Duke aids public schools teacher training

By Paul Bonner

Duke University will support teacher training in the Durham Public Schools with teacher scholarships, a Spanish-language program and mentoring for new teachers, Duke and school district officials said Wednesday.

The programs together represent a $925,000 investment by Duke.

Officials announced the efforts at Lakewood Elementary School, where Spanish-speaking students have increased from 3 percent to 40 percent.

Duke and other universities might assume that since they receive applications from bright, well-educated high school seniors, secondary education must be doing fine, Duke President Richard Brodhead said to light laughter from the several dozen teachers, principals, volunteers and Duke officials.

"But in truth, it would be profoundly short-sighted for Duke or any other American college or university to forget about K through 12 education," Brodhead said. "We rely on you guys."

And everyone has an interest in students, college-bound or not, living up to their potential, he added.

"We can think of ourselves as living in separate universes, but the truth is, we all rise or fall together when it comes to education," Brodhead said.

Superintendent Ann Denlinger said Duke also has supported the schools in other ways, with more than 500 Duke students and retirees volunteering regularly, including some who bring science enrichment activities into the schools.

Through the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, Duke has supported the seven schools within the partnership area for 10 years and helps the entire district, as it has recently with a mentoring program for new teachers, Denlinger said.

One of the programs announced Wednesday is called the Durham Teaching Fellows. For the next three academic years, Duke will fund tuition for eight teachers a year to complete their master's degree in education at Duke -- a value of more than $43,000 per student.

"We recognize there are many teachers who would like to further their own education but simply cannot afford tuition costs, because we know that public school teachers are woefully underpaid," Denlinger said.

The Spanish Language Leap program will train 30 staff and faculty members from four schools near Duke in conversational Spanish. They are Lakewood, E.K. Powe, George Watts Montessori and Forest View elementary schools.

A short course this summer will be followed by sessions during a year. Teachers then may participate in a weeklong language-immersion visit to Mexico.

The third program will help teachers who have worked between three and seven years and haven't obtained National Board Certification with coaching and other training designed to help them obtain the qualification.

Lakewood principal Elizabeth Shearer introduced a few of the school's young Hispanic students and asked them to tell the crowd how they saw the potential benefits of more Spanish knowledge among the teaching staff.

"It would help a lot if there were students who didn't understand what the teacher said in English. They could say it again in Spanish," said Elvira Vasquez, a third-grader.

"It could help children that, if something happens and their parents speak Spanish, they can call them," said Jonathan Alonzo, another third-grader.

Robin LaBelle, in her fourth year of teaching at Lakewood, said she hopes to benefit from one or more of the programs.

"Honestly, I would love to get my master's," she said.

Her classroom is ethnically diverse and becoming more so all the time, she said, so she's also interested in learning Spanish.

"Anything that gives me a benefit that I can pass on to my kids is great," LaBelle said.

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