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Bush foundation Minnesota Reads Grant: Improving teacher preparation in literacy

St. Cloud State University is one of four universities to be part of Minnesota Reads, a $1 million Bush Foundation Grant for improving literacy instruction.

The three other universities involved are the University of Minnesota, Augsburg College, and the College of St. Catherine. The grant is designed to support colleges of education as they analyze and redesign literacy education courses that are part of teacher licensure programs.

The four SCSU faculty members who will be facilitating the grant are Pat Heine, Dave Heine and Judith Davison-Jenkins, Teacher Development and Chris Inkster, Information Media.

The grant facilitators are responsible for working with partner institutions in researching best practices in literacy instruction. They are also planning evaluation techniques for current curriculum and examining course syllabi. They are developing and adapting an e-portfolio format for documenting students’ performance.

A website will be constructed for literacy projects in the College of Education at SCSU. The goal of the project is to improve childrens’ reading in the K-12 grades.

The grant gives teachers, educators and researchers the chance to build consensus on the literacy knowledge and practices in which future teachers should be proficient when they leave teacher preparation programs.

The three–year project will involve the evaluation of literacy programs, the upgrade of technical support and the investigation of best practices.

The grant enables the faculty from SCSU who are part of the grant to buy out a quarter of their contract and use that time to work exclusively on the improvement of literacy instruction.

This is the first grant of its kind to be given out by the Bush Foundation, making the outcomes of the grant a possible model for literacy programs nationwide.

According to Literacy Project Leader Pat Heine, “The goals of the grant are consistent with the goals in the College of Education. Our emphasis in the college is on assessment and on technology support, especially through e-portfolios.”

“Seldomly do we get the opportunity to work closely with faculty from other institutions for a common goal.” Pat Heine said. “This is really exciting stuff.”

The University of Minnesota wrote the original grant that included partnership organizations. They contacted the SCSU College of Education and Dean Joane W. McKay who indicated that the “COE pledged its enthusiastic support to participate in the Minnesota Reads grant.”

The U of M was awarded the grant in late July and called the first meeting of all the partners in August of 2001.

“This is a very comprehensive process.” Pat Heine said, “There is so much to do on so many fronts, but it is all important. We are just beginning and the first step is to research literacy and critique best practices.”

On Nov. 7, the partner institutions convened at the U of M and brought together all the information they had gathered to examine it as a whole and decide what would be the next step in the process. One of the outcomes of that day was the completion of a website that will allow the academic community to be informed about the progress of the Minnesota Reads grant to improve literacy instruction.

To learn more about this project see the website at: http://intranet.education.umn.edu/Bush/

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