In this week’s issue:
(2) The
6th International TOCFE Conference
Quote
(3) Norman
Cousins
Editor’s
Notes
(4) Kay Buckner-Seal
(1) News from the Philippines
From Nora Uy,
Makati, Philippines
Background on TOCFE
Philippines:
Our volunteer TOCFE
Director of the Philippines, Dr. Cora Santiago, is also the Director of the
National Capital Region of the Department of Education, Culture and Sports
(DECS) which educates 8 million children.
Thirty-six of the thirty-seven superintendents who serve under Cora have
been through a TACT training. There are
three geographical divisions within this region that have especially active TOC
training programs through the support of the DECS, municipal governments, local
Rotary Clubs, and an extraordinary team of facilitators who generously
contribute their time and talent. Here
is a report recently received from Nora UY who is responsible for the TOCFE
Makati Division. —Kathy Suerken
This year, 2001, has
been a very busy year for all of us TOCFE people here in Makati. We are on the last leg of training and
licensing teachers in TACT to which our Training Calendar attests. Since January, we have conducted 27 full
TACT trainings at 27 schools to 1,039 teachers. (The complete list of trainings
is available at www.tocforeducation.com. Click on trainings and then go to schedule.)
In the new Teacher
Instructional Support System in the Philippine school system, researchers
pointed out three factors by which a teacher could fail in teaching: lack of
knowledge of content, lack of teaching skills/strategies and lack of personal efficacy. We zeroed in on the third factor, lack of
personal efficacy, in order to institutionalize the use of TOCFE tools in
teaching the different subject areas.
Here in Makati, my boss, Superintendent Elena R. Ruiz, enabled us to
reach out to each and every teacher in the whole division!
Just wait for all the
rest of our TOCFE news!
(2) The 6th International TOCFE Conference
The 6th
International TOCFE Conference will be held from July 8 to July 11, 2002
at the University of Nottingham in Nottingham, United Kingdom. Nottingham is approximately 100 miles north
of London and the university is one of the United Kingdom’s leading research
universities, with six departments gaining the coveted “Five Star” rating. To get a better picture of what Nottingham
is like, visit their website at: http://www.nott.ac.uk/ to learn key facts
and figures about the University and its activities. The members of TOCFE UK Conference Committee are Galina Doyla,
David Higgins, and Linda Trapnell.
(3) "If
something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an
approach to immortality." —Norman Cousins (1912-1990)
(4) Kay
Buckner-Seal
Nora, thanks for your
contribution to TACTics this week.
Your comments about the three factors by which teachers could fail dealt
with lack of content knowledge, skills/strategies (process), and lack of
personal efficacy (pedagogy). Our
November 30, 2001 issue of TACTics, made a similar connection to a model
of effective instruction, which involved teachers’ knowledge of their
learners, and knowledge and application of process and pedagogy. Further news about your efforts will
probably give us more insights on how the thinking tools can be applied to the
idea of effective instruction. Good
luck!
To the rest of our TOCFE
family, send your responses, applications of the thinking processes, lessons,
announcements, and etc. by mail to:
Cheryl A. Edwards, 2253 S. Hill Island Rd.,
Cedarville, Michigan 49719, USA. Or send
hyperlink to: redwards@sault.com,
or bucknek@earthlink.net.
To
view TACTics in its intended formatting, visit our website at
www.tocforeducation.com
and click on “What’s New.”