Eastern’s Efforts to Recruit Minority Candidates
1. Specific recruitment strategies currently in place to recruit minority candidates.
a. SIFT: The Summer Institute for Future Teachers.
i. SIFT is a partnership between CREC, Eastern Connecticut State
University, and several school districts. It has convened summer
residential programs at Eastern CSU since 1996.
ii. Participants in the Summer of 2008 came from Bristol, Capitol Region
Education Council (Metropolitan Learning Center), East Hartford, Enfield,
Farmington, Hamden, New Britain, North Branford, Regional school
districts (Regional Hebron, Andover, and Marlborough and E.O. Smith),
South Windsor, St. Bernard High School, Suffield, Waterbury, West
Hartford, Voc-Tech (Windham Tech).
iii. SIFT is open to all of Connecticut’s students who will be juniors and
seniors in their high schools during the following academic year.
Informational sessions about SIFT are featured at the annual Future
Teachers Conference at Eastern CSU during the 4th week of May each
year and at follow-up SIFT activities. Future teacher clubs and Young
Educators Society mentor teachers join with guidance counselors in
recruiting future teachers for the program.
iv.
During SIFT 2008, we implemented a four-week residential programs at
Eastern Connecticut State University for twenty-seven high school rising
juniors and seniors who are pursuing teaching as a profession.
Participants in the program courses and field experiences practiced skills
in creating classrooms that are welcoming for racial, cultural, economic,
and linguistic diverse students. Participants spent mornings serving as
teaching assistants in an elementary summer school program and
afternoons in workshops on teaching and the education profession.
Workshops in computer labs and evening sessions prepared these future
teachers with the academic and professional skills and dispositions needed
to succeed in Connecticut’s schools in the 21st century.
v. Special features implemented for Summer 2008 included 1) emphases on
assessment with pre- and post-surveys on self-efficacy and teaching, skills
and knowledge tested on the PRAXIS I exams, and measures on
developing dispositions for diverse classrooms, 2) instruction designed to
increase greater awareness of the special needs of students in diverse
classrooms, and 3) an evening residential program planned to enhance the
development of a learning community among the future teachers.
1
Eastern’s Efforts to Recruit Minority Candidates
vi. An online network has been developed to maintain this learning
community into the academic year and as a professional development
network for Connecticut’s future teaching corps.
vii. The SIFT 2008 participants also developed their own invitation only
Facebook group, SIFT Young Educators, which is being used to generate
interest in a SIFT 2008 reunion.
b. CHEFTnet – The CREC-Hartford region-Eastern CSU-Future Teachers (CHEFT)
Network:
i. The CREC-Hartford region-Eastern CSU-Future Teachers (CHEFT)
Network builds on earlier efforts in 2000-2002 to encourage Young
Educators Societies and Future Teachers Club to make use of distance
learning to establish and enhance inter-district connections and
collaborative projects. The CHEFT Network was initiated in a pilot study
with Summer Institute for Future Teachers 2008 program participants who
produced a website linking their own electronic portfolio and collaborative
projects, (available at http://ftct.pbwiki.com/SIFT2008).
ii. The project director also developed an open Facebook group, Future
Teachers of Connecticut, expanded a wikispace for Future Teachers of
Connecticut at http://ftct.pbwiki.com/ , and has invited all of the
participants in the 2008 Future Teachers Conference, students, future
teacher mentors, and presenters, to participate in either the Facebook
group or the wikispace.
c. Hartford High School Teacher Cadet program, soon to become the Academy for
Teaching program at Buckley High.
i. Established a team teaching model with high school faculty to teach EDU
101: Teaching in the 21st century
ii. Upon completion, students receive 3 academic credits from Eastern.
d. EDU 110/FYR 174:
i. An introductory education course taught by a full time education faculty
aimed to inform and recruit diverse teacher candidates into the program.
Currently in its second year.
2