Teacher Education

I've had a few conversations recently about why Teacher Colleges are not doing a good job in preparing teachers. I had another conversation with a friend tonight who has applied to teach at a teacher college. The interview process was interesting to hear about. The education department was well represented at the interview. What she observed was that many of the people in the department had not been teaching in schools (outside of the college) in a very long time.

We have regional professional development coordinators here who will train you or you can take classes from them while still teaching. I've learned more from these coordinators than I learned in teacher college. A lot of this is due to the fact they are continuing their own education. A huge part of it is that they are in schools all over the region A LOT! This gives them more insight into the actual needs of schools and teachers. They also can be a bit more objective as an outsider. Another thing that makes their instruction to teachers highly valuable is the way they design their instruction. They realize they are teaching teachers. So they embed strategies into their instruction that we can use with students. If we are learning about math instruction we will be not only learning that material but practicing strategies we can immediately use with our students. This means we are not just sitting and listening to a lecture. We are practicing our practice. Their job is to continue their own learning to be of help to teachers. I notice they travel quite often to attend conferences. They read a lot and pay attention to research based practices.

We also discussed that while in teacher college, fledgling teachers need to be in the classroom more. WAY More. I think they need to do an internship with mentors as well. There is a huge aspect of learning to teach that is through the experience. We can discuss theory all we want but putting ideas into practice is way more difficult. I think having really hands on mentors for new teacher is vital.

Classroom management is one of the most difficult challenges of the job. Every year how you manage your classroom changes because the needs of your students change. You also find ideas that work for you and don't work for you. It is in a perpetual tweak mode. I am constantly looking for ideas that may help. Every year I have a challenging student or ten that I am at a loss how to get them in "school" mode. It takes time to figure out what will work. Sometimes it feels like that doesn't happen till the last two weeks of school.

There is another aspect we call "With-it-ness." This is like your mom having eyes in the back of her head and knowing what you are up to from the other side of the house. Teachers need to have that. The ability to look and see the needs of the students in a glance. It's an awareness of the surroundings. I've been in classrooms in which the teacher had none of this. There were students throwing things at each other, playing with each others hair, making things out of paper, singing songs to themselves, and talking to each other. The teacher didn't notice. She had a great lesson but was completely unaware to what her students were doing. Now I will be the first to admit that some days you are more "with-it" than others. However, if you have this you can see if your students are even understanding the lesson.  I think this is an ability that can be worked on and improved, but some people may never get it.

I think in most (not all) teacher colleges you spend so much time on the theories of learning that you do not get to the brass tacks of quality instruction. It really does help if you have professors who are continuing their own education and getting into classrooms themselves.