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K-16 Collaboration Committee

Report from the Secondary Education Committee 2003

Report of the Secondary Education Committee

The Secondary Education Committee is currently working in several areas that foster American Studies scholarship in both the secondary schools and in higher education.

The Crossroads staff have taken over hosting the committee listserv and launched a webpage on the Secondary Education Committee at the ASA website. We hope that this page will allow us to provide content and keep it updated easily. So far, the page has information about the committee and members, but limited information about resources and models. We hope that the site and its related links will be especially helpful in centralizing information about ASA resources for secondary and university educators (one-stop shopping, at least initially) in support of American Studies programs.
The committee is also working on an update to the excellent ASA Secondary Schools Model Programs resource guide, which is already available online.

In addition, the Secondary Education Committee is developing a “partnership planning tool” to support the collaboration of secondary schools and universities that may also be helpful for the across-the-organization work of internal committees, task forces, and members as well as internal and external partnerships. Significant amounts of federal funds via the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)-also called the “No Child Left Behind” Act (NCLB)-are earmarked for programs designed to improve teacher quality (defined in the legislation as content experts with full state certification), to
provide quality professional development programs for new and experienced teachers, to align curriculum with national standards, to improve instructional practice, and to provide tutoring directly to K-12 students. University and secondary school collaboration is a required component of many of these funding opportunities, so once the partnership planning tool is completed, the Secondary Education Committee would be interested in piloting a project in one or more of the above-mentioned areas. Deb Schmalholz and Lois Rudnick, two former members of the Secondary Education Committee, are working on this updated guide, and plan to have a draft ready by this spring.

The Houston convention continued the ASA’s tradition of highlighting Saturday as “Focus on Teaching Day” (FOTD) by scheduling sessions that highlight American Studies curriculum and instruction at both the high school and university level. The committee was somewhat disappointed in attendance at these sessions and especially at the luncheon, where a significant number of people simply didn’t show up. There was also no discernible presence from local educators at the Focus on Teaching Day.

At the Hartford convention, we have tried to solve some of these problems of attendance. At this conference, we have added a second day (Friday) of off-site workshops co-sponsored by the New England ASA and local schools, colleges, and the Connecticut Historical Society. A request was made to (and granted by) ASA that teachers who register and participate in the Friday workshops will also be able to attend FOTD on Saturday at no extra charge. The NEASA has already worked with local educators to plan target mailings and invitations and to secure Continuing Professional Education (CPE) units for teachers who attend the convention. Contacts made and referrals given by ASA members in Houston have facilitated this tremendous partnership of the NEASA and the Secondary Education Committee in planning for Hartford. Other collaborations include the committee’s co-sponsoring two sessions for the Hartford program: one with the Queer Caucus and one with the Graduate Students’ Committee. We are sponsoring a luncheon with Bruce Franklin, who is giving what we hope will be a provocative address on Vietnam and the role of dissent. We hope that this strategy will increase our attendance and outreach to local communities.

While the pedagogical emphasis of past conference sessions has been well-received, the committee is also exploring the possibility of more content-oriented workshops at future conferences. ASA university colleagues could provide secondary educators with cutting-edge scholarship in American Studies and in the separate disciplines. We will be discussing this at length at our committee meeting in Hartford and invite all ASA members to provide us with their ideas about this program development.

This last goal highlights two key challenges that continue to inform, and sometimes, inhibit the work of the Secondary Education Committee. High school teachers and university professors inhabit very different worlds—in the amount of autonomy and intellectual freedom afforded in the workplace; in the different criteria for tenure and promotion; in the number and types of students they time and the amount of time they have to prepare courses. It is often very difficult for these two groups to build partnerships effectively because of these key differences.

Given their relative privilege and status, university professors need to do more, I believe, to provide support and resources for secondary teachers—to advocate for better curriculum and teaching conditions, to provide accessible versions of their research that are useful with a younger, more heterogeneous population than university students, even at the most open of public campuses, ever encounter. Unfortunately, universities do not value partnerships and outreach work in their tenure and promotion guidelines; even professors who want to work effectively with secondary teachers find that they cannot without risking tenure and promotion.

The ASA cannot be expected to solve a problem of this scale. Articulate advocacy on behalf of high school and university partnerships, however could provide university faculty with ammunition in their ongoing skirmishes with university administrators. The secondary education committee recommends that the executive committee consider this issue in its future work.

The Secondary Education Committee changed chairs this year; Jaime Harker and Ron Briley, representing a university and a high school, respectively, took over as co-chairs. Most of the work that the Committee this year has completed projects that Deb Schmalholz, the previous chair, initiated. At our committee meeting in Hartford this year, we plan to build on Deb’s excellent work and identify several projects to focus on in the next two years.

Respectfully submitted,
Jaime Harker