Teachers College at Columbia University will offer an 18-credit training program for mathematics and science teachers in the New York City area this fall.
The program is aimed particularly at those teaching mathematics and science without adequate credentials because of the severe shortage in these subjects, said Stephanie Benjamin, a program assistant at the college. But the courses are also open to college graduates interested in working toward a teaching certificate and others who plan to shift careers, she said.
About 100 inquiries have come in about the program, Ms. Benjamin said.
The program, scheduled to run from Sept. 6 to May 8, 1984, will cost $125 per credit, and will meet Tuesday evenings and some Saturdays. Faculty from Teachers College will teach some courses.
The science courses will include study in biology, nutrition, earth science, and physics. Mathematics courses will include elementary computer programming, geometry, and analysis.
For more information, write Stephanie Benjamin at Teachers College, 525 W. 120th St., New York, N.Y. 10027.
During the last school year, Pennsylvania experienced more strikes by teachers than any other state, according to the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.
The year’s 44 strikes included the longest teacher strike in Pennsylvania history--the 82-day walkout in the California Area School District. Some suggest the problems resulted in part from the fact that the state includes close to 500 small districts. But others say they reflected longstanding labor-relations tensions in the schools that have produced numerous strikes in previous years as well.
Dorsey Enck, a spokesman for the school-boards group, argues that the state’s collective-bargaining process is clearly not working the way it was supposed to under the state law that took effect in 1970.
Union officials concede that anti-strike legislation now under consideration may have a chance of passage this fall because of the large number of strikes this past school year. “They set the mood for what’s happening now [in the legislature],” said William Campbell, media specialist for the Pennsylvania State Education Association.
More than one-fourth (29 percent) of the teachers polled in a new National Education Association survey said they probably would not become teachers if they could start their careers again, and 12 percent said they definitely would not.
Only 24 percent of the respondents said they definitely would choose teaching again, according to preliminary results from the poll.
The survey, called the “1983 Nationwide Teacher Opinion Poll,” will be completed and available for distribution by late September, an association spokesman said.
Nearly 75 percent said they were satisfied with the support they received from their principals, and 83 percent said they derived personal fulfillment from their jobs.
Fewer than half the teachers polled reported that student misbehavior interfered with their teaching activities.
The survey was sent to 1,978 teachers, and the preliminary results are based on a 67-percent response rate.
For further information, contact Linley Stafford, National Education Association, 1201 16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.--ha
