The Moment you Know you can Teach

The mid-term of student teaching is a time of great anticipation in the lives of everyone involved in the student teaching experience. There are probably as many definitions of what constitutes a good teacher as there are teachers. In fact, there are probably as many definitions of what a good teacher is as there are teachers, parents and legislators combined. Just about everyone has experienced a teacher of some sort in their life so just about everyone "knows" what a "good" teacher is.

Regardless of what constitutes a good teacher there are signs to look for when you are learning how to teach that let you know that you can actually teach, in the institutional sense, that is. These are not things that other people tell you you are doing but things that come from within. There's something quite unique about teaching; it's the only job where you are face to face, within one room, and in control of up to 30 other people for around 180 days a year. This is what sets teaching, in the institutional sense, apart from all other human endeavors. So knowing, for yourself, that you can do it is a huge milestone on one's life. This "knowing" usually occurs in an instance, in a trice, momentarily; it's not something that creeps up on most people.

I knew I could teach when I was called from my class one day to deal with an urgent issue to find, when I returned, some 7 minutes later, all 34 fourth graders were still happily working on their individual assignments. Last semester I finally saw it happen with Teal, one of my student teachers when she stopped during a class and said quietly  "you're all being so good". Yes, I know that teaching is infinitely more than classroom management but that institutional sense of teaching comes primarily from that threshold of confidence across which all successful teachers step at some point.

Then begins the life  journey of learning how to teach in the pedagogical sense where the learning of each individual student in your class becomes the number one priority and your knowledge and understanding of the subject matter enables you to optimize the learning of each of these  individual students. OK, so this is how I define good teaching!

Student Teaching

I'm supervising four student teachers this semester, two undergraduate and two graduate students. Three of them are at Williston Central School, a 3 - 8 grade school while the other is at the K - 2 Allen Brook school, also in Williston. Their classroom experiences are each unique but they all experience the same developmental process that we all go through when we embark on a new life adventure.

Many years ago I came across Frances Fuller's Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) of socialization into the teaching profession and have used it ever since as an assessment guide to the progress student teachers make during their student teaching semester. The CBAM provides me with a way of assessing where the student is in her development as a teacher. Through reading entries in her daily journal and weekly observations in her classroom I am able to tell which of the three stages of development the student is going through.

The three stages are basically this; concerns for personal survival, concerns for teaching and, finally,  concerns for student learning. Students usually pass through the first stage within a couple of days of being in the classroom although sometimes self doubt can creep in later when things don't go as planned or they experience a particularly tough day. The second stage of concerns, "am I teaching properly?", can last for several weeks or even a month or two. In this stage the student is preoccupied with her ability to plan lessons, manage the classroom, keep records and deal with the everyday demands of being an elementary school teacher. The final set of concerns are characterized by a focus on student learning and is quite a magical time. The student is usually confident in her teaching abilities at this point and knows her students well. She no longer accepts whatever quality or level of work they hand in but bases her expectations on what she knows each student is capable of  doing.

She has arrived at the point where she is concerned that each student is learning to her or his potential. This is both the art and science of teaching and is what it is all about..    

On Becoming a Teacher

I cannot think of many things in life that are more rewarding
than being actively involved in the creation of a teacher. As a supervisor of student teachers I am privileged to work with young people as they make the journey from being a student of teaching to being a qualified, licensed teacher. My student teachers are active participants in the journey, of course, but they need feedback, advice, and guidance as they navigate the many intricacies of the elementary school classroom.

The journey is often marked by remarkable self-analysis on the part of the student teachers as well as "aha" moments of life changing significance. Several weeks ago, one of my student teachers shared a wonderful realization with me which involved her work with a rather difficult student in her classroom. The student has a reputation for being a little bit difficult so when he acted up one day and said he would not do the assigned work she automatically assumed he was just being difficult. Within a minute of sitting down with him she realized that he did not understand the assignment and wanted help to get started. In her reflection the student teacher described how she will never again automatically assume that a student's difficulty is a result of an attitude, especially if the student has a track record of being negative. Once she had sat down with him and gone over the assignment he was fine. From now on, she said, she will assume the best of every student until proven otherwise.

Another of my student teachers has a beautiful clear, but rather loud natural voice; a voice like a bell, as I call it. This is a wonderful attribute for a teacher but one that needs to be tamed and used to best effect. When she spoke to the young students in her classroom  they would tend to get louder and then she would get louder and so on. So we developed a strategy that she could become more aware of her voice as others heard it. Her cooperating teacher videotaped her and used a signal to help her become aware when her voice was getting too loud. In her last set of journals the student shared her excitement at how the students were responding so well to her quiet voice. Her whole student teaching experience has now changed for the positive because she can see the results of something she is actively doing to improve her teaching skills.

The journey of becoming a teacher is not a spectator sport.   

Student Teaching; an Ending and a Beginning

For my student teachers this semester, the experience marks an end to their college life and a beginning to their careers as elementary school teachers. It's a time of great growth and development, a time to take risks and also a time to finally find out if teaching is the right choice of career. For the vast majority of students the student teaching experience affirms this choice and is a culmination of all the hard work of the previous semesters. For a very, very small number, perhaps less than 1% it is a time of great anguish and soul searching for everyone involved when the prospect of failure looms large. Thankfully I have been involved in very few such situations but when it does happen it takes a long time to recover both mentally and emotionally because one cares so deeply about one's students' success.

