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Villanova
University hosts Pa. Governor’s Institute for Early Childhood Educators
By Colleen Moughan’04 and Kathleen Lamb’04
 Villanova
once again acted as host to The Governor’s Institute for Early Childhood
Educators that was held this summer, from June 22 to 27. One hundred education
leaders including elementary principles, early childhood directors, school
district administrators, professors and others who work with early childhood
educators attended the program.
The attendees were chosen from across the Commonwealth to study the relationship
of academic standards and assessment to early childhood education. The main
focus of the Institute was leadership with an emphasis on early literacy.
The Institute also emphasized how teachers can use today’s technology
to enhance early childhood programs and bring more to the classroom.
The Governor’s Institute was an initiative of former Governor Tom
Ridge and is an outgrowth of the Chapter Four Law. The Chapter Four Law
began its movement in Pennsylvania, and addresses the issue that teachers
themselves need professional education in order to improve overall child
education. The Law established requirements for instruction, graduation,
strategic planning, and assessment based on Pennsylvania academic standards.
These standards build consistency across Pennsylvania in the areas of reading,
writing, speaking, and listening.
The Institute invited three keynote speakers to attend its program at Villanova.
They included Dr. Lesley Morrow, president of the International Reading
Association, Dr. Charlotte Danielson, author of numerous books including
Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching, and Greg Thomas, president
of weLead, Inc.
 The
2003 Institute involved early childhood educators in compelling conferences,
lectures and discussions, promoting improved professional development within
and extending from the classroom. Consider: you walk into a room full of
seven and eight year-olds full of the sounds of students chatting, dropping
belongings occasionally, book-bags unzipping while at the same time Mike
has just pushed Peter and Mary is crying because she forgot her reading
book. Is this the simplistic, summers-off job that many describe? Not really.
A teacher’s job today is complex, interwoven with issues of child
psychology, diversity, recent brain research, education standards, assessment,
teaching style and at times language and cultural barriers. As every minute,
every day of teaching brings new challenges, questions, disruptions, lessons,
assessments; teachers today have to have the tools to gauge their classroom
environments efficiently and accurately. Keynote speaker, Dr. Lesley Morrow,
who has also taught on the college level stressed that the main issue today
concerning education is that the teaching profession is not as respected
as it should be: “People think that since they attended school that
they know everything there is to know about teaching and that simply isn’t
true. Teaching is a much more complicated and challenging job than people
make it out to be and I think the Governors Institute helps to build professional
development which I feel is crucial to quality education.”
Regarding early literacy, presenter Dr. Donald Bartalo, explained that there
are many different ways to access a classroom environment, where the teacher
can take the role of a detached observer, participant observer, or as a
collector. Even the task of introducing a balanced literacy curriculum has
its complications. Students, Bartalo believes, should be involved in speaking,
reading, writing, presenting, listening, and viewing. Think of the complications
involved with children who have problems following the subject matter, have
a language or cultural barrier, have psychological or disciplinary problems
without even mentioning that everyone learns in unique ways and that the
teacher has to address many different needs simultaneously.
Fellow keynote speaker Dr. Charlotte Danielson acknowledged that good teachers
make a difference, but asserted that the main concern of many teachers is
how a good teacher is defined. As many educational studies do not distinguish
the differences between effective and ineffective teaching, Danielson decided
to write a book on the issue. In her book, Professional Practice: A Framework
for Teaching, Danielson divides teaching into four domains, evaluating and
clarifying different teaching methodologies. Danielson explained: “I
think of teaching as a holistic act, but find that one can shine a spotlight
on it to emphasize a specific moment and that’s what I tried to articulate
in my book, the methods behind those moments.” Yet after all the methods,
assessments and domains, Danielson stressed that, “A good teacher
sets goals at a high intellectual level, promoting critical thinking and
engagement. The more caring a teacher is, the better the teaching is and
the harder the work becomes on emotional, physical and intellectual levels.”
 After
all the lectures were finished and the last speaker had his word, teachers,
elementary principles, early childhood directors, and school district administrators
involved in the Institute left Villanova with the kind of educational pedagogy
essential for success in the classroom, a pedagogy not only concerned about
assessments and psychology but also concerning one’s philosophy of
education, valuing a loving and caring environment within the classroom.
Within every speaker’s concerns existed a genuine love for the student
as a whole person. At the very core of the gripping lectures, conferences
and discussions, if one listens intently, is a philosophy of education echoing
Augustine’s words on teaching: “Set love as the criterion of
all that you say, and whatever you teach, teach in such a way that by hearing
may believe, by believing may hope, and by hoping love.”
The Pennsylvania Department of Education paid for all costs of the program,
including food, lodging materials, and two graduate credits. The participants
were housed in single rooms located in Villanova University apartments.
The PDE continues to provide great opportunities for leaders in education
to improve their understanding and guidance skills in early childhood education.
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