The University of South Carolina and the National Association for Professional Development Schools invite you to participate in the 2013 PDS National Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. This annual gathering of educators has served for fourteen years as a source of invaluable networking for P-12 and college/university faculty and administrators interested in sharing with each other their efforts in building and sustaining PDS relationships across the school-university continuum. The Planning Team for the 2013 event is building on that legacy by designing a four-day schedule that will include multiple opportunities for formal and informal conversations, presentations from nationally recognized keynote speakers, hands-on workshops addressing such topics as how to get started with a PDS and how to most effectively disseminate your PDS work to the broader public, and sessions specifically designed to encourage teacher candidates to take leadership roles in the national PDS initiative. Specific details about conference events will be shared as they are finalized by the Conference Planning Team.

The conference has grown throughout the years and now typically attracts 1000 educators from nearly every state in the United States as well as a handful of foreign nations. In previous years, the conference has focused on strands which have encouraged presenters to share their experiences with a wide variety of very specific PDS-related topics. These topics have included, for example, implementing the recommendations of the NCATE Blue Ribbon Panel Report, identifying funding and other resources, creating and managing a PDS, succeeding in a challenging political climate, and encouraging arts and sciences faculty to work in PDSs. For the 2013 conference, the Planning Team has decided to go Back to the Basics of PDS work by asking concurrent session presenters to address one of the four broadly-recognized purposes of Professional Development School work: preparing the next generation of educators, providing professional development to sustain current educators, engaging in collaborative inquiry designed to further the profession, and making a positive difference in the learning of P-12 students and in the lives of all stakeholders in the educational community.

A Request for Assistance

As he announced at the 2010 PDS National Conference in Orlando, Dr. Bruce Field (University of South Carolina) is compiling a list of all PDS partnerships in the United States. Such a list would not only help us all answer the often-repeated question of “How many PDSs are there?” but would also serve as an invaluable resource for PDS practitioners as we seek to learn from each other. He has broken that task down to a state-by-state search and is looking for individuals in each state to take the lead in compiling the list for their particular state. If you would like to be a part of this endeavor, please contact Bruce for specifics. He can be reached at fieldb@mailbox.sc.edu.

The Professional Development Schools National Conference is sponored by: