The purpose of this announcement is twofold:

1. to encourage your participation in the Second Great Virginia Teach-In if you have not, as yet, registered; and
2. to request your assistance in providing information for a workshop scheduled for human resources administrators from Virginia's 132 school divisions and higher education officials from the commonwealth's 37 approved teacher preparation programs that will be held Friday afternoon , March 4, 2005-the day before the Second Great Virginia Teach-In.

The purpose of the workshop is to generate an open and focused dialogue among the two groups to identify the 10 most important issues and concerns they wish to address with each other with the goal of ultimately developing ( not necessarily at this workshop) shared strategies for dealing with the identified concerns and issues. As a result of a recent meeting of the Second Great Virginia Teach-In Steering Committee, some issues and concerns have already been generated as follows:

• Critical Shortage Areas: How can school divisions and colleges and universities partner to meet staffing needs in critical shortage areas?
• Teacher Attrition: How can school divisions and colleges and universities partner to support novice teachers from pre-service to service in the all-important first year?
• Teacher Leadership: What do school divisions need from their best classroom teachers in terms of teacher leadership (leadership from the classroom out) and how can colleges and universities help to meet that need?
• Quality Field Experiences: How can colleges and universities and school divisions partner to improve the quality of field experiences for pre-service teachers?
• Highly Qualified Teachers: How can colleges and universities and school divisions partner to assist current teachers in meeting HQT requirements?
• Leadership Preparation: How can colleges and universities and school divisions partner in the grooming, development, and professional preparation of future school leaders?

For additional planning purposes, and to obtain the opinions and suggestions from as many persons as possible from each group, could you please take a few minutes to complete and send the following mini- questionnaire? Please complete the questionnaire by Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005.

Click here to participate in the questionnaire for determining the ten (10) most significant concerns and issues of Virginia Human Resources Administrators and Teacher Preparation Higher Education Officials.

The data obtained by this questionnaire will be used by the workshop planning committee to ensure that the issues addressed at the workshop are those actually identified by the respective groups and workshop participants.

If you have any questions about this survey, please call, fax or e-mail Dr. Steve Sailer at (804) 561-5719 and wssels@msn.com.

Thank you, again for your assistance! We look forward to seeing you soon at the Second Great Virginia Teach -In.

NOTE: A VASPA Business Meeting is scheduled for 4-5 pm , March 4 (meeting room TBA) .An important agenda item is a proposal by the Executive Committee for the terms of office for the President and the President-Elect to be extended to two(2)consecutive years for each position (presently, both positions have just one-year terms, ). The proposal is for the President to serve a two-year term automatically after serving a two-year term as President-Elect and for the President-Elect to serve a two-year term .The VASPA Executive Committee has unanimously endorsed this proposal and strongly recommends a "YES" vote for this proposal at the Business Meeting on March 4.