TEAM spirit at IUB helping build teaching careers

By Susan Voekel

First there was The Charter: Strategic Directions. Then there were the strategies.

After the Strategic Directions Charter became a reality, the Indiana University family got to work developing ways to implement it.

The School of Education at IUB had a faculty retreat at Lake Monroe. Out of that retreat several projects emerged. One of them was Project TEAM (Transformative Education Achievement Model), directed by Christine Bennett, an IUB professor of education who was part of the retreat's Minority Enhancement group.

For a long time, Bennett has recognized the need to encourage minority students to choose teaching careers. About 15 percent of the students at the Bloomington campus are minority students, but less than 1 percent of them seek to become licensed teachers.

TEAM is designed to change that. It is now a full-blown project with Strategic Directions funding and 21 minority students participating. Eight of these had not been heading toward teaching before they heard about Project TEAM.

"The primary purpose of Project TEAM is to establish a community within the School of Education that provides academic, social, personal and financial support for students from under-represented minorities who wish to become teachers," said Bennett.

Seventeen of the first TEAM students are enrolled in an interdisciplinary seminar, "The Teacher as an Agent of Inquiry and Social Justice," which emphasizes decisions about teaching and learning. Their initial activities and reactions indicate that the goal is attainable.

"The students are so inspiring," Bennett said, explaining that the instructors make suggestions, then the students go far beyond them with fresh ideas and enthusiasm.

And the students think they have found a home in Project TEAM.

"It provides a way to belong to a group of people who have similar interests," said Angela Nowling, a junior from Fort Wayne. "I had planned to be a teacher, but I didn't realize how small a group the minority students were in the School of Education." And, she added, "TEAM helps put us in touch with potential employers."

In addition to attracting college students into the program, a goal is to reach out to middle school students to develop their interest in becoming teachers.

Another goal is to establish an educational model which can be used by other teacher education institutions in attracting minority students to teaching.

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