Teachers

What's a good idea worth? Well, about $300 each to 73 individuals and groups of teachers representing the Delaware County Intermediate Unit and 13 of the county's 15 districts. The winning teachers were among 180 who applied for the grants from IMPACT: Partners in Education. The IU-sponsored organization allows teachers to share with others successful methods they have developed to help their students learn. This is the first year for the program in Delaware County. Nationally, IMPACT has existed for 10 years and has been approved by the National Diffusion Network, a professional group that disseminates information about education.

Delaware's Gov. Castle, in his State of the State address to the legislature last week, outlined a program for improving public schools that deserves implementation at least on a trial basis. It provides for compromises to reconcile different views on education reform. Delaware school districts are having difficulty attracting qualified teachers in sufficient numbers because of relatively low starting salaries. The problem is expected to worsen as New Jersey raises starting teacher salaries significantly.

Matching freshman names and faces is no easy task this fall for teachers at Lansdale Catholic High: The Class of '94 boasts six pairs of twins. Peering from the windows of a school bus are (from left) Thomas and Richard Homolash, Jeremy and Jason Bertrand, Elizabeth and Sara Chiappa, Leah and Amy Holdsworth, John and Mary Grabish and Sean and Megan Quigley. Some of the twins have classes together.

No terms have been released on a tentative contract agreement reached last week by Haverford School District administrators and teachers, pending ratification votes in the next several weeks. The school board is scheduled to vote on the new contract at its meeting next Thursday. Judy S. Rice, president of the Haverford Township Education Association, the teachers' union, said teachers would vote on the agreement at a meeting early next month. No date had been scheduled. The tentative agreement was reached Friday after three months of bargaining by negotiators for the teachers and Superintendent Ewald Kalmbach, representing the district.

It's not often that having a highly experienced and educated staff becomes a problem. But in the Marple Newtown teachers' contract disputes, it is a problem - not in the classroom but in the district ledgers. The Marple Newtown Education Association has an unusually large number of members with advanced education and many years' experience. And the large number of teachers at the top end of the pay scale, making $50,000 to $60,000 a year, is a major reason the teachers and the school board are worlds apart in the quest for a new contract.

The "grow-your-own" approach to recruiting and nurturing a talented crop of teachers eager to work in our public schools is the most viable solution to the teaching deficit confronting the School District of Philadelphia. One caveat - even if implemented effective today, our harvest of "homegrown" teachers would not manifest itself for at least a half decade. Innovative programs, such as Pathways to Teaching Careers at Drexel University, ultimately produce the kinds of teachers we need - teachers who themselves are products of our public school system and who live in communities surrounding our schools.

Gibbsboro teachers explained their side of a contract dispute with the Board of Education at a parent-sponsored meeting Tuesday to rally support for the teachers, who have been working without a contract since June. During the rather sedate informational meeting at Gibbsboro Methodist Church, union negotiator Angela Bergess said the two sides had been negotiating since October 1985 with little progress. "We've lowered every bottom line, and now we're at the lowest," she said.

Third-grade teacher Lynne Klempner was busy unpacking boxes in her Russell Elementary School classroom yesterday, getting ready for the first day of school. But it is unlikely that a teachers' contract will be ready for her when classes start Sept. 2. The 238 members of the Marple-Newtown Education Association decided Thursday not to strike and to return to work under the terms of the current contract, said Peg Clothier, association president. She said that if a new contract were not approved by the start of the school year, teachers would "work to the contract," she said.

Students did some of the teaching at a conference for their teachers over the weekend. " 'Write what you know.' That's my motto. I have to write on my life because I don't know about anybody else's life," said Sarah "Jake" Major, one of six Moorestown Middle School students who shared writing and philosophies with a roomful of district teachers who were learning ways to incorporate a writing workshop into their third- through eighth-grade classes....

By a vote of 32-4, Jenkintown's teachers have ratified the tentative four- year contract reached last week between the Jenkintown Education Association and the school district. The accord, reached Sept. 22, ended the district's 21-day teachers' strike, the first in the district's 111 years. Both sides have declined to comment on the details of the agreement, pending final ratification. The school board is scheduled to consider the agreement at its regular meeting Monday. David Seitz, president of the association, said the teachers voted on the contract by secret ballot Monday afternoon.