Spanning boundaries to support teaching and learning: reflections from recipients of the NASUP exemplary PK-20 boundary spanner award

Kristien Zenkov, Elizabeth Rozas, Jennifer Hatch Knight, Gina Dudkowski, Eva Garin, Drew Polly

PDS Partners: Bridging Research to Practice

ISSN: 2833-2040

Open Access. Article publication date: 1 January 2025

68

Abstract

Purpose

Annually, the National Association of School-University Partnerships (NASUP) awards individuals with the Exemplary PK-20 Boundary Spanner Award. The award goes to a university-based or a PK-12 school or school district-based individual who “innovates the systems or practices to enhance the learning of all of those involved in the partnership (NASUP, n.d.).” This article describes the boundary-spanning activities and perspectives of recipients of the NASUP Boundary Spanner Award during its first two years that it was awarded (2023 and 2024).

Design/methodology/approach

The article includes autobiographical and biographical accounts about the recipients of the NASUP Exemplary PK-20 Boundary Spanner Award.

Findings

While there are no empirical findings, recipients of the NASUP Exemplary PK-20 Boundary Spanner Award shared their backgrounds, reasons for serving as a Boundary Spanner, and the impact of their work.

Originality/value

This article provides firsthand accounts of the experiences and activities of individuals who serve as Boundary Spanners to support teaching and learning.

Keywords

Citation

Zenkov, K., Rozas, E., Knight, J.H., Dudkowski, G., Garin, E. and Polly, D. (2025), "Spanning boundaries to support teaching and learning: reflections from recipients of the NASUP exemplary PK-20 boundary spanner award", PDS Partners: Bridging Research to Practice, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/PDSP-09-2024-0015

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2024, Kristien Zenkov, Elizabeth Rozas, Jennifer Hatch Knight, Gina Dudkowski, Eva Garin and Drew Polly

License

Published in PDS Partners: Bridging Research to Practice. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode


Introduction

Of the awards given by the National Association for School-University Partnerships (or NASUP—formerly the National Association for Professional Development Schools), there may be none whose criteria is more difficult to define than the “boundary-spanning” honor, given annually to both university- and school-based individuals. While this apparent (and persistent) ambiguity might appear to be problematic when an association is attempting to recognize individuals and raise the profile of such necessary and novel roles, the obscurity of these capacities may actually be what makes them so important to the teacher education and teaching professions and to the programs that prepare future educators. A famous football coach once stated that when you have two quarterbacks you don’t have one, suggesting that two individuals sharing a role means that neither is capable of completing the task on their own. In the case of “boundary-spanners” in teaching and teacher education such logic is turned on its head, and—as the winners of these awards highlight in their reflections in this article—such individuals working in two places at once often reflect the best and the greatest potential of both professions.

Of course, in an effort to guide nominators, in its award description has attempted to articulate the key elements of boundary-spanning roles:

This NASUP award recognizes an individual who is exemplary in meeting Essential 8 where the individual moves beyond the responsibilities of one’s job to impact a third space. Boundary spanners are situated in a “third space” between university and PK-12 settings and are not bound solely by the traditions or responsibilities of any one institution. An exemplary PK-20 boundary spanner innovates the systems or practices to enhance the learning of all of those involved in the partnership.

Nominated individuals should also possess key traits and/or be engaged in foundational activities. Perhaps most importantly, they should be helping to deconstruct “traditional power relationships through the support of and dialogue across contexts,” working to “understand roles and responsibilities across boundaries and relate to others across those boundaries,” and “engaging in practices to understand and interpret differing perspectives that lead to the creation and/or maintenance of mutually beneficial school-university partnerships” ().

While such language would seem to be sufficient to settle for the teacher education field (inclusive of both school- and university-based teacher educators) just what is meant by a “boundary-spanning” roles, recent scholarly evidence would suggest otherwise. In a forthcoming book, Boundary-Spanning in School-University Partnerships (in press with Information Age Publishing)—for which two of the “Boundary-Spanning Award” recipients who authored this article (Zenkov and Polly) served as editors and authors—across almost 30 cases of what the chapter authors argue is “boundary-spanning” activity, it was virtually impossible to identify a coherent or common notion of this concept. As suggested above, perhaps this indeterminate quality is exactly what makes such roles so important to the teacher education field, what animates the individuals whose stories we share below, and exactly what the teacher education needs more of.

