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Newsletter Volume 3 |
Spring 1999 |
South Mountain Community College (SMCC) - ASU College of Education Partnership: The Dynamic Learning Group Program
Jackie Jaap
Department of English/Humanities
South Mountain Community College
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Newsletter Volume 3 |
Spring 1999 |
With a firm belief that traditional teaching methods were doing little to address the brain's infinite capacity to learn, three faculty members at South Mountain Community College, Peter Facciola, Yvonne Montiel, and I developed the Dynamic Learning Program at South Mountain Community College (SMCC). This program, first offered in 1993, reflected our vision of a comprehensive model for systemic educational reform. Our goal was to design a complex, integrative, interactive learning environment based on a theory of teaching and learning drawn from the latest research in the fields of physics, neuroscience, psychology, biology, physiology, and education. Key elements of the program included: interdisciplinary curriculum integrating three courses per semester; three-hour blocks on MWF; team-taught classes; project/problem-based learning centered around major themes; self, peer, and faculty evaluation. Our focus was on improving the preparation of students to become teachers.
Student response to the program was overwhelmingly positive, and the retention rate and learning achieved demonstrated proof of the success of the model. Particularly effective were the integrated curriculum and the three-hour blocks of time which gave students adequate time to explore topics of interest in depth, using reading, research, and communication skills to develop real-life projects. Projects included writing grant proposals and planning fund-raising events for a South Phoenix after-school program, promoting more equitable funding for women's sports on our campus, and planning an all-night " stay-in-school" event for at-risk elementary pre-service students. Success in these projects in the Dynamic Learning Program empowered students as learners and as citizens. Also, we SMCC faculty and students together became a real learning community, supporting each other as we learned from one another.
After three years of offering Dynamic Learning as a two-semester "core" program, in the Fall of 1996 we decided to expand to four semesters and accept only those students interested in becoming teachers-secondary, elementary, bilingual/ESL, special education, and early childhood. By recruiting students from South Phoenix schools, we believed we could better reach our long-term goal-to transform the schools in our community. We developed a partnership with the College of Education at Arizona State University and worked out a specific four-semester plan that would meet their admission requirements. A significant addition to the program was a four-semester field experience in which our students were able to observe and work in classrooms in elementary and secondary schools. Our plan was (and is) for students to study and experience new ways of teaching and learning and to return to the community schools to teach after graduation from ASUs College of Education.
During the fall of 1998 we had our first cohort of Dynamic Learning students enrolled in the College of Education at ASU, two full-time freshmen and sophomore cohorts, and two instructional aide (mostly bilingual) cohorts from Roosevelt and Isaac school districts in Phoenix. From these four cohorts of SMCC graduates, we learned that the integrated curriculum we offered them at SMCC was effective because students' research and their projects became focused on innovative methods of teaching, brain-based learning and educational reform in general. In preparing to become teachers, all students take basic math and science courses, including the SMCC course, MAT 156, Theory of Elementary Mathematics. Early on we faculty realized that it is essential that we help these students to develop effective ways to learn and teach these science and mathematics as well as humanities. Fortunately for us ACEPT had in place a program focused on improving the science and math preparation of teachers with goals aligned with those of the SMCC Dynamic Learning Group.
Last year ACEPT and Dynamic Learning established a formal collaboration to fully integrate science and math into the SMCC Dynamic Learning curriculum. We initiated this collaboration sharing many beliefs about inquiry-based, hands-on, active, integrated, project-based learning, and had many goals in common-mainly to improve pre-service teacher preparation. We are excited about integrating math and science with the other courses in our teacher-training block, recruiting more math and science majors from inner city Phoenix schools, and generally contributing to the educational reform movement. Of real benefit to the Dynamic Learning Program are the ACEPT scholarships that have been made available to our students who are now at ASU. ACEPT is also helping us identify those classrooms that model reformed math and science courses in which to place Dynamic Learning students for their four-semester field experience.
The students enthusiasm and feedback demonstrate that the SMCC Dynamic Learning Teacher Training Program is highly effective. However, we continue to seek ways to improve it. ACEPT is helping us do that.
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