Making a Difference in Local Schools
Making a difference in local schools Faculty members in the Department of Educational Foundations and Leadership stay connected to alumni and students by working in their schools on professional development, school improvement, research and service projects. During this school year, many of our faculty members have been actively engaged with in-service educators.
Following is an update on what some faculty members have been up to:
- Gary Sehorn has been working with administrators and teachers in the Sherwood School District on the development of a cohort of the department’s new Educational Specialist degree. The degree program features a core curriculum in servant leadership, which is designed to immerse educators in that district in the process of addressing building-level and district-level improvement projects supportive of the district’s mission of ensuring that all students will achieve learning targets.
- Our newest faculty member, Susanna Steeg, is working with personnel in the Woodburn School District on a project to align reading-specialist course work with the district’s goal of developing bilingual and biliterate students. Susanna joined the department this fall as our reading specialist, in the role formally held by Jim Worthington and Doreen Blackburn.
- One of our senior faculty members, Terry Huffman, recently returned from a trip to South Dakota and Montana, where he continues his research on Native American educators working in reservation schools.
- Our department chair, Scot Headley, has been working with faculty and administrators at Cornerstone Christian School in Vancouver, Wash., on implementing changes in school culture to allow for deepened professional learning of teachers. Headley is also collaborating with teachers at Valor Middle School in Woodburn on a research project to determine the effects of the use of mobile computing devices on learning in math, science, language arts and social studies classrooms. Headley is joined in this project by Anita Zijdemans Boudreau, a professor in the College of Education at Pacific University. The project is aligned with a grant-funded professional development project to support the development of English literacy in secondary classrooms. Department alumna Marie Ballance was instrumental in establishing and delivering the literacy preparation for teachers. Marcelo Peralta, an alumnus of our Master of Arts in Teaching program, is heading the implementation team at Valor Middle School.
These examples give a small view of the varied work that our faculty members are carrying out in schools in our region. We are blessed to be able to work with our alumni and current students on meaningful projects that contribute to the growth and well being of educators and learning of their students. The work also allows faculty members to stay current on the practices and concerns that are important in local schools.