Perhaps what is so unique to boundary-spanners and so vital about boundary-spanning activity is not the requisite clarity upon which so many professions rely, typically provided in the form of a position or job description and a concise and transparent set of duties. Maybe it is the ideals upon which such a capacity depends that make it so important and rewarding. Boundary-spanners are also often referred to as “hybrid” professionals and—as the award description notes—they are typically engaged in what is considered “third space” activity. As detailed elsewhere by other scholars (including ), this framing suggests that boundary-spanners seek to develop “flow” across their formal and informal professional contexts. This orientation also suggests that boundary-spanners are seeking some form of professional convergence among the constituents of teacher education ventures, as if some version of harmony could be found across universities and schools.

As the honored individuals in this chapter highlight, though, they are not driven by a goal to merge their capacities or their institutions. Rather, more often than not, they recognize the value of professional “muscle confusion” for helping them to function best and serve the widest array of their constituents—from elementary kids to collaborating teachers or professors. These individuals are not “flowing” between roles in a “converged” manner; rather, they are completing novel engagements with everyday structures in both their primary professional setting (a school or a university), while at least occasionally taking on alternative, sometimes confusing capacities in a secondary professional setting (again, most often a university or a school), in the service of helping themselves, those they serve, and both institutions to become stronger.

These sections below were authored by the recipients (Knight, Dudkowski, Rojas, Zenkov and Polly) or by a nominator (Nowlin). In the case of the first four, recipients were asked to include responses related to:

  • (1)

    How does your role add significance to school-university partnerships?

  • (2)

    How does receiving the NASUP award impact your work with school-university partnerships? and

  • (3)

    What advice would you provide others that are doing similar work to enhance school-university partnerships?

It is our intention that this article provides opportunities for readers to examine their own school-university partnerships or contexts and look for ways to support teaching and learning processes through intentionally designed, mutually beneficial partnerships that may involve boundary-spanning activities.

Communication is key

Gina Dudkowski, South Buffalo Charter School, 2023 recipient

All of the collaboration between South Buffalo Charter School (SBCS) and Buffalo State University begins in dialogue among the university faculty, the administrative team at SBCS and our four teacher liaisons. This group forms our Liaison Team, which meets every other month to discuss on-going initiatives. As associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction at South Buffalo Charter School, I have the privilege of working with teachers at all grade levels to implement our curricula and assessments in all subject areas. Therefore, I am able to add insights to planning conversations with the Liaison Team by providing school community, teacher and curricular context.

This Liaison Team helps to develop innovative, mutually beneficial initiatives to address the needs of the children, families and teachers in the school, the needs of the Buffalo State teacher candidates and provide professional learning for all. For example, we have asked university faculty to run book clubs on co-teaching, mentoring and anti-racism. The mentoring book club led to teacher-created innovations such as monthly mixers for new teachers and their mentors, mentoring protocols and enhanced supports for all mentors in the school who work with teacher candidates and new teachers. Teacher candidates have volunteered to help with our family literacy night and implemented a tutoring program focused on early literacy skills. Our students have traveled to the Buffalo State campus for author presentations by Jason Reynolds and Amy Ludwig Vanderwater. The latter included collaboration with a school in Brazil that we connected with through Buffalo State. We have presented this work at three consecutive annual conferences of the National Association of School University Partnerships. These presentations have included teacher candidates, teachers, me and university faculty. Attendance at the NASUP conference always leads us to more innovation and collaboration as we hear about the different projects being implemented by school–university partnerships around the country. Receiving the Exemplary PK20 Boundary Spanner Award in 2023 was an affirmation of our work and an inspiration to deepen our collaboration.

Building deep relationships and listening are the foundation of our work. By getting to know one another, we continually uncover and realize our unique assets that can be leveraged for the good of our partnership. When I learned more about what our university faculty partners could offer to help us meet the needs of our students, families and teachers, this helped me to think creatively about ways to deepen our collaboration. I found that simply asking the university if they can help with a particular challenge is a great place to start. University faculty bring fresh perspectives for us to consider, so asking is a useful way to think outside the box. In addition, university faculty have come to me with their own challenges that I have been able to address often quite easily and to everyone’s benefit. For example, university faculty asked how we could provide more time for teacher candidates placed in upper-level elementary classrooms to teach early readers and writers. As a result, we implemented a tutoring program in which all teacher candidates work with a student in grade one on early literacy skills for 30-min each time they are in the building. Communication is at the heart of all of our initiatives.

