February 9, 1995: Vol26n16: Give teachers stake in schools:  Petrie

By STEVE COX
Reporter Staff
"It's always hardest for the reformers to reform themselves,"
explained Graduate School of Education Dean Hugh Petrie.
	That is why the introspective, self-critical report
"Tomorrow's Schools of Education," released last week by the Holmes
Group, was nearly a year overdue and drew cautious reactions from
education professionals. According to Petrie, it was a classic case of
"We have seen the enemy, and he is us."
	The report concluded, after nearly three years of study, that
teacher education schools needed "more intellectually rigorous
programs that offered more meaningful field experience" and "blurred
the distinctions between teaching and administration, in favor of
developing teacher leadership roles," says Petrie, adding that the
report is basically "just a start that showed us how much more there
is to be done."
	Petrie was a founding member of the Holmes Group, a
Michigan-based education schools think tank, nearly 10 years ago. The
group brings together representatives from 80 of the nation's top
research university-based schools of education to examine ways to
better prepare the teachers of tomorrow. Petrie has served on the
Holmes board of directors since 1986 and served as vice president for
the group's northeast region from 1986 to 1991.
	Although the schools represented by Holmes only produce about
20 percent of the nation's teachers, Petrie pointed out that Holmes
Group institutions produce most of the nation's professors of
education. "We prepare the future professoriate and these graduates of
ours will be preparing the other 80 percent of the teachers."
	Petrie said that a new, real-world orientation to teacher
education is needed. "Education schools need to become the teaching
hospitals of the teaching profession, blending university-based
instruction with clinical experience." The UB Graduate School of
Education has made a good start in that direction, according to
Petrie, particularly with two unique programs: BRIET and LIFTS.
	"Our nationally-recognized Buffalo Research Institute on
Education for Teaching (BRIET) incorporates many of the report's
recommendations with its emphases on clinical faculty and teachers as
researchers. We have a long way to go, however.
	"Our newly launched "Leadership Initiative for Tomorrow's
Schools" (LIFTS) is a problem-oriented, field-based approach to
preparing teachers for tomorrow's schools," he says, "but we are only
beginning to think about how to incorporate the two programs into an
integrated approach to the preparation of outstanding teachers for
tomorrow's schools.
	LIFTS takes teachers out of their classroom roles, while still
supported by their local districts, and places them into a two-year
team-based innovation and administration training program. Eight
teachers from two districts are currently involved in designing a
"model elementary school" for a troubled district outside Pittsburgh
through LIFTS.
	"You have to be a very good teacher to teach in an urban
school," explains Petrie. He believes the special challenges of urban
schools require special attention from teacher education schools. Yet,
fewer than five percent of professors at education schools have actual
experience teaching in urban settings.
	"While they can be placed in the midst of a gruesome
neighborhood, once you get inside the building, they are very much
like schools anywhere else," says Petrie, "and most of the kids there
are just as eager to learn." Indeed, says Petrie, school can be an
"oasis" for children of the inner city. Petrie supports placing
student teachers in these more challenging settings as part of their
clinical education. And, he agrees with the Holmes report that urban
teachers need to develop professional network and support mechanisms.
	Petrie recalled a recent reminder of just how unique the
challenges of urban schools can be. "We were asked by teachers to help
with teaching them how to instruct students in grieving. So many of
these students have friends and family members affected by violence --
be it drive-by shootings or drugs or so on -- that they need to learn
how to grieve."
	Tomorrow's secondary schools could take on a structural look
more like that of today's college departments, says Petrie. "Career
paths that take you to administration have classically been thought of
as a way of getting out of the classroom," Petrie explained. "However,
a college department chair is, essentially, a teacher selected by his
or her peers.
	"College professors have lots of responsibilities and
leadership roles to fulfill in governance, departmental chairing or
mentoring junior faculty. We can make secondary schools like that. We
can give teachers a stake in their school, empowering them with
broader responsibilities."
	Petrie, who came to UB from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, has been dean of the Graduate School of Education
since 1981. Along with his involvement in national education policy,
Petrie has served as president of the New York State Teacher Education
Conference Board and was appointed by Governor Cuomo to the Special
Commission on Educational Structure, Policies and Practices in 1993.