subsequent years we hope to expand the study group and inquiry concepts into other languages and for regular and special education teachers who have ELLs in their classrooms. The extension of the study group into other languages and groups of teachers will also allow collective inquiry for the specific needs of each of the groups involved.