Positions and dispositions

Elizabeth Rozas, University of North Florida, 2023 recipient

I have a vivid memory of scanning the Chronicle of Higher Education web page during the all-encompassing academic job search and reading a job description for an assistant professor position at the University of North Florida. Although Florida was a little farther away from Boston than I had planned on moving, I was struck by a description of a Faculty-in-Residence position as well as the university sponsored grants that supported research in schools. Despite enjoying research methods while getting my education doctorate at Harvard, I was a practitioner at heart. While many of my peers had focused mostly how many articles they could get out of a data set, I had worked on a practitioner book and did professional development at local public schools. I knew that aspect might have kept me from moving to the campus interview stage several times but at UNF the search committee valued my connections with K-12 schools.

In the summer of 2019, I moved my family down to Jacksonville, Florida to start my position of assistant professor of literacy at UNF that included that very role of Faculty-in-Residence at Tiger Academy Charter School in Jacksonville. This position, that counts as part of my load, has allowed me to be part of a school community, to be in the arena of education which has dramatically supported my desire to do research that is of practical use to educators and grounded from real problems of practice. One example of my work at Tiger resulted from numerous conversations with my school’s reading interventionist about discrepancies in different types of reading tests we began a collaborative year-long study that included comparing students’ iready reading scores with running records and phonics assessments. Some students performing far below grade-level in both types of data while a significant portion of students performed poorly in iready but proficiently in the more authentic assessments. We also used observational time stamp data during computerized testing, student interviews and a reading self-concept survey to better understand what we were seeing.

After sharing our findings at whole school professional development, we worked with the Resident Clinical Faculty (RCF) at Tiger and trained that semester’s UNF interns, who had been in my literacy course the prior semester, on a small group phonics intervention program. These interns worked with the lowest performing small groups in their class, which also fulfilled several requirements for their reading endorsement. Meanwhile, data that showed discrepancies in student performance led to conversations about a possible overreliance on iready data when it came to planning instruction and began a whole school conversation about how to address the ability-performance gap some students showed when it comes to computerized testing and better triangulating data.

This position has been integral to my ability to stay highly connected to schools but I think it’s also a question of disposition, which is reflected in partnerships that go beyond my FIR role. Four years ago, I wrote a grant that allowed our university to establish a successful summer institute for the Seven Bridges Writing Project, a National Writing Project site, which is now in its fourth year. We have a collaborative leadership team that includes four elementary teachers from Jacksonville, who not only greatly contribute to the success of our initiative but also provide a valuable lens as current practitioner that, regardless of my history as a teacher, is an asset to my own understanding of current practice. My literacy research on nonfiction reading is an extension of my years in Boston Public Schools where I developed a reading format called HART (High Attention Reading through Talking) that is now used in the Read USA afterschool program in Jacksonville for 4th graders who are in aftercare waiting to meet with their teen tutors. I am also helping to create university-based field trips on renewable energy for elementary students, along with colleagues in our college of engineering, that have teacher-embedded professional development on science and literacy integration, with this first visit being 5th-grade students from my very own Tiger Academy.

Through my work at UNF I feel I have helped, in my own context, close the research-practitioner gap that still persists in education. Teachers at my school have taken part in both regional and national conferences with me and, I believe, have seen how research and teacher inquiry can play a valuable part in classroom and school improvement. It’s hard to imagine why there is often a separateness between K-12 education and university teacher education, although as any tenure-track professor knows, university-school partnership work is complex, sometimes slow moving and not always as valued as it should be.

Receiving the NASUP Boundary Spanner award has validated this type of work that I have always known was valuable. Being recognized in this way has reenergized my commitment to building and strengthening partnerships between my university and K12 schools. But I also think the very creation of this new award highlights the imperative for the field of education to nurture this work – both the positions and dispositions – for both teacher education and K-12 schools to reach their potential.

Boundary-spanning with high school teachers

Kristien Zenkov, George Mason University, 2023 recipient

How does your role/work provides/adds significance to school-university partnerships?

I’m a two decade-long plus veteran of school-university partnerships and Professional Development School (PDS) partnerships. Virtually all of my partnership work has been conducted in secondary settings, which the dearth of research reports on such collaborations suggests are problematic to develop, maintain and study. Why secondary school-university/PDS structures are so much more challenging to implement and examine has also not been thoroughly documented. But those of us engaged in partnership activity in secondary contexts have long speculated that this is the case for a number of reasons: the departmental structures of high schools make it harder to find a key set of partners; high school teachers typically operate as subject area experts in professional siloes; and secondary schools tend to be significantly larger than elementary schools, making finding an “entry point” to collaboration more difficult.

