Last November, SUNY hosted higher education faculty and their education partners from across the state for the launch of the SUNY Statewide Teacher Education Network (S-TEN). Supported by a $3.5 million Race to the Top grant, S-TEN engages higher education faculty and their educational partners in the renewal of teacher and school leader preparation to meet the needs of today’s children. The S-TEN initiative involves the work of 17 campus network teams (C-TENs) from the SUNY institutions with teacher and school leader preparation programs. The C-TENs share a purpose and passion around renewing the preparation of teachers and educational leaders throughout New York State.
SUNY is in a unique position to be of service to the state’s students. SUNY prepares 5,000 new teachers, or over one quarter of New York’s teacher workforce, every year and SUNY graduates are employed in every one of the State’s nearly 700 school districts. This depends not only on Teacher Education faculty on our campuses, but also on the content expertise of Arts and Sciences faculty, and the on-the-ground experts in schools around the state. The preparation of excellent educators and school leaders at our SUNY schools lets SUNY build upon existing success across the system infrastructure, as systemness in teacher education is displayed through sharing and distributing best practices.
To achieve truly exemplary teacher education, over 200 individuals participate on C-TEN teams from the 17 SUNY campuses. Each team is comprised of 7 to 20 members and includes representatives from School of Arts and Sciences, PreK-12 principals and teachers, superintendents, Teacher Education and Educational Leadership faculty, Community College faculty and representatives of related agencies in the community.
The operational structure of the S-TEN project uses a community engagement model of faculty-designed professional development, put into practice thus far by workshops and regional forums. The workshops focused on four topics of the Regents Reform Agenda: Common Core Standards, Clinically-Rich Teacher and Leader Preparation, Performance Assessments, and Data-Driven Instruction and Annual Professional Performance Review.
The next phase of S-TEN will include:
- Grants for campus-based, clinically-rich practices implementation to give teacher education candidates the in-depth practical preparation they need.
- Grants to support faculty-led regional P-20 collaborative projects to implement regional collaboration with local educational partners.
- The creation of an online resource center to support activities relating to the systematic vetting, archiving, retrieving, and dissemination of online educational resources, webinars, and online courses.
- The establishment of regional “Centers of Pedagogy” to support developing communities of practice, field practices for rural and urban education, research, and other areas.
As these developments occur and results come in, please stay up to date on the S-TEN initiative through the Generation SUNY Blog.