In the spirit of lifelong learning as a teacher educator, I presented at the annual 2023 Council for Exceptional Children Teacher Education Division (CEC TED) Conference in Long Beach, California. This national conference is an annual gathering of “a diverse community of professionals who lead and support teacher education on behalf of students with special needs and their families”. The conference theme was SEAS the Day: a fitting name for the inclusive-minded teacher educators learning, connecting, and advocating along the shore of downtown Long Beach.
This was my 6th CEC TED conference! As always, I had many takeaways and relished the opportunity to connect with friends and colleagues in the field of special education teacher preparation. Here are a few highlights.
A special education teacher shortage continues to persist nationwide. Keynote speaker and California State University (CSU) Vice Chancellor Emeritus, Dr. Marquita Grenot-Scheyer, provided a California and national perspective on the teacher shortage. She shared strategies to recruit and retain diverse education candidates to serve students with special needs in inclusive schools. Teacher Residency programs and apprenticeship programs are innovative models to address this need while ensuring candidates are well-prepared.
Leveraging partnerships with districts, community organizations, and other teacher educators to expand access to and retention in the teaching profession for educators of color was the focus of the second keynote panel. Dr. Margarita Bianco of the University of Colorado highlighted “grow your own” programs for paraeducators as a pathway to diversify the teaching workforce and shared her Pathways2Teaching model. Attendees had time to partner up and discuss barriers to teaching for educators of color such as financial burdens and supports needed for educators once they enter the profession.
Several CSU campus professors who consult through 2Teach presented a session led by Dr. Wendi Murwaski on moving the needle toward inclusion in California. Dr. Murwaski is a researcher who is well known for co-teaching. In this session, we brainstormed regarding moving the needle toward inclusion and common barriers districts face such as administrative support for inclusive education, master scheduling issues, effective co-teaching between general education and special educator teachers, and the implementation of Universal Design for Learning. Presenters discussed Rightful Presence for students who are often kept at the margins and excluded from general education settings. This notion especially resonated with me because I believe wholeheartedly that all students belong, regardless of their disabilities or support needs.
Video coaching and feedback through university supervision of teacher candidates was featured in a session led by Dr. Michael Kennedy. He shared highlights of the FRaME Institute, which is an Institute for Educational Sciences (IES) funded research project aimed at using feedback, reflection, and multimedia pedagogy to teach evidence-based practices in classroom management. Dr. Kennedy also led a demonstration of an innovative new video coaching tool named COACHED, which enables university instructors and supervisors to provide teacher candidates with explicit and time-stamped feedback on their student teaching. It was an impressive and free tool (wohoo!) and I am excited to try it out in future methods courses!
My presentation was a collaborative research project with my colleague and friend, Dr. Megan Chaney, on the assessment of educator dispositions. You can view our session slide deck.
