Professor Ted Hamann from the Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education (TLTE) recently hosted his second “Teacher Perspectives” vodcast as an equity fellow with the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center. The vodcast highlights challenges and lessons learned by teachers as they engaged in school reform efforts that were intended to improve equity at their schools.
The June 2018 vodcast is titled “Teacher Perspectives and Teacher Participation in School Reform for Educational Equity.” It features former mathematics teacher, Chandra Diaz, now an assistant professor, University of Nebraska at Kearney; Janet Eckerson, chair of Lincoln High School world languages department and a practice fellow at TLTE; and former Spanish teacher, Tricia Gray, lecturer, TLTE. All three earned doctorates from TLTE. Current TLTE doctoral student and ESL teacher at Lincoln North Star High School, Cara Morgenson, is also featured.
“Schools are continually contested spaces to change practices and organization to be more successful and more equitable sites of learning for more students,” said Hamann in the June vodcast.
He adds that American rhetoric routinely expects better outcomes from its public schools and sees teachers as the lynch pin for change, but the wisdom of various plans and the inclusion of teachers in supporting the planning and implementation can be haphazard. That’s why, he says, capturing the voice of teachers is so important. With the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center charged with improving the quality and equity of schooling across its 13-state region, Hamman says it is important to create research-grounded resources that capture teacher perspectives and make them accessible to other teachers, colleague to colleague.
“[Teachers] are the folks who have had to negotiate at the classroom level with learners these concurrent and multiple pressures that are pulling schools one way and then pulling them another,” said Hamann.
The June “Teacher Perspectives” vodcast can be downloaded from the Great Lakes Equity Center website at https://go.unl.edu/pbes. A previous vodcast by the same team, “Teacher Perspectives on Equitable Education for Immigrant Students,” is also available at https://go.unl.edu/038t.