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Five Edison Community College Faculty Selected for “Great Teachers”
Conference
“The Great Teachers Retreat was very affirming for me,” said Cheryl M.
Buecker, professor of early childhood development at Edison
Community College.
“This is only one of
many professional development opportunities that enable us to grow as
teachers and help put Edison faculty a little ahead of others in what
we know about teaching and learning.”
Buecker of Piqua and four other Edison professors recently
participated in the prestigious, three-day “Ohio’s Great Teachers
Retreat 2003” held at Mohican State Park near Mansfield. Its objective
was to further improve the teaching skills of college and university
faculty and to allow them to ponder and adjust their methods,
behaviors, and attitudes as teachers.
Additional Edison faculty chosen for the workshops were David R. Barth,
Troy, instructor of electrical/electronics; Janet K. Cook, Sidney,
assistant professor of mathematics; Jesse D. Parete, Piqua, professor
of mathematics; and William J. Waxman, Vandalia, instructor of
marketing.
Only 15 faculty members from higher education institutions in Ohio
were selected for the retreat. A dozen of them represented nearly 200
years of teaching. Three participants were new faculty members at Ohio
colleges and universities.
“For sure, the retreat caused Edison educators to venture beyond
the limits of their own specializations in search of transferable
ideas,” stated Keith L. Roeth, dean of business and humanities.
“The retreat’s focus was on the art of teaching, and not the
subject matter,” he said.
Buecker pointed out that Edison faculty benefited most from
sessions which enhanced methods for serving under prepared students
and for teaching writing in many different courses of study.
Edison staff also discovered that many of the retreat ideas
promoted better methods for integrating into the classroom Edison’s
own core values-- such as critical thinking, human diversity, and
interpersonal skills, or teamwork.
Roeth added that this retreat was based on the notion that, if
properly tapped, “the collective wisdom, experience and creativity of
any group of practicing educators surpasses that of any individual
expert.”
The “Ohio Great Teachers Retreat” is an outgrowth of the National
Great Teachers Seminars founded in 1969.
Underlying all activities of the seminars and the retreat, as it’s
now called, is the challenge to characterize and define the “Great
Teacher.”
Over the last three years, 16 Edison faculty have been selected for
the program.
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