No such problems this semester. All four of my student teachers are off to a great start and already there are some great stories of things children say or do. Things like the third grader  who ignored what the teacher was asking about how balls bounced during a science lesson because he thought she had said Beyonce and couldn't understand why she would say that.

The same student teacher also relayed a story about students thinking about how they could make the world a better place. One student said they could help animals while another student said they should help the elderly. Together they decided that they would help "old people's animals".

I observe my student teachers every week for the first 4 or 5 weeks of the semester so I can act as a resource for them as they develop their whole class teaching skills and come to terms with the myriad demands of running a class of twenty-something students. The most rewarding part of the job is seeing the joy on a student teacher's face when everything goes to plan and the students learn. 

Kindergarten Blog

One of the wonderful things about about having my students complete their student teaching experience at the Williston schools is the level of technology used by the teachers and students at the two schools. From their very first days in kindergarten students get to learn how different forms of technology can be used to improve both the quality of education and of life itself.

Jen Canfield, an amazing kindergarten teacher at Allen Brook school, keeps a wonderful blog about life in her kindergarten class. Just imagine what it must be like as a parent of one of Jen's students to be able to see what goes on in your child's classroom from day to day. The picture is of my student teacher, Ali McHenry who is completing her student teaching experience in Jen's classroom this semester.

In the last couple of years of the last century I was employed as the Science Education Professional Development specialist at the two Williston schools, Central and Allen Brook. I loved every minute I was there and it's always a neat experience for me when I return to work with my former colleagues.

It's Triad Time

A triad, according to the dictionary is 1) a set of three, 2) a musical chord, 3) an atom with valence of 3, 4) a U.S. strategic missile force, or 5) a Welsh literary form. In the world of teacher education it is the meeting, held three times a semester, between the student teacher, cooperating teacher and college supervisor during the student teaching semester. Since I have four student teachers to supervise in local area schools I have four "Initial Triad Meetings" during the first two weeks of the semester.

I always find the first meetings a time of great hope and excitement as the student teacher looks forward to putting into practice all the things she/he has learned in the courses they have taken in previous semesters. We talk about the expectations for the semester, the lesson plans and instructional unit  the student will need to complete, their commitment to student teaching as a full-time activity for the semester, the expertise the cooperating teacher will share them, and the need to make sure that they let the students they are working with know they care about them.

My four student teacher span the elementary grades from kindergarten to fourth grade this semester which is a wonderful experience for me. I often think it would be neat if public school teachers got to share this wonderful experience I have of working in so many different classrooms with so many inspirational teachers.

A triad in music is an "implied harmony". I can't think of a better metaphor for the student teaching experience.  

Reflecting on Reflecting

Deborah Meier, author of The Power of Their Ideas and many other wonderful educational writings, believes that teaching must be an intellectual process if teachers are to be truly effective in what they do. I have always believed this too.

The act of teaching requires the processing of a vast number of different things often simultaneously and often without a lot of time to think too much. On the other hand there are times when there is time to think; time to process the what we have learned from experience, what we are  learning about the students we are currently working with, as well as information from the currency of the ever changing world in which we live. In teacher education we call this reflective thinking; the ability to process all kinds of information so that our practices are improved through the disposition of  lifelong learning.

My student teachers started their Spring student teaching experience this past week and one of the most critical things they need to do is to think reflectively. They need to be able to use all the knowledge and understandings they have gained from their coursework and synergystically combine this with the new knowedge they are gaining of the students and classrooms in which they find themselves. The act of thinking reflectively helps them develop the teaching strategies, classroom management styles and a "teacher voice" that will form the basis for what type of teacher they will become. Throughout the semester I will read their weekly journals through which they will share their challenges and successes in the form of reflective thinking. It's one of the most exciting and rewarding parts of my job.     

Student Teaching is the Best

Part of my job as a professor of teacher education is to supervise students during their senior student teaching experience. This involves visiting each student in her classroom eight times during the semester. During each visit I observe the student working with children as they learn what it really means to be a classroom teacher. It's the time when they get to put into practice all the things they have learned during the courses that comprise their teacher education program at St. Mike's. Last year, because of other course load commitments, I wasn't able to do this. Only now, when I am once again supervising students in classrooms, do I realise just how much I missed this part of my job.

I now have confirmation of what I always thought; not only is it a critical part of our students' education it's also a critical part of my ongoing education as a teacher educator. I now realise that for a whole year, the first time in my professional life, I was cut off from the public school classroom. Looking back, I can see what I missed; no new stories about things children do; no new learning about the things teachers use in their day to day interactions with children. For example, I learned this morning that teachers at one of the schools where two of my students are, Allenbrook school in Williston, now have access to an IPAD2 cart that allows them to integrate this wonderful piece of technology into their teaching. I plan to use the iPAD2 in one of my courses this semester but I wasn't sure until this morning whether this was a realistic expectation for prospective teachers to develop their skills in. I also learned that we can no longer assume that children know how to use a traditional telephone. One of the first grade students had no idea how to hang-up an old press-button 'phone.

My weekly visits to classrooms keep me grounded in the day to day activities of teachers; the way students in K - 5 classrooms learn and behave. Being in schools on a weekly basis is a way of keeping me honest in the things I teach about in my other courses. I have three student teachers in first grade classrooms and one in a fourth grade classroom and they are all doing really well. The cooperating teacher we use in public schools are wonderful; skilled not only in working with their students but also in the challenges of helping their St. Mike's interns develop their teaching skills.