When the invitation came from the college’s Office for Student Success to attend the National Association for Professional Development Schools (NAPDS) February conference in Chicago, the undergraduate teacher-licensure candidates weren’t sure what to make of it.
But they weren’t about to pass it up.
Courtney Schoen, a Middle Level Teaching and Learning major from Glen Ellyn, remembers seeing the unexpected email and its request for a quick response.
“For me, it was kind of an impulse decision to go. I thought it would just be really fun, and it’d be a good experience to go to a conference, be surrounded by a bunch of different educators on all levels of the spectrum and fully immerse myself in that,” says Schoen, who will graduate next May.
“I am really happy that I did get to sit in on some of the sessions because they were just so interesting,” she adds. “They weren’t necessarily geared toward student-teachers, but it was still interesting to see the research and what was going through the minds of those administrators and universities that are working with students.”
Tyler Goben also appreciated the opportunity offered by Jennifer Johnson, the college’s Senior Director for Student Success.
“I went just because Jennifer pushed it out there that it would be such a great experience,” says Goben, an Elementary Education major from Aledo, Ill., “and it was.”
Goben liked the glimpse of “the inner workings of how colleges are connected with school districts, and how they really go about supporting their teachers and supporting their clinical instructors and, basically, how that all trickles down to the position I’m in,” he says.
“I guess I didn’t give credit for how much work goes into that – all the things that they’re being trained on and being taught at these conferences,” he adds. “I took away a lot more than I thought it would, and it was nice to create relationships with people from all over the country.”
Schoen and Goben were joined on the trip by College of Education classmates Todd Anliker, Sophia Apostol, Garrett Connor, Bryanna Howard, Jessica Morrow, Sarah Nash, Araceli Salazar, Sarah Stawicki, Jennifer Wade and Jessica Znamenski.
With them were Christopher Groth (Music Education, College of Visual and Performing Arts) and Ciara Myhre, Kristen Sedlacek and Julia Spahn (Secondary English, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences).
They spent a portion of each day serving as volunteers and the rest of each day attending presentations and professional development sessions.
Johnson hopes that the experience inspired NIU’s students to seek out similar opportunities to collaborate with their colleagues and to continue their professional learning in their practice as they grow in their careers.
“This was an amazing opportunity for them to learn from, and engage with, leaders from across the country – all passionate about preparing future teachers,” Johnson says.
“Because NIU was the host institution, our students were given the opportunity to attend this national conference as student-volunteers,” she adds. “As volunteers, these students represented NIU and the College of Education with distinction and were recognized by the NAPDS conference organizers as invaluable contributors to the success of the event. They were professional, poised and well received by presenters, attendees and event staff.”
Jenny Parker, executive director of Educator Licensure and Preparation at NIU, agrees.
“Our candidates were visible as a sea of red and black at the conference,” Parker says. “They represented themselves, their programs and NIU with the utmost professionalism.”
NAPDS advances the education profession by providing leadership, advocacy and support to sustain professional development schools as learning communities that improve student learning, prepare educators through clinical practice, provide reciprocal professional development and conduct shared inquiry.
The organization’s leaders contacted Parker last fall with an invitation for NIU to serve as host university of the 2022 conference in Chicago. With support of NIU leadership, Parker accepted the invitation and started to plan for the event – including university-funded bus transportation each day for the student-volunteers to travel from DeKalb to Chicago and back to campus.
Hosting provides opportunities for student-volunteers to experience a national conference along with the chance for the university to identify a school or district as recipients of the NAPDS Give Back event (where conference participants donate educational materials to the school of district identified).
As the oldest Professional Development School partnership, NIU identified DeKalb Community Unit School District 428 as the recipient of the Give Back event and offered the volunteer opportunities to student-teachers and clinical students associated with the district from all of the licensing colleges.
“It was such a great opportunity for our teacher-candidates to interact with professionals from across the country,” Parker says. “They were able to learn how professional development schools operate in different situations and examine the similarities and differences with their own context. They were also able to see the importance of giving back, and how participants in the conference donated materials to a school district to benefit the education of K-12 students.”
Presentation topics that intrigued Goben included diversity, equity, inclusion and a partnership between a science museum located next to a university.
“They’ve actually implemented it into their education program, where as part of your clinical experience you work with the museum and teach little classes or sessions for ‘X’ amount of your hours during the semester,” Goben says.
“I thought that was really cool, and I feel like there are probably not many programs out there that have something like that built in,” he adds, “and with the lack of science that you see being taught in elementary settings, you don’t really get exposed to it much during clinical experiences. I think it would be a good opportunity for those students in that program to get that extra, that more than what you need, in order to be a licensed teacher.”
Goben spent his spring clinical placement at Cortland Elementary School.
Scheduled for full-time student-teaching in the fall prior to his December graduation, he hopes to teach in first- through third-grade classrooms.
“I’m pretty comfortable with the youngers,” he says. “I’ve been involved with all sorts of different sports programs and camps, and I’ve just kind of got a passion for seeing the light bulb go off. It’s even better when you know that you’re doing is helping a person to understand something, and that’s what drive of me to want to be a teacher.”
For Schoen, the right fit is older students.
Her spring clinical placement took place at Eastview Middle School in Elgin Area School District U-46; this fall, she’ll student-teach in DeKalb.
“I really like the middle level because, for me, elementary is where they’re still growing up. In middle school, they’re old enough where they can be independent. You can joke around with them. You can speak with them rather than with their parents if they didn’t do their homework,” Schoen says. “Middle schoolers are finding themselves as people.”
Although she’s always known she wanted to teach – “I’d play school with my brother when we were young,” she says – her major content area of social studies came into focus during high school.
“My whole life I’ve liked history, and I had a teacher in high school who really kind of inspired me to teach history,” Schoen says, “but I think the reason I really want to teach is to just to inspire students, letting them know that they can do things. Growing up, those are the teachers who really left an imprint on me, so I hope to do the same with my future students.”
Schoen was moved by the level of care and engagement she observed in Chicago.
Listening to professionals in the field reminded her of “teachers who connected with me on a personal level, and who were there for me as a person rather than just a student,” she says.
“It was cool to see how everyone came together, and how we all wanted to learn. We wanted all wanted to further our development, whether it was me as a student-teacher still in college, or it was a principal, or it was colleges looking at different mentorship programs with schools at every level,” she says.
“Everyone also was interested in what each other had to say, and that’s one thing I appreciate, especially right now because there’s a teacher shortage and there are a lot of things going on in the education world,” she adds.
“Getting those firsthand accounts from people who are teachers, who are administrators, who really want to see differences made, and are really trying their best to inspire. They are inspiring me, because there are times you look at the news, and you see what’s going on in the educational world, and you think, ‘Oh my gosh, am I really going to do this?’ – but then you meet the people who are actually doing it, and they’re giving you words of advice and they’re giving you words of motivation.”
Conference attendance offered another benefit to the Huskies.
Part of the NAPDS conference is a “give-back event,” where attendees bring supplies, books and other classroom needs to donate to a chosen school district.
Donated materials started to arrive at the DeKalb 428 district office as soon as the conference began, Parker says.
On April 11, NIU student volunteers, faculty, staff and leadership from the licensing colleges traveled to District 428 headquarters on Fourth Street to look at the tablesful of treasure and celebrate the continuing partnership.
During the appreciation ceremony, the future teachers heard passionate words of encouragement and career validation from Superintendent Minerva Garcia-Sanchez – who also urged them again and again (and again) to email Deetra Sallis, the district’s director of Human Resources, to apply for jobs.
