Teacher Quality and Career Advancement-IBEST Example

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Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 3131] Teacher quality and career advancement
From: Jackie A. Taylor jackie at jataylor.net
Date: Fri Feb 27 20:29:46 EST 2009

Hi Kim, All,

Kim, thank you for these details and for the draft teacher expectations document, very helpful! It sounds like your college may be doing well in supporting the working conditions teachers need to access and benefit from professional development, including paying them to attend PD and planning time to coordinate curricula.

A few more things to think about for Monday:

Please say more about coordinating curricula. How many hours a week are they paid to do this? How are they paid to do it - for example, is it added to the existing work load for full time staff or are they given additional paid hours or some combination thereof? What about the part time instructors?

These questions are for Kim, Leslie, and others:

  • I'd like to know more about the nature of your college's teaching profession for I-BEST or other integrated education and training programs. What % of basic skills instructors are part time and what % are full time? What about the technical instructors who team teach? Assuming that some of your basic skills teachers are part time, are there opportunities for them for stable, full-time employment? If so, what's that look like?
  • What's staff turnover like among the ABE/ESL instructors; what are the barriers and what strategies do you use to keep them?
  • Are there "career pathways" (in this sense, meaning instructor opportunities for advancement) or career ladders for the ABE/ESL instructors and if so, what do those look like?

The reason I ask is because 80% of adult basic education and literacy instructors nationwide are part time and thousands are volunteers; most are funded on year-to-year grant programs. Many are not paid release time to attend PD nor are they paid planning time. The Association of Adult Literacy Professional Developers (AALPD), the Commission on Adult Basic Education (COABE) and the National Coalition for Literacy (NCL) have made WIA recommendations to improve teacher quality and professionalize our field. I'd like to know whether you face some of these issues with I-BEST.

Thanks,

Jackie Taylor, PD List Facilitator, jackie at jataylor.net

Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 3144] Re: Teacher quality and careeradvancement
From: Ward, Kim kward at tacomacc.edu
Date: Mon Mar 2 14:14:37 EST 2009

Hi All, in response to Jackie's questions:

1. Please say more about coordinating curricula. How many hours a week are they paid to do this? How are they paid to do it - for example, is it added to the existing work load for full time staff or are they given additional paid hours or some combination thereof? What about the part time instructors?

We had a difficult time coming up with a formula of how many hours each team would get for planning because all of the courses and programs differ. So, we have been pretty flexible. Most seem to only need about an hour or two per week to coordinate curriculum. Our experience has been that the more organized the P/T instructor is with his or her curriculum, the less time the instructors need to meet. As an administrator, I realize that some courses are more complex than others, so I have left it pretty open and not assigned a "formula". All instructors are paid the hourly professional services rate I mentioned before for joint meeting and planning. If they are full time faculty, this is in addition to their regular load.

If a course requires more work or preparation, instructors can also submit a request for I-BEST curriculum planning funds. I have attached a sample proposal form for your review. We use Perkins funds for this, so instructors are required to submit the "product" of their work together. This form is new so it is also a work in progress.

2. What % of basic skills instructors are part time and what % are full time? What about the technical instructors who team teach? Assuming that some of your basic skills teachers are part time, are there

opportunities for them for stable, full-time employment? If so, what's that look like?

The percent changes from quarter to quarter, but most of my basic skills faculty teaching I-BEST are full time. And, believe it or not, most of my faculty choose to do I-BEST as a "moonlight" contract. This quarter in I-BEST, I only have one part time instructor teaching. I mentioned earlier that I am lucky in that I have full time faculty. We serve approximately 1,000 students per year split fairly evenly between ABE/GED and ESL. I have 4 full time ESL and 4 full time ABE/GED faculty.

On the professional technical side, there are currently 2 part time faculty and four full time teaching in I-BEST.

I think if we want to make these programs work, we have to make an investment. The investment of full time faculty in our program has paid off over and over again. In fact, we had so many adjunct faculty, we were able to show a cost savings in benefits by moving to more full time faculty.

Kim Ward

Tacoma Community College kward at tacomacc.edu

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