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Writer Frank McCourt spoke at the March event for teachers — and signed books. (Photo: Joe Sinnott, WNET.) |
Originally published in Current, July 31, 2006
By Steve Behrens
Thanks in part to New York City’s high hotel rates, “there hasn’t been a national educational conference to come to New York City in over a decade,” says Ron Thorpe, v.p. and director of education at WNET/WLIW.
So the pubTV station threw one for the city’s elementary-secondary educators in March 2006 and plans to do it again March 23-24, 2007.
This year’s Celebration of Teaching and Learning, on a former Hudson River freight pier, may seem out of scale for the gatherings that a pubTV station ordinarily attempts, though perhaps not for a vast city with a pent-up demand for teacher conferences. Nearly 7,000 teachers attended, mostly from the tri-state region but including travelers from more than 30 states.
“This is about reestablishing our position in the schools,” says Thorpe, a former teacher and foundation official who joined WNET in 2003.
He was gratified to find the intended message came through in the newsletter of the United Federation of Teachers, a conference sponsor: “Executives at public television went back to their roots last month . . .”
The station has been beefing up online content for educators related to its major series. It recently created eight lesson plans for major bios in its American Masters series and an Access Islam section from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly.
Though many sessions on school issues were not directly related to public TV, planners brought in reps from PBS series where they were pertinent, and Thorpe aims to do more of that in 2007.
Next spring’s conference will feature such PBS figures as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, new host of Nova scienceNow, and pick up on the theme of science education, linked to the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the first Soviet satellite. Speakers will include Dr. Mel Levine, learning abilities expert and pediatrician from the University of North Carolina Medical School, who was featured in the 2002 PBS documentary Misunderstood Minds.
The WNET Board’s education committee originally wanted to throw a party celebrating the teaching profession. That morphed into a professional development conference with the same purpose.
Ticket sales ($180 for one day), exhibit space rentals and sponsorships (starting with JPMorgan Chase) didn’t entirely cover the costs, which came to about $2 million, with perhaps 2,000 attendees coming in free, Thorpe estimated. Next year, he expects to break even.
School systems outside New York City bought many of the tickets this year, and that number may rise in 2007 with the city public schools paying admissions for some of their teachers. Sponsors such as the Prudential Foundation and the United Federation of Teachers also bought tickets for hundreds of teachers. The event’s top sponsor gave out 10 JPMorgan Chase awards for teachers’ multimedia classroom projects.
Logistics were handled by WNET’s conference production partner, ENK International, which is redeveloping Pier 94 as a venue for mid-size conventions.
WNET also used the star power of celebrities likely to appeal to teachers, including Tom Brokaw, whose spouse chairs the station’s Education Committee; Gwen Ifill; author Frank McCourt, who was once a teacher; and actor Richard Dreyfuss, who played one in a movie. Children from the Los Angeles elementary school featured in P.O.V.’s “Hobart Shakespeareans” also performed at the conference.
The conference included a Tri-State Leadership Summit, presented in cooperation with the New Jersey and Connecticut pubTV networks. Attendees also were attracted by smaller regional conferences held at the same time and place, including a teachers’ union conference for English teachers and an annual literacy institute for a Long Island school district.
Web page posted Aug. 14, 2006, updated Nov. 28, 2006
Current
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Copyright 2006