By Matt Kurnick
"I believe that the future of our social and political democracy depends upon all children having access to high quality teachers regardless of whom they are or where they happen to come to live. We are committed, at Illinois State University, to producing teachers who can teach all of our nations' children." — Molly Munson-Dryer, associate director of Clinical Experiences
(January 21, 2009) Molly Munson-Dryer, associate director of Clinical Experiences, knows the importance of diverse experiences for students training to become teachers. She also knows some students resist those experiences.
"I believe that our democracy depends upon children having access to high quality teachers across the country and we are committed to doing that at Illinois State," Munson-Dryer said. "We're having to shift the way people think about their experiences here at ISU. We want to prepare our students to teach all of the students in Illinois and across the country so they need experiences with English Language Learners, minority students, special needs students, and low income students. We're making our placements very purposeful to make sure they have experiences with everybody."
Munson-Dryer has worked closely with Illinois State's Professional Development School (PDS) program and implemented the first high school PDS program to ensure that each Illinois State Teacher Education student gets the most valuable experience possible before graduation.
Professional Development School programs provide teacher education students with a year-long internship where they complete clinical hours, take classes on site and co-teach with professional teachers.
"Our students see the school year from the very first day all the way to the end," Munson-Dryer said of the PDS program. "The students in their classrooms don't see them as student teachers. They see them as another professional in the classroom. Connecting our resources — our students, with schools in need, and finding ways to help teachers who are overwhelmed, and bringing what our students learn in their classes at ISU to the different schools they work with; my biggest reward is helping make those connections."
At times Munson-Dryer has had to fight to make those connections. While working on placing students in the Little Village PDS, a predominantly Hispanic part of Chicago, she recalled meeting and overcoming some pretty strong resistance.
"At one point I had a meeting with (some students and their parents) in my office," Munson-Dryer recalled. "A couple of the students were crying. Their parents were threatening to sue us. Their parents were adamant that they didn't want their kids to go to Little Village."
Munson-Dryer and a colleague diffused the situation.
"Dean (Deborah) Curtis and I said, 'You need to visit Little Village before you make these decisions, before you have these preconceptions about what it will be like.' They went to visit and they all agreed that it would be a good experience," Munson-Dryer said.
After the students completed their year-long internship, their perspective on gaining diverse experiences while student teaching were significantly altered.
"They loved it so much," Munson-Dryer said. "They asked if they could come back and be ambassadors for the Little Village program. Because of that we have been able to recruit more students into that program."
In 2006, Munson-Dryer initiated a working relationship with Woodruff High School in Peoria, a low-income, high minority school to implement ISU's first PDS program for secondary education. Since then Normal Community High School and Normal Community West High School have joined the PDS program for secondary education.
In addition to helping ISU students, Munson-Dryer also coordinates the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) at Illinois State. The teacher education program gathers data about ISU's teacher candidates and all the schools ISU works with throughout the state in five year increments. Then, every five years the program, headed by Munson-Dryer, presents the data to the National Council.
"There's a lot of pressure because a lot of institutions do look to us and see what we're doing, but also how we're doing it on such a big scale," Munson-Dryer said. "We're proud of what we do. I feel like all the work we put in to partnering with schools and creating this program is worth it."
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