Due to these historical and structural challenges, for approximately the past decade my school-university partnership efforts have been oriented around the unique roles I and my secondary school partners might play—specifically as “boundary-spanners” working across what are typically islands of institutions (schools and universities). Thus, my partnership collaborations have primarily occurred with individual teachers and small high school and middle school teams and English departments, focusing on alternative forms of clinical experience that typically involve joint projects with graduates of the secondary education program I direct. My commitment to boundary-spanning is at the core of these structures, which all require me to work side-by-side with classroom teachers, and most often alongside preservice teachers and doctoral students. I think my boundary-spanning activities and implementation of critical, project-based clinical experiences have been my most significant contributions to school-university partnership work, via the ways these projects simultaneously support me, veteran teachers, preservice teachers, doctoral students in education—all functioning both as classroom practitioners and nascent educational researchers—in exploring novel pedagogies.

How does receiving the NASUP award impact your work with school-university partnerships?

Awards can serve many purposes—I’d categorize these as personal, professional and related to profile. For me, the personal and the professional are pretty closely connected, as I’m fortunate that my personal identity as a teacher educator, scholar and advocate are intimately tied to the boundary-spanning roles I play. I learned about boundary-spanning very early on in my academic training, via the everyday engagements and commitments of three of my mentors—Bill Ayers, Brian Edmiston and Ken Zeichner. I must note that none of these individuals named their capacities or their activities as “boundary-spanning”: the field of teacher education hadn’t yet begun to recognize this notion.

Bill was a scholar-advocate (or -activist) through and through, so my first academic experiences were rooted in this identity and practice. Brian allowed me to apprentice as he functioned as a co-teacher with multiple classroom practitioners, engaging elementary, middle, and high school students in process drama activities that allowed these children and young adults to make sense of various social issues. And Ken introduced me to the concept of “Professional Development Schools,” which have long called on university faculty and classroom teachers to operate on as close to a level playing field as possible around teacher education, teaching and research ventures. In retrospect, Bill, Brian and Ken each appealed to and facilitated my natural instinct and desire to work—ideally daily but at least weekly—in both schools and the university, honoring teachers’ experience, maintaining my own pedagogical “chops,” and using arts-based methods to engage with these teachers, youth and children as co-researchers.

But perhaps the most important way this award has impacted my work as a teacher educator—as a practitioner and scholar, and particularly with school-university partnerships—is via that profile aspect. While I’m very fortunate to be a tenured full professor at a Research 1 institution, a nationally recognized teacher education scholar, and accomplished in the myriad ways that a younger me would have only dreamed of being, the most important aspect of my work and the most sustaining element of my professional identity is as a teacher education boundary-spanner. And, sadly, this is certainly the aspect of my professional life that is least understood and appreciated in my daily interactions with secondary preservice and veteran teachers and middle and high school students, in my national activity as a teacher education scholar, and even in my own program and college. But the award has offered some additional professional validation and at the very least has caused many to ask more about the type of work I do that warranted this honor. I’m also looking forward to further raising the profile of boundary-spanning roles and activities—their origins and their urgency—in the forthcoming book on boundary-spanning in teacher education that I’m co-editing and co-authoring with my colleagues Drew Polly and Lin Rudder.

What advice would you provide others that are doing similar work to enhance school-university partnerships?

Two ideas and practices come to mind when I think about how others might engage in boundary-spanning work in support of school-university partnership and PDSs. The first is to be open to any form of partnership—a one period collaborative co-teaching with a veteran or a pre-service teacher, the development of an alumni-led professional development project that honors the pedagogical expertise of veteran teachers and mentor teachers, the mentoring of a current teacher and graduate of a teacher education program into a PhD track, the organization of a university-based instructional methods course around “problems of practice” identified by veteran teachers that are addressed by collaborative planning and co-teaching by these teachers and preservice teachers…and on and on. More and more in the current world of teacher education “school-university partnerships” and “boundary-spanning” roles and structures can’t take one form: In this era, we must be ever more responsive to the professional realities and needs of schools, veteran teachers and preservice teachers. As a university-based faculty member, I am the individual with the personal and professional flexibility, and I need to operationalize that plasticity, via and in support of the best teaching and teacher education work my veteran teacher and future teacher partners can identify.

