105: Assignment 2, "How Teachers Learn"

Question:

Most of this article seems like it is directed to school administrations rather than teacher. The article discussion the way by which teachers learn but then quickly transitions into a discussion about which environment teachers can best learn in – which in most cases are outside of the realm of a teacher’s control. At Rocketship and through reach, many of those environments exist in one form or another. But in other schools, where less support is provided, what can teachers do to ensure that they have exposure to such environments?


Quote:

“When student teachers enter their first classrooms, the instructional methods, curricula, and resources can be very different from the ones they learned about in teacher education programs. So although prospective teachers are often anxious to begin their student teaching and find it the most satisfying aspect of their teacher preparation (Hollins, 1995), the dissonance between this experience and their course work supports the belief that educational theory and research have little to do with classroom practice.”

This quote is particularly interesting. Not having been in a typical education program at a 4-year university, my experience is much different than what this article assumes the experience of most new teachers is. This is perhaps a strong point of TFA’s training model. Although it only provides one month of training, it directly couples theory and research with the implementation of such theories and research in the class-room almost immediately. REACH works in a similar way. Once research is discussed as a collaborative group it is implemented in a lesson at some point down the road. That lesson is also observed to make sure that the theories and research are not only implemented, but implemented correctly – which is another point this article makes: observation is important!

Commentary:

Overall, I think this was a useful article to read. It allows us as teachers to see what we are being exposed to and how that helps us learn. It allows provides us for the opportunity to reflect on our learning – are we in each of these environments? Is there anything else we can do to expose ourselves to those environments? Especially looking at the first section, which address HOW teachers learn – most of the items listed in that section are things we can do on our own, like talking with other teachers. By reading this article, we know specifically what to look for when we reflect on our growth (eg: Are we talking to other teachers? Just informally? Or also formally? How often do we do it? Etc.)