NAPDS Awards National Exemplary PDS Achievement Award to School of Education
Buffalo State’s Professional Development School (PDS) Consortium, a partnership between the School of Education, Teacher Education Unit, Western New York P–12 schools, and several overseas sites, will receive the Exemplary PDS Achievement Award from the National Association for Professional Development Schools (NAPDS).
This is consortium’s third award from NAPDS. This year the PDS will be honored with its second Exemplary Achievement Award, having previously received the award in 2011. In 2013, the PDS received the Spirit of Partnership Award which recognized Buffalo State's consistently high level of student participation at NAPDS's annual conference.
In announcing the award, NAPDS noted that “the Buffalo State consortium was cited for its exceptional international outreach and long-standing relationships with Buffalo-area public schools. Consortium partners are deeply invested financially and programmatically in supporting the educational needs of the young people in area schools and the next generation of teachers learning their craft through Buffalo State’s programs. Study-abroad opportunities and teaching internships in nine countries on five continents have extended the global impact of Buffalo State’s program beyond its base in 31 Western New York school districts.”
NAPDS is the pre-eminent national organization supporting and advancing school-university collaboration and clinically rich practice as the norm for educator preparation. Its vision is to serve as an advocate for the educational community in promoting the continuous development of PreK–12-higher education-community relationships.
Katherine Conway-Turner, president of Buffalo State, said, “We are very proud of the outstanding work done by our faculty and students in collaboration with teachers and administrators throughout New York State as well as in other countries. International partnerships give future teachers a global understanding of education and, in many cases, first-hand experience of the challenges facing second-language learners.”
Buffalo State is one of four outstanding institutions to receive the Exemplary PDS Achievement award. The other three are Baylor University, Ohio University, and Penn State.
“Since its earliest days of collaborative practice with local schools in the 1990s, our Professional Development School Consortium has grown to be an exemplar of clinically rich practice, which is a new mandate for all teacher education programs in New York State,” said Wendy Paterson, dean of the School of Education. “Through our PDS partnerships, candidates in Buffalo State’s educator-preparation programs develop their craftsmanship in authentic, local, and diverse schools and in community programs from their very first courses throughout their professional development. Working in so many different schools offers our candidates the best possible opportunities to learn about themselves as teachers—long before the final student-teaching experience.”
“This NAPDS award recognizes the astounding expansion of Buffalo State’s PDS model into partnerships with global school sites, a program we now call International PDS,” continued Paterson. She noted that, through PDS’s action-based research grants, Buffalo State faculty and students collaborate with teachers and school leaders to do research that addresses the unique challenges identified by the partner schools themselves. Such partnerships move beyond daily practice into change agency, advancing social justice, and supporting academic achievement for all children.
“This national recognition honors the many hours of exhaustive work by all of our PDS members," said Paterson. "Coming on the heels of the publication of our first book, Doing PDS: Stories and Strategies from Successful Clinically Rich Practice, this award only affirms our fierce commitment to this outstanding model of teacher and leader education.”