TEACHING

Teaching: Lessons

Teaching: Lessons

Part A

One of the most important factors that can determine whether or not one continues to teach is how long a teacher has been in the profession (Heller 2004, 13-19). Teachers are the true builders of our communities. Their teaching in classless or outside the classrooms can play a major role in the development of any city and culture. Student teaching is the capstone experience of a pre-service teacher's preparation program. Student teaching is intended to provide pre-service teachers with supervised, extended experiences in real classroom settings and the opportunity to be assessed in relation to their strengths and weaknesses as prospective teachers. While student teaching has traditionally been viewed as a capstone experience, it is increasingly seen as an initial rather than a terminal learning opportunity with schools, districts, and state departments of education looking at the role of induction and mentoring as a much-needed, job-embedded extension of the student teaching experience. (Wentz 2001, 23-44)

The nature of the student teaching experience varies greatly among teacher education programs. The length of a student teaching placement can vary from 5 weeks to 2 semesters. Typically, a student teacher is assigned a cooperating or supervising teacher at a school site, and a university supervisor makes periodic visits to observe the student teacher in practice. The typical student teaching assignment requires the student teacher to spend about half of the student teaching placement teaching, with the remaining time spent observing and participating in classroom or school-level activities with experienced teachers. (Heller 2004, 15-27)

Typically, the student teacher's responsibility in the classroom increases during the course of the student's placement in the school. The student teacher sometimes has the opportunity to participate in all aspects of a teacher's work in a school (e.g., parent conferences, supervisory duties, committee or grade-level teamwork) and to meet and confer with other school personnel that support the teacher in the classroom (e.g., counsellors, administrators, academic area curriculum and instructional specialists, special education teachers).

Traditionally, pre-service teachers had little real experience with schools until the student teaching experience in their senior year. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some universities experimented with the concept of a professional development school where the research knowledge of the university was integrated with the practical knowledge of K-12 classroom teachers to enhance the pre-service teacher's preparation for the real world of the classroom. In some cases, student teaching was increased from one semester to two and included intensive supervision and guided reflection by public school teachers or clinical faculty rather than faculty from the university. The student teaching experience sometimes involved working with two different cooperating teachers at two different grade levels.

The role of the cooperating teacher cannot be underestimated in the development of the pre-service teacher. The ability of the cooperating teacher to observe instruction, communicate with pre-service teachers about strengths and weaknesses observed, and guide the novice teacher in selecting teaching, learning, management, and assessment approaches to address problems that may surface is key to the pre-service teacher's ...