Finally, I’d offer the advice I’ve given over the years to dozens of doctoral students and early career faculty members regarding my own boundary-spanning and school-university partnership work. In our own PhD programs, many people almost certainly suggested that we always think of any bit of scholarship as leading to a presentation and then to a publication, or the other way around. The upshot was that we should always function with a “feeding two birds with one hand” approach to our professional endeavors. I’d suggest that boundary-spanners and school-university partners have to think not just about such double-dipping but about triple- and quadruple-dipping. How might that co-planned and co-taught lesson with a veteran and/or preservice teacher serve as a data point or a reflection that contributes to an article or presentation? On a grander scale, how might that “problems of practice” orientation to a methods course lead to not just scholarship on that structure, but also to an examination of that structure as a teacher education curriculum model, a novel version of a research-practice partnership, and even proposed educational policies?

The lesson of this award for me—and I’d argue for the fields of teaching and teacher education—is that boundary-spanning and school-university partnerships begin to address some of the current existential threats to schools and teacher education programs by engaging school- and university-based teacher educators in the most authentic of shared professional practices.

Multi-faceted boundary-spanner

Dawn Nowlin, Prince George's County Schools, 2023 recipient

Authored by Eva B. Garin

Dawn has been an active member of the Bowie State University (BSU) Professional Development Network since 2004 when she graduated from our Elementary Education program and was hired at Oaklands Elementary School, the PDS site where she completed her yearlong internship. Dawn became active by joining the site-based PDS committee, hosting early field placements and participating in the school’s inquiry group. After she was tenured, she became an outstanding mentor teacher for yearlong interns. When a new school was slated to open, a group of mentor teachers from other PDS sites in our network wanted the experience of opening a new school and approached the new principal about becoming a new PDS site with BSU. Dawn was one of those teachers and enthusiastically transferred and shepherded the partnership through the beginning stages. Then a few years later, a school asked to join our PDS network and once again a group of PDS teachers from our network transferred to the new site to give it a good beginning as a PDS site. With Dawn’s knowledge, enthusiasm and motivation, she has contributed to creating three highly effective PDS sites.

Dawn has been an exemplary boundary spanner in multiple ways, including serving as: Bowie State University adjunct professor, member of the BSU PDS Network, coordinator of the elementary PDS methods instruction team, BSU mentor teacher and coordinator of mentor teacher workshops. Additionally, Dawn has engaged in boundary spanning roles with the Maryland State Department (MSDE), Prince George’s County Schools (PGCPS) and Anne Arundel County Schools(AACPS) in her role as coordinator of mentor teacher workshops. Additionally, Dawn has carried out exemplary work at her current PDS as well as at a national level with NASUP (formerly NAPDS) and the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

Boundary spanning roles with Bowie State University

Dawn was hired to teach our Methods of Teaching Science Methods course and revised the course to focus on hands-on experiential learning opportunities by hosting the class at her PDS site and having students work with children enrolled in the science club. She also incorporated literacy skills and action research possibilities with the BSU students. When the math methods course became available Dawn jumped in and redesigned that course demonstrating her commitment to Essential 2: Clinical Practice. The redesign included having teacher candidates provide math tutoring with children in an after school format demonstrating her ability to innovate and demonstrate Essential 4. Parents enthusiastically enrolled their students in these opportunities and in many ways Dawn has become the go to person in our department for all things STEM related. Dawn meets regularly with other methods instructors and is the person who pulls together the elementary methods faculty to coordinate assignments and discuss the progress of the BSU students. Dawn’s work with methods courses is guided by continuously improving the courses to ensure connections between theory and practice.

Boundary spanning roles with the BSU PDS network and neighboring school districts

Dawn is also a valued member of our PDS Network that meets monthly and on the occasions when I am unable to attend she steps in as the facilitator. Dawn has become a leader in this space and works with site-based PDS coordinators, representatives from MSDE, PGCPS and AACPS demonstrating her ability to form shared governance structures for Essential 7. In our PDS network Dawn became a facilitator of our Teach Coach Reflect Workshop, a required workshop for all mentors in our PDS Network. She quickly rose to the role of coordinating the training of other workshop leaders, staffing the workshops and revising them each summer using course evaluations and input from our PDS Network members, showing her skill again with Essential 4: Reflection and Innovation. This workshop became so valued in our PDS Network and with school district partners that PGCPS now requires the workshop for all mentor teachers in the district, and Dawn now facilitates this process with the school district by staffing the workshop leaders and coordinating state credit with MSDE.

