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Yahoo
17-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Commentary: Aspiring teachers in Pa. need training that provides classroom realities
Students in Christine Persun's classroom in Mechanicsburg Middle School. (Submitted by Christine Persun) Lily stared at me with wide, worried eyes, trying to process every word I said as I explained the problem in her workbook. I slowed down and repeated myself. She hung on every word, desperate to keep up. Lily had immigrated from China just two years earlier and had spent time traveling back and forth. She was an incredibly hard worker, still learning English, and, as a first-year teacher, I had no idea how to help her. Five years later, Eugenio arrived in my classroom from El Salvador. In many ways, he reminded me of Lily—motivated, hardworking, and eager to please. But unlike Lily, he had just arrived in the country and didn't speak a word of English. This time, though, I was prepared. I gave him directions in my very limited Spanish. I used AI to generate translated notes and assignments. I created a Spanish-to-English math dictionary and kept it handy for him. I modified assignments that would help him learn the concepts and experience success. I was ready to do whatever it took to help him learn. The difference? Experience. By the time I had Eugenio in my class, I knew my curriculum and I knew how to meet individual student needs. I knew where to look to find resources. I knew which colleagues to go to for guidance and support. When I had Lily as a student, I was a brand-new teacher, fresh out of student teaching. I had completed my university's teacher preparation program and learned from a supportive mentor, but I was unprepared for the realities of the classroom. I needed a preparation program that equipped me to help students like Lily and Eugenio from day one—not five years later. Teacher preparation programs at the university level often train pre-service teachers through a theoretical lens rather than a practical one, leaving many feeling underprepared for the realities of the classroom. In Pennsylvania, these programs vary greatly in coursework requirements, meaning a teacher's readiness depends as much on their training program as on their own abilities. A publication from the William Penn Foundation found that in order for teachers to succeed, they require much more time and practice in the classroom than current pathways to teaching offer. What future educators need are training experiences that truly mirror the realities of the classroom. This means rethinking how we prepare teachers. Education majors should begin their work in schools in the early years of university rather than postponing until their student teaching experience during their senior year, when they may realize that teaching is not for them. From early on in their bachelor's programs, pre-service teachers should be learning hands-on in the classroom. Integrating early and consistent field experiences into teacher preparation programs is essential. As noted by Carolyn Parker, director of graduate teacher education at American University's School of Education, 'Get them into the schools as early as you can and as often as you can.' This approach gives pre-service teachers the time they need to build meaningful relationships with students and communities, ensuring they are well-prepared for the realities of the classroom. They should be completing experiences by observing classrooms and meeting with students. Coursework should center on realistic case studies with real students instead of abstract theories. While standardized tests like the Praxis have been shown to correlate with effective teaching in specific subjects—particularly those requiring deep content knowledge, such as elementary math and reading—clinical experiences and capstone portfolios offer a more comprehensive way for teacher candidates to demonstrate their effectiveness. More realistic forms of assessment allow candidates to showcase their teaching abilities in real classroom settings, which provides a clearer picture of their preparedness for the challenges of teaching. Structural changes in teacher preparation policies are also necessary. New teachers consistently cite student teaching as the most valuable part of their training, as it allows them to apply theory in real classrooms under the guidance of experienced mentors. To maximize its impact, student teaching should last an entire year, not just one semester to ensure that teacher candidates will be able to manage classrooms effectively. Universities must move away from the traditional model which delays classroom experience until later in academic programs. Instead, education majors should begin experiencing classrooms immediately. Further, licensure requirements should be revised to prioritize demonstrated teaching skills over standardized test scores, allowing for a more accurate assessment of a candidate's ability to succeed in the classroom. A stronger, more practical approach to teacher preparation would mean fewer new teachers struggling to support students like Lily – and more teachers entering the classroom equipped to provide students like Eugenio the help they need from day one. If we want new teachers to succeed, we need to demand change in how they're prepared. It's time to prioritize hands-on experience over outdated theory—because when teachers are prepared, students thrive, and when students succeed, we all succeed. Christine Persun is mathematics teacher at Mechanicsburg Middle School in Mechanicsburg, Cumberland County, and a 2024-2025 Teach Plus Pennsylvania Policy Fellow.
Technical.ly
17-02-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
Philadelphia's open data effort may be losing momentum, but OpenDataPhilly isn't giving up
This article is a part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism with lead support from the William Penn Foundation, and additional funding from Lenfest, Comcast NBC Universal, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation, Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation and Philadelphia Health Partnership. This article was created independently of the project's donors. This piece is also available in Spanish, thanks to translation services by Gabriela Rivera, digital communications manager at Resolve Philly. If you want to easily sift through years of Philly campaign finance data or see a map of all the nearest athletic fields, the city's open data visualization tools make it easy. However, a quick dig around OpenDataPhilly, one of the platforms where the city publishes its data, shows some obvious weak spots. Some sources get updated regularly, while others like Police Advisory Commission complaints haven't been touched in years. The city says it's working to make the data updating process more seamless with automated systems and more dashboards to display information. The people behind OpenDataPhilly, a volunteer-run platform that collects open datasets across Philly into one place, say the open data ecosystem faces slowing enthusiasm from the city as administrations change. 'There is essentially still a motivation for the city to maintain open datasets,' Robert Cheetham, 'godfather of open data' and OpenDataPhilly volunteer, told 'But I don't think there's the same kind of energy, commitment [and] resources.' The city established its open data program in 2012 after Mayor Michael Nutter issued an executive order. The initial goal was to publish city datasets in an open data portal, hire a chief data officer, establish an open data working group and appoint a data governance advisory board. The executive order also called for an open government plan. Within a year, the city achieved six out of 10 of its original goals. However, open data has not been as much of a priority for the last few mayors, Cheetham said, and the movement lost some of its energy. By 2019, some of these initiatives, like the OpenDataPhilly platform, remained strong, while others like the working groups and advisory boards had fizzled out. Lack of requirements and automation slow public releases The city hasn't given up on the program, though. It still has a chief data officer, Tim Haynes, and the program still has a system for updating its data with a focus on turning the data into digestible and usable resources, Kistine Carolan, senior program manager with the Office of Innovation and Technology (OIT), told Without a specific requirement for city departments to provide updates to data, though, there's a lot of variance, despite years of progress. Frequency depends on the capacity of each city department, Carolan said. 'The sharing of open data has become more of a habit for city departments as part of their process of having data that they're using internally,' Carolan said. 'That's really exciting because often we have been approaching open data with a more holistic model of sharing the datasets themselves.' Still, the system for updating open data isn't as automated as it could be, she added. To combat this, OIT is in the process of moving its central data warehouse to a new version of data integration service, Data Bridge. This shift will hopefully lead to updated data at a faster pace, she said. Leaving more time for staff to work on projects that present that data in useful ways. 'We're pretty excited about that process both for allowing fresher data publicly, but also for freeing our staff to be able to engage in more projects like these dashboards or applications,' Carolan said. OIT helps make tools like the Campaign Finance Dashboard, which comes from the Board of Ethics and presents visualizations of data from campaign finance reports. The dashboard also links out to the metadata and the raw version of that data on OpenDataPhilly. Another use for the data is 'finder apps,' which help people find resources around the city like primary care providers and recycling centers, Carolan said. The free meal finder app presents an interactive map where people can look up locations for food and meal sites throughout the city, for example. 'It gives an immediate resource to people who just want to explore the data for general trends,' she said. From datasets to dashboards that the public can understand Once OIT has updated data, staff publishes it to various platforms within the hour, Haynes, geographic information officer and chief data officer, told The data is published through Data Bridge to two software platforms where OIT hosts APIs, ArcGIS Online and Carto. Those platforms are posted to the OpenDataPhilly website, the city's metadata catalog, and the Philadelphia website along with its applications, Haynes said From there, the data is available for use by students, journalists, researchers and other residents for projects on anything from voter turnout maps to sharing information about gun violence in the city. OIT then works with city departments to turn their data into interactive dashboards and applications so it's easier to understand. Having open data available is important to transparency and supports city residents working on private data-related projects, but also to improve internal operations and make city services accessible, Carolan said. 'Creating an interactive dashboard where people can explore the data, particularly if there's spatial information related to where they live or where they're working, really allows a broader audience to engage with this data and use it in meaningful ways,' Carolan said. A focus on usability, not just transparency, for the project's next upgrade OIT put out a survey to residents in 2020 to get a better understanding of how people use the open datasets and what challenges they have. In response, it developed an open data dashboard in 2021 to track the metrics around datasets that have been shared publicly. 'You'll see a list of datasets and shows when they were last updated, and if there's a visualization available,' Carolan said. '[It] helps people get a better sense of when something was last updated. That was one of the major pieces of feedback.' The dashboard currently says there have been 552 datasets released, but this includes multiple versions of previously released data. There are also 142 automated datasets and 179 datasets with visualizations. Overall, the city's open data structure has become more 'holistic,' Carolan said. Not only is the data available, but they are working to present it in a useful way that will hopefully improve resident experiences. 'More and more we're being approached by departments themselves who want to build these dashboards,' Carolan said. 'They want to do that both to have transparency about their work, but also they are able to use it more.' Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.
