CSUCI Officials Make Priority of Teaching Teachers

Responding to the need to turn out more teachers and improve the training they receive, Ventura County’s developing Cal State campus is launching a series of programs to boost the preparation and performance of people pursuing careers in the classroom.

Even though it is not yet a full-fledged university, Camarillo’s Cal State Channel Islands plans to kick off a program this fall to help personnel at local military bases get into the teaching profession. The campus also has joined a larger effort by the university system to reduce the time it takes teachers to earn full credentials.

University officials are even starting to dabble in teacher recruitment, holding a job fair last week. Sponsored by the Ventura County superintendent of schools, it was aimed atattracting new teachers while helping those who already have credentials explore the job market.

The emerging curriculum and the emphasis on recruitment reflect the desire of officials to turn the Channel Islands campus into a premier training ground for beginning teachers and for those looking to advance their careers by continuing their education.

“A primary purpose and priority of CSU Channel Islands will be to help address the teacher preparation crisis in California,” said Barbara Thorpe, head of academic planning for the campus. “I think it’s clear that a primary part of our mission will be to serve the need for teacher recruitment and education in California.”

The need is great. An estimated 250,000 new teachers will be needed over the next decade to keep pace with surging enrollment and class-size reduction initiatives.

The shortage is evident in the 20,000 emergency teaching permits issued statewide this school year. About 500 went to Ventura County.

Efforts to address the shortage come at a time of growing emphasis on the quality of teaching in public schools.

Just last month, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley called for a three-tier licensing system aimed at elevating teaching to a “first-class profession.” He was particularly blunt in calling for a nationwide effort by universities to upgrade the preparation of teachers.

For the Cal State University system, which trains nearly 60% of California’s teachers, that challenge has not been taken lightly.

Last month, the School of Education at Cal State Long Beach became the first in the state--and one of only a handful in the country--to offer a warranty on teachers. The policy commits the university to sending a professor to provide one-on-one assistance to any graduate having trouble the first year on the job.

On a broader scale, Cal State Channel Islands is a key player in a consortium of CSU campuses to develop a distance-learning curriculum for teacher education, known as CalStateTeach. That program seeks to help teachers working on the basis of emergency permits to obtain their credentials within 18 months, in part by watching videotapes and completing courses on the Internet at night and on weekends.

“We will be targeting Ventura County’s need for more teacher training opportunities with a strong emphasis on teacher education,” CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed wrote recently. “At CSU Channel Islands, we can offer a solution [to the demand for more teachers] by providing greater access and convenience to people who want to become teachers or must finish their formal teacher training.”

Toward that end, Channel Islands officials plan to start a program this fall aimed at guiding civilian and military employees at Point Mugu, Port Hueneme and other nearby bases toward teaching careers.

Modeled after a federal program to move downsized military personnel into public schools, courses will primarily be taught through distance-learning technologies such as the Internet and interactive television and will be broadcast to a studio classroom at Channel Islands from Cal State Northridge.

Participants will be able to work toward secondary teaching credentials, which are necessary to teach middle school or high school.

The effort is significant because the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge only offers credential programs for K-6 education and for education administration. The two programs will come together as the campus evolves over the next few years into the new Channel Islands university.

Cheryl Love, credential advisor for CSUN’s Ventura campus, said such programs will provide a good foundation for the emerging Channel Islands university as it continues to craft a cutting-edge teacher education curriculum.

“I think the building blocks are already in place,” she said. “I don’t think it will be difficult to take a system that is already run quite well and make it even better.”

Indeed, teachers across Ventura County are counting on the new campus to lead the way when it comes to recruitment and training.

So when the county’s superintendent of schools office needed a bigger place to hold its second annual job fair, officials turned to the budding campus for help.

Hundreds of prospective teachers and credentialed ones looking for new jobs converged on the bucolic campus Friday. Colleges including Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks to Pepperdine University in Malibu sent recruiters to entice those interested in the teaching profession. And nearly every school district in Ventura County sent a representative to interview those actively seeking jobs.

The Oak Park Unified School District took a high-tech approach to recruitment, setting up a row of laptop computers featuring a student-produced CD-ROM touting the district’s accomplishments.

“We used to have hundreds and hundreds of candidates for our positions, but that pool has been shrinking,” said Mark Webster, the district’s human resources coordinator. “We’re hoping this will help bring us more candidates.”

Several district representatives said they were happy to have the job fair at the developing Channel Islands campus, since the university will be a major provider of new teachers.

“It’s important that all districts in the county work with the university and have it be the major source for new employees into the 21st century,” said Jerry Dannenberg, assistant superintendent for the Ventura Unified School District. “We need all the help we can get to find quality candidates.”

San Diego State University graduate Cyndee Custis, 24, showed up hoping to help fill that need. Custis grew up in Camarillo and graduated from Camarillo High before heading to San Diego for college. She said she tried to break into the job market this school year there and in Orange County but had no success.

That’s when she decided to return to Ventura County, where she has landed a position until the end of the school year in the Las Virgenes Unified School District in Calabasas.

“I thought to myself, in 20 years, where would I want to raise my family? And I decided I wanted that to be in Ventura County,” she said, moving from recruiter to recruiter to sign up for job interviews. “If this is going to put my name on a list and give me a better chance of getting a job, I’m all for it.”

About This Series

“Birth of a University: Countdown to a Cal State Campus” is an occasional series chronicling the development of a four-year university at the shuttered Camarillo State Hospital complex. This installment focuses on efforts to craft a curriculum to boost the preparation and performance of school teachers.