Waiting for the End-of-Semester Storm to Clear

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While trying to get my final assignments and papers done for my final course load (that’s right, in less than a week I will have completed my course load), I am having a hard time focusing. I have two… kind of three courses that I am chomping at the bit to plan.

Course #1:

This summer I will be teaching a MAT course on diversity in education. I, along with two of my fellow graduate students, taught this course last summer and have been rehired to teach it this year. Last year, we were asked to rework the syllabus for the course. As with any teaching experience, some of what we planned seemed to work rather well, and some of it seemed to really fall apart. As such, we have decided to do a little revision.

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Actual instruction: Realizing my teaching influences

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This past semester, one of my many hats was as a teaching assistant for a young adult literature course. Teaching alongside an accomplished professor forced me to think hard about my actual teaching practices.  I say actual teaching practices here because there are times when I have found that my teaching practices were not necessarily in tune with my teaching philosophy.

Without a doubt or any hesitation, I would say that my experience with the National Writing Project (NWP) had a profound impact on my teaching. All of the other professional development programs I participated in had little or no impact. Clark and Florio-Ruane (2001) identify four key reasons professional development offered to teachers is historically bad:

1. Ownership- The teachers have none of it.
2. Deficit Model- It is all about fixing something that the teachers are doing wrong.
3. Contextual Insensitivity- If it worked on that side there’s no reason it shouldn’t work on this side.
4. Short-Term Thinking- Here today, gone tomorrow.

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Where did I learn to teach?

Photo by Michael 1952If you would have asked me six month ago where I learned to teach, I probably would have simply cited my undergraduate institution. After all, that is where I was given my teaching certificate. This past semester I took a teacher education course with Dr. Jocelyn Glazier. I spent more hours than I would like to admit thinking about what it means to be both a teacher and a teacher educator. It was in this line of thinking that I started to realize where and how I actually learned to teach.

Early in the semester a question was posed: “What should teachers know and be able to do?” A list of nearly 100 items was quickly generated. The list included things like content knowledge, be able to laugh, classroom management, examine teaching materials and curriculum critically, advocate, incorporate technology, etc. From my prospective, there was a quick divide in the class around the relationship of content and pedagogy.

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