Boundary spanning roles with NAPDS

Dawn has served in a variety of roles with NAPDS including reviewer, author, presenter, Assistant Editor for PDS partners: Bridging Research to Practice and co-editor of the first themed issue for this journal, For Teachers by Teachers and About Teachers. Dawn served as a reviewer for PDS Partners and it quickly became evident to the co-editors that she possessed a deep understanding of PDS and had a keen eye for helping authors, especially first time authors, share their work. She co-presented with the co-editors at NAPDS conferences and met individually with authors who wanted individual assistance. Dawn also published several articles in PDS partners. For all of these reasons, we asked Dawn to serve as Assistant Editor of PDS partners and she did so with fidelity, hard work and a quest for learning.

When BSU was recognized in 2021 for the Exemplary PDS award, and I was unable to attend in person, it was Dawn and Nicole Wall from PGCPS who stood in for me. Dawn was pivotal in creating the PowerPoint presentation and arranging for multiple practice sessions. Upon her return she was asked to share the presentation with the BSU PDS Network, showing her ability to embrace Essential 9: Resources and Recognition.

Boundary spanning roles with AERA

Dawn has demonstrated Essential 5: Research and Results in multiple ways. Dawn and I conducted research on the impact of action research on interns and their mentor teachers. We wrote a paper that I was able to present at AERA and then with her at NAPDS. During the pandemic, Dawn and I and my graduate student decided to conduct action research on the impact of the pandemic on the yearlong internship that had gone fully virtual for that school year. We interviewed interns, mentor teachers and supervisors and submitted the study to the AERA PDS Research Special Interest group and were awarded the Claudia A. Balach Teacher Researcher Award.

In summary, Dawn’s boundary spanning work speaks to the NAPDS Nine Essentials. Dawn represents P-12 faculty in well-defined boundary spanning roles that transcend institutional settings, working with her school district, the university, other school districts, the state department of education and national organizations. Her role as a methods faculty member is a well-defined role but the leadership she has taken is a testimony to her commitment to PDS work. Being a workshop facilitator for mentor teacher workshops is a well-defined role and compensated by both the school district and university, her leadership in growing it to be a requirement for a school district to serve as a mentor teacher and her leadership in revising the course to meet MSDE standard for credit is another testimony to her PDS leadership across boundary spanning roles. Dawn has excelled in her work such as those in Standards 2 and 3, as demonstrated in her work with action research and inquiry groups and her ability to draw reflections and input from all stakeholders.

You have had the opportunity to hear about the boundary spanning roles that Dawn has accepted and excelled in. It is important to know that Dawn is an exemplary 5th-grade teacher at Whitehall Elementary School and has been recognized for her teaching. She also serves on the Whitehall PDS committee and serves as a mentor teacher. Dawn is the epitome of what it means to be a boundary spanner and teacher leader. She is valued by colleagues in her school, at BSU, at PGCPS, AACPS, NAPDS and MSDE for her hard work, collaboration, PDS knowledge and someone we can all count on!

Leader and boundary-spanner

Jenn Hatch Knight, UNC Wilmington, 2024 recipient

The University of North Carolina Wilmington Watson College of Education Professional Development System (PDS) is a school–university partnership (SUP) that spans across eleven school districts, a university laboratory school and two public charter schools in the southeast region of our state. Our College of Education is home to over 1,300 students engaged in undergraduate and graduate level programs for both future and current educators, Pre-K through high school. The university is situated in the New Hanover County school (NHCS) district.

How does your role add significance to school-university partnerships?

