WSTRFT to receive PDK grants

Washington State Teachers Recruiting Future Teachers (WSTRFT) will receive $6000 in grants this year from the State Chapter ($3000) and PDK International’s Regional Grants Program ($3000). The grants will be used to partially support the certification and re-certification training of more than 170 high school teachers and teacher trainers who teach the “Careers in Education Course.” During the training, new and experienced teachers review and learn to use WSTRFT’s “Academy Careers in Education Manual” and 180-hour curriculum. The curriculum is used in more than 160 schools and 70+ school districts throughout the state.

WSTRFT is a statewide organizaton committed to actively recruiting, training, coaching, and mentoring highly qualified diverse high school students into careers in teaching.
The PDK Project grants support curriculum development and dissemination activities which include presenting and sharing innovative program at the local, regional, and international conferences. Washington State PDK Chapter 1599 Chair, Katherine Sue Barnum, an OSPI School Improvement Faciliator, and Seattle University professor, Nancy Bush are leading the project with Educational Consultant, O.J. Coates of Spokane, WA.

We trained 25 new teachers for Teacher academy classrooms last year with a total of 175 trained for the state.

We had a Spring conference in Yakima on May 7-8, with the theme "Here's looking at You" Sessions included day one keynote by Ken Wilson, "Energizing your Classroom: Getting Under achievers to take Responsibility" and day two keynote Pat Steinberg, "Helping Your Academy Student Look at Special Education". There were also numerous breakout sessions on math, science, portfolio development, an OSPI update, writing letters of recomendation, and recruiting students for the program.

WSTRFT will be training new program teachers again in October this year as part of the Vocational conference. WSTRFT will also be presenting our program at the PDK International Summit in San Antonio in November and will have an article about the program in the upcoming Washington PDK Journal.