Partners in Education

A signature program of The Center for Teaching Excellence at The University of Virginia's College at Wise is the Southwest Virginia Partners in Education. This partnership joins the Southwest Virginia Public Education Consortium, The University of Virginia's College at Wise, and eight public school divisions representing the counties of Buchanan, Dickenson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Tazewell, Wise and the City of Norton. These eight divisions serve over thirty-two thousand students and employ over twenty-seven hundred full-time teachers.

Partners in Education is an intervention blueprint for improvement of public education in Southwest Virginia. Partners in Education redefines the relationship between public education and higher education by creating an equitable, sustained framework for interdependence and accountability. The partnership strengthens and improves pre-service education and increases the capacity of the teacher education program to produce more teachers. Equally as important, Partners in Education provides content resource professionals and professional development providers for teachers currently employed in Southwest Virginia school divisions.

    Seeking to enhance the quality of public education, the partnership focuses primarily on:

• improving the instructional quality of teachers and school leadership personnel;
• providing assistance to school divisions in meeting Standards of Accreditation and to teachers in helping students meet the Standards of Learning;
• helping school divisions and teachers apply technology in support of instructional goals and student performance; and
• assisting students enrolled in pre-service education programs in pursuit of their academic goals and professional development.

The concept for the partnership involves several components. Content fellows, in content areas and at grade levels deemed most needed by the eight school divisions, are housed on the campus at The University of Virginia's College at Wise. Holding an academic title and a title to signify their outreach mission, the content fellows bring discipline-specific expertise (i.e. math educator, reading specialist, etc.) for school systems. They serve as technical assistants for the instructional leadership in the school divisions and as professional development providers, conducting training for in-service teachers and their pre-service counterparts.

As resource and technical professionals, the content fellows assist divisions with curriculum development and improvement, strategic interventions for poor SOL performance, review instructional materials and equipment, and advise on technology integration within the content areas.

The content fellows are available for many types of training: from building level workshops to division-wide and region-wide college courses and institutes across several school divisions.