My role as PDS Assistant Director within the larger department of Engagement, Professional Learning and Scholarship is truly unique as it allows me to move between higher education, PK-12 education and the community. It provides opportunities to engage with all stakeholders based on their individual needs while informing the work of the college and pre-service teachers. When my work in these spaces comes together for collaborative experiences that is when the impact on teaching and learning grows exponentially. The main facets of my work are related to supporting beginning teachers in our region, facilitating student support for edTPA successful submission, growing experienced teachers who strive for National Board Certification, and teaching a class for our interns within the elementary program. An example of how my role is able to weave common themes throughout each initiative in a meaningful way is my work of bringing trauma informed resilience and wellness practices to each group in ways that meet their individual needs. The need in schools and for teachers to embed resilience and wellness as a priority became significant post pandemic when burnout was at an all-time high and continues to impact the profession. Based on my work with beginning teachers, I knew building these skills needed to begin prior to being in the classroom and there was not enough exposure in the courses being provided in the college. I decided to craft my course with interns around student engagement strategies and building teacher resilience. I partner with the New Hanover County Resilience Task Force to provide a seminar for professional learning adapted from the Community Resilience Model (CRM) that raises awareness about how trauma impacts the brain and learning while also building their tool kit to maintain personal wellness to ensure success in their career. I am also able to bring this knowledge to our students completing edTPA when they are challenged to identify a wide range of student needs while analyzing the need to inform instructional strategies through an asset-based lens. We spend a considerable amount of time working through the negative impacts of deficit language on student learning and a teacher’s mindset. This is an opportunity to connect to the language and practices of a resilient teacher mindset. I am able to continue this work when I meet with beginning teachers, beginning teacher coordinators and mentors in our partnership districts. In our planning conversations, they often specifically request support in the areas of building resilience and wellness and even if the specific need is a different topic, I am able to build targeted strategies into reflective activities within the professional learning experiences. This learning thread continues seamlessly into my work with teachers on the National Board certification journey as the foundation of the process is beginning with knowledge of students’ abilities and needs. To fully address student needs and the process of teaching the whole child a teacher needs to have a deep understanding of teaching from an equity and inclusion perspective while building on the assets each child brings to the learning environment. Completing the National Board process is a strenuous process, so I intentionally embed wellness strategies into our learning sessions, which helps them realize how they are building resilience along the journey. The practices I intentionally weave throughout all facets of my work bring humanity and relationships back as the central focus of the teaching profession, which got lost in the increased accountability movement. I am proud to be part of a movement that brings practices that make teaching a sustainable and desirable career option a reality.

How does receiving the NASUP award impact your work with school–university partnerships?

Receiving the NASUP Boundary Spanner Award has increased my ability to leverage collaborative learning experiences across the PK-12 and Higher Education spaces. In collaboration with the PDS Director, Somer Lewis, a team has implemented a four-week teacher wellness program that addresses resilience, emotion regulation, health and wellness, making and maintaining connections, and taking initiative. Our director secured grant funding from the NC New Teacher Support Program and our planning team, which included faculty, instructional coaches and a digital learning specialist from NC DPI, curated the learning modules and a research plan. The role out of this program began with Watson students and now we are growing the program to include beginning teachers in a partnership district with the hope of expanding to additional cohorts within education to include school-based leaders and training facilitators to build capacity within school districts. I believe this award has increased awareness in the college of the power within school university partnerships and the wide reaching impacts these collaborative learning spaces can have on teaching and learning that are relevant to current teaching needs.

What advice would you provide others that are doing similar work to enhance school–university partnerships?

Those who are doing the work of school university partnerships are often behind the scenes working to advocate for the profession, enhance teaching and learning, and collaborate to create systems that will make teaching a sustainable profession. It is hard work but so rewarding to be part of positive change that impacts the trajectory of education. My advice to others committed to partnership work would be to look for the invisible thread that connects multiple stakeholders and create spaces for them to come together. Carving out time for collaborative, reflective discussions will open up lanes of opportunity and ways to problem solve in a productive manner that enhances the teaching profession. It may begin as a small seed, hope or dream, but it will spread and grow if given the opportunity and support to thrive across the school university continuum. Continue to push forward while keeping the humanistic nature of education at the center of the work while ensuring all who are part of the solution are valued as individuals with meaningful contributions based on their knowledge and lived experience as an educator.

“How can I help?”

Drew Polly, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2024 recipient

How does your role/work provides/adds significance to school–university partnerships?

The strength of Professional Development School (PDSs) partnerships and school–university partnerships (SUPs) is only as strong as its enactment to the NAPDS 9 Essentials () and its alignment to the comprehensive mission of both schools and universities ().

As a university-based teacher educator it has been a privilege to ask, “How can I help?” and have schools and school districts ask for my support related to elementary school mathematics. While these activities do not directly align to the schools that our candidates are placed in for clinicals and student teaching, these activities in the past few years have led to many of our UNC Charlotte teacher candidates taking jobs in a lot of the schools where I spend time. As a result, years after graduation I am continuing my relationships with our teacher candidates who are now elementary school teachers.

