2021
Mid-Valley Educator Collaborative
- By consensus of Collaborative membership, it was decided in spring 2021, that it was time to organize with a broader group of partners to seek to continue collaborative efforts and improve educator workforce development across the region. With this, the Salem-Keizer Collaborative, after 13 years, was disbanded and the Mid-Valley Educator Collaborative was launched.
2019
Clinical Model of Teacher Preparation
- The majority of the Salem-Keizer Collaborative’s work was focused on further refinement of the Clinical Model of Teacher Preparation, demonstration and validation of its efficacy, and the continuous improvement of all related systems and activities embedded in the model of clinical preparation.
2017
Pacific University Joins the Collaborative
- Pacific University joins as a partner. The Salem-Keizer Collaborative continues develop more robust partnerships and relationships with additional educational organizations including, most notably, Chemeketa Community College.
2012-2013 school year
Foundational Framework & Teach Oregon Grant
- In the 2012-13 school year the school district and partner universities wrote and received a Teach Oregon grant funded by the Chalkboard Project to build upon the foundational framework that was started in 2008. During this planning year the Salem-Keizer Collaborative was officially formed (Willamette University has since dropped out of the Collaborative because the university discontinued their education program). The vision developed by the Collaborative at that time stated:
Our dedication to the comprehensive, collaborative and systemic improvement of teacher education at both the pre-service and in-service levels in the mid-Willamette Valley will result in high quality instruction, continuous professional growth over a teacher’s entire career and improved academic growth and achievement for every student we serve.
The Teach Oregon grant awarded to the Salem-Keizer Collaborative included several goals to support the articulated vision. One of those goals was to prepare up to 10% of the Salem-Keizer teacher workforce as clinical teachers to mentor and work with teacher candidates in residence. It was through this goal that the Clinical Model of Teacher Preparation was formed. This model was developed to create a more effective system of teacher preparation that would better prepare teacher candidates to successfully meet the challenges faced by teachers in today’s classrooms and to ensure student success, both in academic achievement and in college and career readiness
2008
Salem-Keizer Collaborative Founded
- Collaborative work between the Salem-Keizer School district and its university partners related to teacher preparation began formally in 2008 when the school district was awarded a mentoring grant from the Oregon Department of Education. As a component of that grant, the Salem-Keizer Mentor Advisory Committee was formed. This group was comprised of district personnel and university deans from Willamette University, Corban University, and Western Oregon University. Teacher candidates from these three institutions made up the majority of the student teachers placed in the Salem-Keizer School District each year and also represented the universities that produced the majority of the teachers the school district hired each year. The universities were interested in this partnership in order to learn how their graduates were doing in their first three years of teaching so they could better design their pre-service experiences and consequently produce more effective teachers. This committee met on a monthly basis to discuss the mentor program and to also share data collected from the mentoring experience.