So then to add to what you are saying Bev, it is the teachers' college who
should be responsible for adding more hours of in school/class observation
and/or student teaching. When I graduated college back in the day my first
classroom experience was student teaching which came at the end. 3 months was
just not enough in my opinion. The teachers we get in now are in shock for
about one month of the three they are with us. They have not been prepared for
what they will encounter when they walk into a classroom, especially in a Title
One school setting. I truly believe colleges need to send their candidates out
from the very beginning.
Laura
-----Original Message-----
From: Beverlee Paul <[email protected]>
To: Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group
<[email protected]>
Sent: Mon, Jul 12, 2010 8:46 pm
Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] a professor's reply
And yet another perspective, that one of a reading specialist, lit coach,
and university instructor:
I understand how frustrating it may have been for you, and hope you had a
good lit coach or grade level partner to help you through, but I'd like to
speak to the issue of teacher education.
What you missed in your teachers' college was what I call "training" which
is different than education. The teachers' college really does have the
responsibility to prepare you for the profession of teaching and what is
known best practice. It sounds as if that's what they did. They educated
you as to what we currently know about how kids learn and how you build on
that to teach. How to be a professional educator. That took the 36 hours
or whatever you had in your major. Now, within that, they certainly could
have spent some hours talking about the "real world" but it couldn't take
much time away from their obligation to educate professional educators.
They needed all the time they could get to educate you as a professional.
Fortunately, I guess, it doesn't take nearly as long to "train"
managers/teachers to follow a basal reader or do the kinds of things
required by NCLB/Reading First type programs. That's the kind of training a
school district can do; it's not all that sophisticated and the
decision-making that is required of a professional isn't involved. It takes
no knowledge of child development or of cognitive processes or any of the
other sophisticated knowledge that would be required by a program in which a
teacher had the responsibility to design teaching and learning.
Truly, a couple of days with some refreshers could prepare someone for the
lower-level job of "delivering" the curriculum with fidelity and
standardization, a one-size-fits-all program. So, from my perspective they
probably did the best they could: they prepared you to be a teacher, and
left the job to the district to train you for whatever they wanted.
Hope you still have that knowledge within you! There'll come a day. . . .
Bev
A different perspective if I may...
>
> I graduated 9 years ago from a school that had a clear philosophy of
> inquiry based learning. I had no exposure to a basal text, and direct
> instruction was also considered "evil". While I believe that the ideas
> presented in the Mosaic books is the best way for certain to learn, it is
> very disheartening as a new teacher to learn that many school districts do
> not hold similar views. Please expose your students to basals and whatever
> the required curriculum is for your district or state. When I first started
> teaching I was very angry that my school did not prepare me for what I saw
> as the "real world". There was little to no discussion about standardized
> testing especially those related to NCLB and AYP.
>
> Just another viewpoint.
>
> Rosie
>
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