Education Department Newsletter
Volume 5, Number 2 – Fall, 2009
Educators Conference and Career Summit
Dr. D. Bruce Lockerbie, educational leader, speaker, and author, is the featured speaker for this year’s Educators Conference on Thursday, March 4, 2010, at Covenant College. Dr. Lockerbie is the author, co-author, or editor of over forty books on a broad range of topics including education, aesthetics, literary criticism, and history as well as several textbooks. A frequent lecturer both in the US and around the world, Lockerbie served for over three decades as a secondary school teacher and administrator at the Stony Brook School, one of the outstanding Christian schools in the country, and is now chairman of PAIDEIA, Inc. His most recent book, A Christian Paideia: The Habitual Vision of Greatness, was published in 2005. Topics for the conference include moral education, the ultimate purpose of education, and the essentials of an educational worldview to inform practice.
The Educators Conference is Thursday, March 4, 2010, at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, from 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM. The $75.00 conference fee includes lunch, refreshments, and discounted pricing on Dr. Lockerbie’s books through Covenant’s bookstore.
Covenant’s annual Career Summit is scheduled on Thursday evening, March 4 and Friday, March 5, 2010. The Career Summit is an opportunity for school leaders to meet and interview Covenant’s senior education majors for positions in their schools. Dr. Lockerbie will also speak on Thursday evening, offering his views on the future of Christian schooling.
Click here to register for these events.
For further information, call 706.419.1407 or e-mail jane.stewart@covenant.edu.
Covenant College joins Notre Dame, Boston University, and Trinity Western University on major research project.
Cardus, a Christian-based public life think tank located in Canada, has announced a $1 million quantitative and qualitative research project in 2009-2010 to investigate the effects of Christian schooling in North America.
At the same time, three qualitative projects, all funded through Cardus, will investigate more focused aspects of Christian schooling, and a three-person team from Covenant College was selected in October. Drs. Jack Beckman and James Drexler of the Education Department, along with Dr. Kevin Eames of the Psychology Department, will investigate Stopping the revolving door: role stress and educational leader retention.
The research of Beckman, Drexler, and Eames, situated in what is known about the longevity and turnover rates of educational leaders, will be embedded in current leadership models to determine the antecedents of longevity, turnover, and vitality. Rooted in a broad survey of current heads of schools in organizations such as Christian Schools International (CSI), the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) and the Catholic school sector, the study is designed to gain information regarding head turnover rates in Christian schools, possible causes of these changes, related board and governance structures, and a variety of other factors that will offer a clearer picture of educational leadership in private religious schools. Cardus awarded the Covenant team a $25,000 research grant for their work, scheduled for completion by autumn 2010.
Faculty Happenings
Jack Beckman participated with a team of researchers this summer in Ambleside, UK, for the purpose of beginning to digitize the Charlotte Mason papers. The team has received two grants from the Social Studies and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. The initial two grants were awarded to set a research agenda and subsequently explore and digitize targeted elements of the archive. A third grant involving the SSHRC will engage the work of an international team made up of researchers from the UK, Canada, and the United States, and is focused on completing the digitization and development of a virtual platform for the research community to begin accessing the life and work of Mason in the third millennium.
Becky Pennington achieved “ABD” (“All But Dissertation”) status after successfully completing all her coursework at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in their Ed.D. program in Learning and Leadership. Becky anticipates finishing and defending her dissertation by the summer 2010. In addition, Becky took a number of Early Childhood Education students to a reading conference this fall.
Steve Kaufmann travelled in late October to speak at the ACSI French Enabler Conference in Colmar, France. Steve also has written First the Foundations: A primer for Christian school education for ACSI-Europe, a book printed in Hungarian, Romanian, French, and English. He has completed a companion book, Meditations for Teachers: Reflections for Christian teachers about their work which will be published soon.
