Audio recording clip of interview with Dr. Porter Troutman by Claytee D. White, November 20, 2006

Once I finished Southern I came West. And when I got here, I was looking for a job. My first job was in the recreation department. I worked one solid year in the recreation department with Joe Haynes, the brother of Marcus Haynes. I don't know if you know Marcus Haynes, famous basketball player, magicians, just known all over the world. But anyway, that was my first job. Before I got here I went to Chicago and I interviewed for a job and was going to take a job as a teacher in Chicago. The lady in personnel asked, "Well, where are you from?" I said Las Vegas. She said, "And you want to come here to teach?" And I said yes. She said if you're from Las Vegas, I'd go back there. And then she began to tell me about how the school district was there during that time. There was just a tremendous turnover. The schools were really in poor, poor, poor shape, and she was telling me that teachers would go out at the drop of a hat. In other words, there were a lot of issues that they were grieving about and they just didn't stick around. They would go out like two and three times a month. And the kids were really just challenging. She said most of the time you were just responsible for taking the roll. Later on I found out that the Chicago school system was in turmoil, in a lot of turmoil. So I returned here, worked one year in the recreation department and then came out here and got a master's degree in elementary education. Here at UNLV? At UNLV, right. Taught for five years in the district. I became very disenchanted because, again, I wanted to see change and change wasn't really where I was in the classroom. I figured I would do better if I got to the university level and started working on some things. From working one year in the recreation department and then teaching five years, the university had a program. They 6 had what they called a Teacher Corps program. This was collaboration between the Clark County School District, the community and the university. And they hired I think it was 16 leaders for six teams of people. These teams were responsible for a pre-service program for interns. The interns were people that had 60 hours. And they were recruited from all across the country. The university, the school district and the community were all involved in this collaborative process. A special program was set up for those interns to acquire an elementary education degree in elementary education to address the urban needs of students. In other words, it was kind of an Urban Ed degree where those interns that were in the program — we had as many as 25 or 30 interns from all around the country. There were like five recruitment centers at least that we drew these people from, and they would come in with 60 hours. I worked as a team leader for five weeks and I was kicked upstairs to associate director and eventually to director. But what the university did was design a 60-hour program for the interns. And the interns had three obligations. They had to do ten hours of community service so they would have a perception of what was going on in the community. Then they had to do what we call the schoolwork. They had to demonstrate the skills that the university was responsible for developing. The program was actually a competency-based teacher education program where the university instructors or professors created modules and these were learning modules. And then the students were held accountable for demonstrating those skills under the supervision of a team leader in a classroom of students. Okay. And then the university instructor would also come out and observe the interns as they demonstrated those skills and all the coursework that we designed here. So I was kind of a broker. We had like a million dollars about every year to kind of make changes. Teacher Corps program was a change program. And that was where my head was during that time. We needed to really look at the education system. We needed to really prepare students to be effective educators in the urban school districts. And that was kind of a national mission all across the country. We were just fortunate that we had that kind of program here. So I was real excited about that. I did that for ten years here from being associate director and finally I became director. We worked here at the university for ten years. But we also worked not only here in Clark 7 County with the urban district, but we also went out in the surrounding counties. We had a program in Nye County that served Pahrump, Beatty, Amargosa — I can't think of the other little town. But we offered an in-service program for that particular area, as well. And what that really equated to - for those teachers that were out in the rural kind of areas we designed an in-service program based on the same kind of arrangement, instructor- designed learning modules, so those teachers could demonstrate those skills with a set of kids in a classroom. And, of course, you had the community component as a part of that because the interns would have to be a part of the intern component. They still had ten hours of community service in a rural area. They had the university work at the university, which was working on their master's degree. Then they had the classroom experience. So, again, you were taking courses at the university, demonstrating ten hours a week in a community component and working in the classroom to demonstrate those modules and skills that were identified by the instructor. We called them competencies. Those competencies were agreed upon by the school district, the principal, the team leader and the university. It was kind of a collaborative process. I think that particular model is a solid model. It is certainly a model that they're looking at today. I think it went away, but it went away because of the Reagan Administration. It was really an effective program that made a difference. And I think anytime you have a competency-based teacher education program where you're going to design those courses and require students to demonstrate skills in an urban setting with a group of urban students and at the same time spend some time in the community, I think you're better prepared to be an effective teacher. I would go so far as to say that's one of the district's problems right now. A lot of the teachers that they hire have never had any experience working with urban students. And as a result of that they're frustrated and they leave. Those are just facts. And they leave in high numbers.