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helps educators, businesses, and community leaders prepare all youth and adults for a quality work life, active citizenship, and a lifetime of learning.Parents and taxpayers recognize that new sets of skills, knowledge, and attitudes are demanded for the 21st century. Federal laws require and promote better preparation of all students for career decisionmaking, employment, and continued learning, and state reform efforts demand that all students be better prepared to apply what they have learned in real-life situations. Communities need young people trained to be not only effective workers, but also good citizens who are willing and able to serve their communities.
School districts, teacher education institutions, parents, and employers are facing increased pressure to move curriculum and instruction out of tradition-bound classrooms and build new educational partnerships with business, labor, industry, and other segments of the community. The integration of academic and occupational learning is essential for all learners, including students who are college bound. As recognized by current education reform efforts, there is a need to connect education at all levels. Educators alone cannot address the learning needs of today's children and adults.
The Education and Work Program carries out a diverse portfolio of work spanning needs assessments, planning, program development, curriculum development, training, consulting, conferencing, networking of various groups, research, evaluation, and dissemination of promising practices and practical tools.
www.nwrel.org/ecc/
Major 1998 Accomplishments
- Teachers Learning in the Community was developed as the eighth guide in the Connections: Linking Work and Learning series
- The annual Work Now and in the Future conference continued to attract some 3,000 participants.
- Some 500 middle school educators participated in the In the Middle conference
- Assistance was provided to school-to-work transition initiatives in Alaska, Oregon, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Washington
- Balancing Life and Work, a guide to the integration of humanities coursework with career exploration, was developed
- A 25-state survey of higher education institutions was conducted to identify the status and issues in teacher preparation related to school-to-work transition
- Long-term partnerships continued with two school districts and the Oregon Business Council to develop and test new community-based learning strategies
- Five major academic-vocational and school-to-work programs and events in the Northwest were evaluated
Program Components
Partners for Learning
Skills are developed for using community resources as part of the instructional context.Promising Practices
Promising practices looking ahead to the 21st century are disseminated through products, publications, and convening of practitioners, model-builders, and researchers.Evaluation of New Initiatives
Evaluation and assessment of comprehensive programs and specific targeted interventions helps administrators and staff know if their career development and integrated learning strategies are working.Middle-Level Learning
Professional development tools and opportunities assist teachers and administrators in the middle grades to help young adolescents succeed in a rigorous and relevant curriculum.
Focus on Middle-Level Learning Professional development tools and opportunities assist teachers and administrators in the middle grades to help young adolescents succeed in a rigorous and relevant curriculum.
Middle-level grades (6-8) are often the forgotten years when school boards, professional organizations, state agencies, teacher education programs, and publishers set priorities, allocate resources, design preservice and inservice offerings, build partnerships, and assign high-performing administrators and teachers. Even though some school districts have changed grade configurations and names of schools, altered school schedules, and adopted new forms of curriculum and instruction, sometimes using new technologies, students still struggle with a basic question, "Why do I have to learn this?"
NWREL is building a repertoire of techniques that help middle school students become more engaged in learning to achieve high standards. These strategies often involve community partnerships that put youth and adults into new configurations and that sometimes mask familiar subject matter disciplines.
In September 1995, NWREL began a three-year demonstration project, Reality Check, on linking middle schools with community resources to enhance student learning. Based on the Reality Check experience, a highly-successful regional conference was conducted in May 1998, built around the notion of middle schools engaged in community partnerships to improve student learning. NWREL assisted the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation in the programming and facilitation of an Idaho-based middle school institute in June 1998. The two events attracted more than 700 people. NWREL staff are continuing to work with 35 Idaho schools as they further develop, implement, and then test their integrated learning projects with students.
NWREL is working in partnership with local schools, professional associations, and community-based organizations. An emerging partnership with the National Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council will help middle school educators see the connections between this event and their curricula. Pilot projects are already underway to involve middle school students in this integrated learning opportunity.
Products
Reality Check newsletter-Newsletters provide ideas for building community partnerships. www.nwrel.org/ edwork/reality/
Compendium of Integrated Curriculum Projects-Integrated projects created by teams of teachers from 35 Idaho middle schools will be tested in 1998-99.
Services
Conference for middle school educators-The second annual conference on middle-level teaching and learning will be held in May 1999.
Idaho institute-Training is targeted on specific middle-level strategies.
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