RESEARCH General Education

SPECIAL EDUCATION
University-school collaboration aims at teacher shortage

Craig Chamberlain, News Editor
(217) 333-2894; cdchambe@uiuc.edu

3/1/03

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Hundreds of special education jobs sit vacant in Chicago, as they do throughout the country. Other jobs are filled by teachers who need a higher certification, but can’t easily leave their jobs to get it.

An innovative program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in collaboration with Chicago Public Schools, aims to address both needs – assisting in the education of 250 teachers over a five-year period.

At least a quarter of those will be teachers already working in the Chicago Public Schools, says Adelle Renzaglia, the head of the department of special education at Illinois and co-director of the program, known as BRIDGES. Some teachers already are teaching in special education classrooms, but need additional credentials, and others are interested in moving to special education from other areas.

Through two years of classes, most taken after school by means of video conferencing and other distance-learning methods, the Chicago teachers will earn master’s degrees that qualify them to teach all students in special education, including those with more severe disabilities.

But BRIDGES (Building Relationships in Diverse General Education Settings) has other benefits as well, for the Chicago system and for the on-campus Illinois students, graduate and undergraduate, who make up the rest of the program, Renzaglia said.

When learning by long-distance, the Chicago students are in the same class with on-campus students, she noted. They get the same lectures and discussion as the students in the classroom, and the classroom students get the benefit of the Chicago teachers’ experience on the job in an urban setting.

The program also incorporates two-day externships that bring on-campus students to Chicago and Chicago students to schools in the Champaign-Urbana area. Both groups get exposure to a different teaching environment in a different setting, Renzaglia said. Those experiences are supplemented with online discussions and seminars on issues related to culturally diverse, urban school environments.

For the Chicago school system, the program also serves as a recruiting tool, exposing Illinois’
on-campus students – most from the Chicago suburbs – to opportunities in the city following graduation.

Renzaglia said the program resulted, in part, because of the Chicago district’s positive experience with Illinois special education graduates, many of whom have risen to leadership positions. "The program grew out of their interest in working with us and hiring our teachers, and our interest in addressing the shortage of teachers in special education," she said.

The five-year, $1.5 million grant funding BRIDGES comes from the U.S. Department of Education, with two-thirds of the funds designated for tuition stipends and other student support. The program began in 2002.

Janis Chadsey, also a professor of special education, is the other co-director.