Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 28, 1994 TAG: 9406300007
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER|
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
``We simply knew that we had to see how these things worked. We didn't have a clue,'' she recalled. ``The students were just filing by to see this new machine.''
Today, every classroom in the county is equipped with computers, thanks to a bond issue passed by voters. For the past three years, Colbert has been director of the schools' department of research, organizational development and innovative technology, a title that usually gets abbreviated. ``Nobody wants to say all that,'' she observed.
But after this month, Colbert will leave the school system where she has worked for 20 years.
She is going to work on a new venture - a statewide effort to improve schools. She will serve as a director and consultant to a partnership effort, the details of which will be announced in August, she said.
Thirteen years ago, Colbert had to drive to Charlottesville for that first computer ``because there just weren't any right around.''
She was also part of other firsts in Pulaski County.
``I think one of the reasons that I wound up staying here for so long is that I had opportunities for new jobs without ever having to leave,'' she said.
A native of Birmingham, Ala., she came to this state to earn her master's degree at the University of Virginia. Then she spent almost 10 years teaching English courses at Virginia Tech, where she later earned her doctorate, before leaving for a federal program on differentiated staffing in Roanoke city schools.
The program based at Ruffner Junior High involved large and small group instruction, sometimes with combined curriculums. ``I was attracted to that program. That's how I wound up in public schools,'' Colbert said.
When she completed her doctorate, she began working with a team on developing a new middle school program in Pulaski County. Charles Franklin, then Pulaski County's assistant superintendent for instruction, invited her to work with a state supplementary skills and development program at the fifth-grade level. For the first time, she ended up teaching elementary school for a year in the county's first program for the gifted. Then she moved to the central office staff.
By the late 1980s, she was working on a collaborative project between New River Valley localities and the city of Bristol involving a science and technology outdoor laboratory. Parts of the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area served as that lab.
Colbert was also a key figure in creating the Southwest Virginia Governor's School, which was established on the Pulaski County High School campus.
At the time, Pulaski County was acting as the fiscal agent for one of the summer Governor's School programs, but conventional thinking was that the region was too geographically spread out for a permanent school to be practical. Colbert never has been one for conventional thinking.
She got permission from then-Superintendent Ken Dobson to use money left from the summer project to explore the possibility of locating a Southwest Virginia Governor's School in the region.
After a year of talking with educators in surrounding localities, "we decided that it could happen. And it did,'' she said.
The school system's research and technology arm, which will be headed by Isabel Berney when Colbert leaves, has already helped launch several programs including:
A demonstration school with special programs in math and technology at Dublin Elementary;
Continuous progress initiatives involving new classes and teaching techniques at Northwood and Claremont elementary schools.
A study to anticipate how new technology, particularly the computer, will affect education.
``I think one of the most sweeping reforms you can engage in is simply giving every teacher a laptop [computer],'' Colbert said.
If teachers have access to computers and time to learn their workings, she said, they can open doors even wider to learning opportunities. But teachers seldom have time to discuss and apply the things computers could do, she said. ``We end up tinkering around the edges.''
by CNB