Peace Corps Director Bellamy to Speak at Teachers College
Peace Corps Director to Speak at TC
Photograph: Carol Bellamy
Carol Bellamy, director of the U.S. Peace Corps, will be the featured speaker at a Teachers College symposium on Mon., Jan. 30, marking the tenth anniversary of the Peace Corps Fellows Program at TC.
Bellamy's speech will begin at 4:00 P.M. in the Milbank Chapel. Her address will be followed by responses from several individuals who have been involved with the Peace Corps Fellows program at TC--including Frank Mickens, principal of Boys and Girls HighSchool in Brooklyn.
The Peace Corps Fellows Program--which allows returning Peace Corps volunteers to teach in the New York City public schools during the day while earning their master's degrees at TC by taking late afternoon and evening classes--has been so successful that it is now replicated in other colleges and universities from coast to coast.
In New York City, Peace Corps Fellows teach in some of the most blighted neighborhoods, including the South Bronx and the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. They also teach in disciplines where the need for teachers is greatest: science, mathematics, bilingual education, special education and English as a second language. To date, more than 200 returning Peace Corps volunteers have come through the TC program.
Before speaking at TC, Bellamy will visit the classes of Peace Corps fellows who teach bilingual education in an elementary school in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, where a majority of the children come from the Dominican Republic. The two Peace Corps Fellows who teach in the school both served in the Dominican Republic as Peace Corps volunteers.
The idea for the Peace Corps Fellows program was developed by Beryl Levinger, who was then a researcher with the Institute for International Studies at TC. She felt that returning Peace Corps volunteers brought back cultural sensitivity and a self-sufficiency that made them ideal candidates to teach in New York City's schools. She approached P. Michael Timpane, then dean (and later president) of TC and worked with him to create the first model program. Both Levinger and Timpane are expected to attend the anniversary celebration.
On Jan. 30, 1985, an agreement to establish the program was signed by representatives of TC, the New York City Board of Education, the Peace Corps and the Xerox Foundation (an early funder of the program). In September of that year, the first 10 Peace Corps Fellows started their studies at TC. They also began teaching in the New York City public schools, including Boys and Girls High School, where Peace Corps Fellows have worked since.
A 1989 survey of the program's participants and alumni indicated that more than 90 percent stayed in teaching after completing the program and nearly 60 percent continued to teach in their original teaching sites in New York City immediately after finishing the program.
The Peace Corps Fellows program at TC became so successful that, in 1989, Paul Coverdell, then director of the U.S. Peace Corps (and now the junior senator from Georgia), began to promote the idea with other institutions. By 1991, more than 20 had signed agreements to sponsor similar programs.
In most cases, returning Peace Corps volunteers in other programs teach in urban schools. However, at some institutions such as Georgia College, they teach in rural schools and, at the University of New Mexico and the University of Northern Arizona, on Native American reservations.
Three universities--San Diego State, Texas at El Paso and Alabama at Birmingham--have created programs in public health based on the TC model.
Johns Hopkins has initiated a program leading to a nursing degree, in which returning Peace Corps volunteers work in clinics in the inner-city of Baltimore.
