TTT Program Trains Future Ed Professors

The Graduate School of Education has begun a program designed to give future professors of education a practical knowledge of classroom teaching.

The Training Teachers of Teachers Project (TTT), federally-funded through the U.S. Office of Education, seeks to alert doctoral students in education to the needs of children, while effecting changes in the relationship between students and teachers and increasing community participation in the schools.

The TTT staff is currently working in three public school sites-two in Newton and one in Cambridge. A fourth site is planned for an inner-city school in Boston.

Pilot School

In Cambridge, the new program operates a pilot school-a school-within-a-school-at the Rindge Technical High School. The school consists of 60 ninth graders intended to represent a cross-section of the Cambridge student population, high school teachers, several Harvard faculty members, and six Harvard doctoral students.

The pilot school proposal, accepted by the Cambridge School Committee, warns that "the events of recent months at colleges and high schools across the country show that if we ignore student voices, we do so at some risk." The new school aims at increasing student participation in decision-making which affects their lives.

During a six-week planning session in self-government last summer, students drew up a constitution for the school. The directors of the program hope that such activities will help "teach responsibility in the use of power, and rationality in the settlement of disputes."

The program, directed by David E. Purpel, associate professor of Education, has received a grant of $344,000.