- Park Forest Elementary
- Park Forest Elementary School
PDS program honored with national award
This year, the district’s Professional Development School program has an extra reason to celebrate a major anniversary.
The PDS program, a 20-year partnership between the district and the Penn State College of Education, recently received the prestigious Exemplary PDS Achievement Award from the National Association for Professional Development Schools. Winning the award for the second time, the partnership was honored at the NAPDS annual conference in Jacksonville, Fla., along with PDS partnerships involving SUNY Buffalo State, Baylor University and Ohio University.
Annually under the district’s PDS program, 70 to 80 college seniors aspiring to teach are selected and paired with mentor teachers in grades K-4 and in high school English classes. In contrast to traditional student teaching, PDS interns spend an intensive year with their mentors, essentially becoming colleagues. Interns fully collaborate with teaching while taking pedagogical courses and completing inquiry projects shared at the annual PDS Inquiry Conference.
“Recognition with this award comes at a very exciting time for the partnership as we approach a 20-year milestone in our history,” said M.J. Kitt, the College of Education’s PDS coordinator and a former district teacher and administrator. “We also received the award back in 2009, and since then, our community has continued to grow and find new ways to support the learning of children and teachers.”
In addition to the partnership’s longevity, the NAPDS commended its “commitment to a culture of inquiry as well as its leadership in the PDS movement nationally.”
“Both partners are deeply invested financially and programmatically in supporting the educational needs of the young people in the State College Area schools and the next generation of teachers learning their craft through the Penn State programs,” the NAPDS said.
To qualify for the award, the partnership submitted a 20-page narrative, titled “Taking Stock and Looking to the Future After 20 Years of Collaboration,” that described the program’s strengths in relation to the NAPDS guiding principles. Composed by mentor teachers, supervisors, method instructors, principals, administrators, school board members and 19 former interns, the narrative will be published in the NAPDS journal “School-University Partnerships.”
In the narrative, the program’s leaders stated the partnership “has a long history of building trusting relationships that value teacher inquiry as a central feature of its work.”
“This unique PDS continues to be characterized by a strong community of learners across all of the district’s elementary schools, mentor teachers who are dedicated to educating pre-service teachers, full-year interns who commit to an intensive and challenging program, and university faculty who go beyond expectations to create a culture of collaboration, innovation, and reflection,” the leaders wrote, noting the application highlights the program’s many accomplishments and achievements since its first award.
“We illustrate how our partnership exemplifies the work of an exceptional, collaborative community that offers meaningful professional development to all of its partners, interns, teachers, and teacher educators, while continuing to improve the daily experiences of the children in our schools.”