Bruce Young has written a chapter about a Christian perspective on Constructivism in the forthcoming Faith-based Education that Constructs and served as a reviewer for the 4th Edition of Interdisciplinary Instruction for All Learners K-8 by Karlyn Wood. Bruce also spoke on “Christian Education is the Christian Life” as the Convocation speaker for our M.Ed. program.
Jim Drexler presented his workshop, Spiritual Warfare and Christian Schooling at the PAIDEIA Weekend Dialogue in Raleigh, and for a group of 125 Christian school teachers and administrators in Connecticut hosted at Christian Heritage Academy. He also presented a four-part seminar on Professional Learning Communities at ACSI teacher conventions in South Bend and Minneapolis.
Phil Horton has served on several Professional Standards Commission on-site visiting teams, most recently at Toccoa Falls College in November. Phil also continues work on developing Covenant’s new Master of Arts degree.
Daphne Haddad has added Arabic to her teaching load. Daphne has a long interest in the Muslim faith and culture, and has presented academic papers in Tehran, Iran recently. She also took a group of Middle Grades majors to a conference in Atlanta in the fall.
Sonia Norwood, a 2009 graduate of cohort #7 of Covenant’s BSECE program
Education Students and Graduates in the News
Chad Dirkse (1989) has returned to Chattanooga to become the new President of Chattanooga Christian School. Dirkse, who most recently was head of school at Westminster Christian in Elgin, Illinois, earned his Middle Grades degree and certification at Covenant.
Austin Branson (2006, History Secondary) is entering his fourth year of teaching at the International Christian School of Budapest in Hungary. He is teaching middle grades social studies, coaching soccer, and serving as the chapel coordinator. In his spare time, he also serves as the director of high school ministries at the Danube International Church. If you would like to contact Austin or get on his regular e-mail list you can contact him at awbranson@gmail.com.
The Education Department Club has announced new officers for the 2009-2010 years: President, Erika Forland (English Secondary), Vice President Jen Paffenroth (Early Childhood) and Treasurer Tommy Slack (Math Secondary). Outgoing president Tim Blumenstein did a fine job last year.
BSECE student Nikki Massingill Sloan (2009) writes the following: “I am in tears right now. I prayed not to get this job, but to get where God wanted me to be. I am so thankful that this is it. Rossville Middle has the highest percentage of students in poverty in Walker County (81%). I just want to be able to help them and let them know someone believes in them and knows that they can overcome any obstacle with faith and hard work. Thank you so much for letting me be a part of this program. I have found a stronger relationship with God over the past two years and I owe it to Covenant.”
Finally, some practical advice from Kim Yagel (Middle Grades, 2007):
So I had a breakthrough today with some of my classes. Today was the day students were supposed to write their first characterization paragraph. Often, students struggle all year long to make sure they have five sentences, including a good topic sentence, two details, explanations of each detail, and a conclusion sentence. But today was different, and it was just their FIRST TIME writing a paragraph in English class!
What was different? We're told that showing students models is a good practice, but most students' eyes glaze over when they see a bunch of text. So it occurred to me that I could practice a research-based strategy that I had learned is helpful when teaching ESL students to write: color coding.
I wrote a well-developed characterization paragraph and highlighted it according to a color code (and displayed it with my Promethean Board technology). As soon as students looked at it, they noticed a pattern: yellow, green, blue, green, blue, yellow. I pointed out that both yellow sentences have the same information, but different words (topic sentence and conclusion sentence). Students could also clearly see the difference between an example from the text and an explanation of the text.
The result: these paragraphs looked by far better than many 6th graders' paragraphs from the end of last year.
This strategy is actually more often used in high school with essays. The idea is that if students were to highlight essays, their essays would increasingly have more blue in them which represents interpreting the author, and less yellow, which in the study I researched, stood for the plot of the story. Green represented quotes that held the plot and the interpretation together.
Anyway, I'm excited about this strategy and had to pass it on somehow to someone. So use it, alter it, and let me know what you think. Now to find blue and green highlighters in bulk!
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