By Matt Kurnick
"Though I firmly believe that one has to work hard in order to achieve, there are serendipitous moments that occur in life as well, and if you've prepared yourself for such a moment, then I think you're in a better position to not only recognize the possibility, but to tackle it." —Robert Lee (on the phrase "Chance favors the prepared mind" and his falling on the opportunity to work at ISU), director of the Chicago Teacher Education Pipeline
(February 25, 2008) Robert Lee is a living example of the adage "chance favors the prepared mind." An adage Lee first heard from one of his mentors. So, it is no coincidence that Lee, director of the Chicago Teacher Education Pipeline, realized his chance to come to Illinois State University, and his chance to make a reality out of a pipeline that had only been an idea. The chance came on one of the few days he had not been working exhaustively on what he had recognized as his life's passion—from the time he had finished student-teaching at a maximum security juvenile detention center in Los Angeles, to this day.
While Lee put the finishing touches on a few things in his life including a five-year stay at DePaul University's Center for Urban Education and his dissertation entitled Learning to Teach in Urban Schools: A University-School Based Partnership in Teacher Education, he submitted to his friends' urges to "let go" and host a barbeque. While crumpling old newspapers to ignite the charcoal for his barbeque, by pure happenstance, he came across an ad seeking a new director for the Illinois State University Chicago Teacher Education Pipeline.
"As I read the description for a new director I kept thinking, 'This is my research in action.' I scanned down and saw that the application deadline had already passed," Lee said. "But I went ahead and ripped it out thinking at the least maybe I could contact them and share my insights from my work at DePaul." Fortunately for both Lee and Illinois State, the search for a new director had failed and the deadline for applicants had been pushed back, providing a chance for Lee to submit his application. Three weeks later Lee completed the interviewing process and was offered the position. "In that story there are too many 'what ifs,'" Lee added in retrospect. "What if my friends didn't persuade me to throw that BBQ? What if I hadn't procrastinated taking that old stack of newspapers to the recycling bin? What if I grabbed that page of the newspaper and it had gone up in flames as I ignited my coals?" Fortunately no one will ever know the answers to any of those questions.
Since those "serendipitous moments," Lee has played a major role in building the Chicago Teacher Education Pipeline that was recently honored with the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education Best Practice Award. The Pipeline is a program—a partnership—between Illinois State and the Chicago Public Schools that aims at preparing and recruiting teacher education students from and for Chicago Public Schools.
Half of the work is in Chicago public high schools where Lee and his staff have started TEACH (Teacher Education and Access to College for Highschoolers) chapters. "Knowing that college graduates have a tendency to return home to teach, it made sense to recruit from Chicago if that is where we want them to teach," Lee said. All TEACH students participate in a service learning component where they tutor and mentor elementary students that attend schools in their community. "When students practice what they've learned, that's incredibly empowering—they see that they can make a positive difference in the life of a student that looks like them and comes from the same neighborhood, which inculcates the value of community ownership and giving back."
"Once students are on ISU's campus, it goes beyond just the recruitment aspect," Lee noted. "If we just focus on recruitment and do nothing to change the way we prepare teachers for challenging urban environments, we just create a revolving door. Data shows us that those same teachers that were recruited a few years prior will leave after just a few years."
Clearly, Lee's work with the Pipeline extends far beyond getting teachers into the schools. "The work is also about the University's Educating Illinois mission and puts into practice the college's conceptual framework Realizing the Democratic Ideal," Lee said. In addition, Lee has also conducted the Pipeline's accompanying research agenda, which has already provided data supporting the work the Pipeline has been doing.
The research has shown statistically significant positive correlations between the attitudes of the teacher education population at Illinois State and the redeveloped courses and other urban-oriented programs that the Pipeline has implemented. The students who take the classes affected by the Pipeline's urban initiatives often have higher intentions to teach in an urban setting, and have better attitudes toward urban education in general. These students also reported a higher perception of preparedness after graduation and during their first year in an urban school.
The success of the programs Lee has worked to implement has shined through in his research. Lee notes that the success of the program represents the collective efforts from many organizations on- and off-campus. "To have this validated and substantiated by empirical research not only helps to justify the vision created and what has been accomplished, but serves as a powerful roadmap of what should be done next."
"Working to create a partnership between a university and a school/district and community takes time, and often long hours that fall outside of what constitutes a normal work day/week," Lee admitted. This commitment to his job is something Lee attributes to his parents who, as a child, he saw work long, unconventional hours as they too built a "community" within a community. Lee said, "I think what I learned from them was the importance of having clarity about your values, convictions and commitments and what you want to engage yourself in, which allows you to be able to follow them wherever they may unexpectedly lead. It serves as a foundation for the next step."
"On the books, teachers only work 186 days a year. But most teachers we work with come in early and stay late, they spend their evenings and weekends planning lessons and grading papers," Lee said. If the Chicago Teacher Education Pipeline staff members have learned one thing from Lee, it is "the Pipeline is not about individuals or individual programs operating in exclusion of others ... this work is about a collaborative experience and a bridge to the next possibility."
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