Monday, August 3, 2015

We are not Tom Brady, either (UPDATED)

I got a couple of questions last week about WPS's being listed as a partner with Sposato Graduate School of Education, which is coming out of the MATCH charter school....is 'empire' too grand a word to use?
This was at least partly in response to a piece "I Am Not Tom Brady," posted last week by Jennifer Berkshire. In it, Amy Berard, who taught for the Lawrence Public Schools under their state receiver, wrote of a teacher training technique that involved her being coached through an earpiece while she was actively teaching. If you haven't read it, please do. There are some ties between the organizations that did this and Sposato.

I didn't know anything at all about it, so I sent off a couple of inquiries to administration. I was told that Sposato (which is collaborating with the Harvard Graduate School of Education) had had a preliminary meeting with some in Human Resources, who had been favorably impressed by the support given to new teachers through such a program. A second meeting with our Human Resources Director was to follow to get more information and discuss further, but it never happened. And now we're between HR directors, and not likely to add something like this to what is being juggled, at least at this point.
I was also told that WPS would ask that Sposato remove WPS from their "partners" list, which has not as of this morning happened.

UPDATE: WPS is no longer listed. We've been told it was a typo; you'll note "Waltham" is now up.

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