Attendees at pubTV's teacher conference lined up for two blocks for the signature of speaker Jane Goodall. Chase was the event's lead sponsor. (Photo: Current.)
WNET/WLIW Teaching & Learning Celebration, year 3
Inspiration, training and thanks for N.Y. teachers
You can’t help noticing the most reliable applause lines at WNET/WLIW’s teacher convention March 7 and 8 were about the teachers themselves — thanking them for preparing future leaders, for instance, and observing that they’re not paid enough for that.
But do public broadcasters ever get enough thanks, either?
The thank-yous are a deliberate part of the stations’ third-annual Teaching & Learning Celebration, as the name suggests, but the event also included 102 professional development workshops, panels of leading school reformers, and pitches about pubTV curriculum aids from the NewsHour, It’s a Big Big World and other shows.
In the center ring were star speakers such as primate researcher Jane Goodall, ocean explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau and urban environmentalist Majora Carter, whose talks were freighted with inspiration as well as curriculum.
After some 2,400 educators heard Goodall’s talk, many bought her book from the on-site Borders bookstore (requiring the vendor to collect copies from branches around the city) and stood in a line while she autographed them for more than two hours.
This year’s Celebration drew more than 7,500 educators in its two days in the New York Hilton, where 125 volunteers stood by to direct disoriented educators to sessions on three levels.
The conference cost a little more than
$2 million this year, with tickets and sponsorships covering most of the cost — narrowing the gap despite the increased expense of the hotel site, says Ron Thorpe, WNET v.p. of education.
For its first two years, the Celebration was held on Hudson River piers 92 and 94, which were cool and funky but far from the subway and distractingly noisy, with only makeshift walls between session rooms. Moving to the Hilton raised costs about 25 percent, Thorpe says.
He says the Celebration is becoming a national event, though most attendees will always come from the tri-state region, which never hosts major education conferences because of New York’s high costs.
Out-of-towners this year included dozens of public TV execs who attended the previous day’s getting-to-know-you session with state education commissioners in the Council of Chief State School Officers.
Celebration attendees watched plenary speakers on huge HD screens in the Hilton ballroom, and the video footage will turn up on WNET’s website, in local programs and in a national special, Thorpe says.
The PBS special this fall will use footage from a March 7 panel moderated by Judy Woodruff. It centers on the sobering prediction that new generations of Americans will be the first in history with lower standards of living than their parents’.
Dominant on the panel was Roy Romer, the former Colorado governor and Los Angeles school superintendent, who warns that the country’s falling behind Finland, Korea and other hard-striving nations that put more resources and classroom time into schooling and whose students outscore young Americans.
Romer, director of the nonprofit Strong American Schools, chairs its “ED in 08” campaign, which is trying to raise education issues during the election year. The campaign and the special are backed by the Gates and Broad foundations.
Other school-improvement campaigners, all pro-education but otherwise not always in agreement with each other, had soapboxes as well, including Ken Kay, Diane Ravitch, Deborah Meier and Marc Tucker.
The objective of Kay’s Partnership for 21st Century Skills ("P21") campaign — which advocates putting more teaching time into analytical and communications skills needed in today’s and tomorrow’s jobs — rang a bell with Katherine Wright Knight, an English teacher from Little Rock, Ark. Knight rose in the audience to tell Kay she was encouraged to hear the group’s message, which states have begun to adopt. Knight said she tried to teach these kinds of skills for decades — but met resistance from believers in memorized facts.
“I was going to retire next year,’” Knight said, “but I may change my mind.”
Web page posted March 24, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Current LLC