What advice would you provide others that are doing similar work to enhance school-university partnerships?

Ask how you can help. In the book of Jonah in the Bible it talks about Jonah on a ship in the midst of a huge storm (). Jonah went below deck, fell asleep and decided to not help the other crew members. Metaphorically, I see a connection between what Jonah should have done, helped the crew instead of sleeping and the work of boundary spanning. More than ever, there is a need for an “all hands on deck” approach where individuals should ask schools and school districts how they can be involved and be supportive of teaching and learning.

Learning with school-based teachers and leaders. I feel sometimes that university-based teacher educators are at a disadvantage at keeping up with what the trends and foci are in PK-12 school settings since we often miss meetings, communications, and other ways of finding out what schools are working on and what their goals are. As a result a lot of my boundary spanning activities with teachers involve listening, asking questions, and making sure I have a full understanding of their contexts, their goals and priorities before offering suggestions. In many cases, we do mathematics problems together or analyze student work together in planning and learn together. It would be naive and potentially harmful of me to walk into a PK-12 school and expect that the only one learning are those who work in that context.

Make sure activities align to the school’s needs. University-based teacher educators are guests in PK-12 school settings and we have the responsibility to ask as such. There has to be a full understanding of the expectations from school-based and district-based leaders about the goals and purpose of boundary spanning activities and teacher buy-in for boundary spanning from the university-based teacher educator to PK-12 school contexts. While university-based teacher educators often have priorities such as research, service and other obligations, these must take a backseat and the priority needs to be how our activities in PK-12 school contexts can help our school partners.

Look for opportunities to build capacity and replace yourself. It was a painful experience the first time I talked to district leaders about their desire to focus more intensively on supporting teachers with district-based and school-based leaders instead of continuing my boundary spanning activities. While this was a decade ago, reflection and other activities with the school district on different projects led me to really value and prioritize the idea of building capacity and replacing yourself. University-based teacher educators cannot be everywhere and boundary spanning has its limitations in terms of the number of schools and activities where we can serve. As a result, a lot of my activities involve communicating closely with school-based administrators and mathematics coaches to build their capacity so in between my school visits the school continues its momentum. As boundary spanners, another one of our ethical responsibilities is to build capacity and replace ourselves so teaching and learning continue to be supported when we are not in the school building.

Concluding thoughts

The National Association for School-University Partnerships (NASUP, formerly NAPDS) recognizes individuals who make a difference in teaching and learning by engaging in boundary-spanning activities across traditional roles housed in either university or PK-12 school/school district contexts. Looking across the characteristics of individuals, their boundary-spanning activities include a variety of activities. These included co-teaching or teaching in a context that is not traditional their own. For example, individuals based on PK-12 schools and school districts teaching university-level courses and workshops or university-based individuals co-teaching or teaching classes or facilitating professional learning in PK-12 settings. Another common boundary-spanning activity included joint leadership teams in which university-based and PK-12-based individuals work together across traditional boundaries to collaborate on efforts such as professional learning, teacher education for initial licensure candidates or residents, or inquiry research. Lastly, another common thread from all recipients was an approach of being open to ways that they could serve, help and contribute to the other participants in the partnership. This is a critical feature since partnerships are not effective if someone enters the partnership with a predetermined agenda and a lack of flexibility to engage in activities that meet the needs related to teaching and learning in the partnership.

References

Bible.com (2024). Jonah. Available from: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jonah%201&version=NIV

National Association for School-University Partnerships (NASUP) (n.d.). Exemplary PK20 boundary spanner award. Available from: https://nasup.org/exemplary-pk20-boundary-spanner-award/#:∼:text=This%20NASUP%20award%20recognizes%20an,to%20impact%20a%20third%20space

Polly, D., Smaldino, S., & Brynteson, K. (2015). Developing a rubric to support the evaluation of professional development school partnerships. School-University Partnerships: The Journal of the National Association for Professional Development Schools, 8(1), 2023.

Zenkov, K., Badiali, B., Burns, R. W., Coler, C., Cosenza, M., Goree, K., … Lague, M. (2021). Essential 1: Justice is our “comprehensive mission”. PDS Partners: Bridging Research to Practice, 16(4), 2124.

Corresponding author

Drew Polly can be contacted at: drew.polly@uncc.edu

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