McGill Faculty of Education-EMSB collaboration: "Teaching to learn and learning to teach"

McGill University's Faculty of Education and The English Montreal School Board (EMSB) are pleased to announce an agreement to explore new avenues of collaboration with a view to:

• facilitating the exchange of knowledge between the two institutions;
• enhancing the practical and theoretical expertise of both teachers and student teachers.

Initially, this partnership will allow teachers at Bancroft Elementary School and MIND High School to share their field expertise with the faculty and student teachers at McGill and to benefit in turn from greater on-going access to the latest developments in research and educational technologies under the aegis of the Faculty of Education. Student teachers in this model will act as additional on-site resources, and the school, for its part, will provide them with the opportunity for on-site observation and action research.

To initiate this collaboration, a working group will be established, consisting of board and school administrators, teachers, school governing board representatives, and members of the Faculty of Education. The role of this committee will be to develop a long-term plan of action, including the activities, steps, and required timelines. In addition to the activities identified above, consideration will be given to such initiatives as:

• an exchange of professional development activities between the field experts at the school level and subject-area specialists at the university level;
• collaboration of McGill student teachers with EMSB students in curricular and extra-curricular activities, special projects (e.g., science fairs, art exhibits, debating teams, plays), tutoring, etc., in exchange for course credit;
• the sharing of physical resources, whereby classroom space at the school could be made available to McGill students and access to certain specialized facilities at McGill (e.g., science and computer labs, libraries, gymnasium) would be provided to EMSB students.

The Faculty of Education and the EMSB look forward to developing "teaching schools" that would benefit both learning communities and serve as models for future endeavours to bridge the gap between theory and practice. It is expected that some of these initiatives will be implemented as early as the Fall of 2002.