Into the Classroom: A Practical Guide for Starting Student Teaching

Author’s Note

Author’s Note As a teacher educator, I am aware of the importance that student teachers, interns , and teacher candidates attach to becoming good teachers rapidly. This attention to praxis is admirable, and I want to assist my students in achieving this goal. However, I am also aware that these enthusiastic new teachers need to learn theory and read research-based literature as well as learn about the history and philosophies of teaching, so they can improve over the span of their careers. At times, the immediate needs of the student teachers and the longterm goals of the professors create a tension in departments/schools/colleges/ faculties of education. The students focus on praxis and the faculty focus on scholarship. In the end, all of us need to remember that good teaching blends praxis and scholarship. I wrote this book to help resolve the aforementioned tension. The purpose of this book is to help student teachers, interns, and teacher candidates rapidly advance their teaching skills early in their pre-service teaching experiences. It is my hope and also my experience that this book helps resolve the tension in my methods classes. Because the readers of this text are more skilled and confident in their classrooms, they are willing to listen, read, and learn the theory andscholarshipthatsupportsgoodteaching.Thepre-serviceteachersandIare all winners. The environment of secondary school is quite different from an office or a university classroom. The pace of the school day is relentlessly fast, with thousands of interactions—student-student, student-teacher, teacher-content, student-content—that the teacher is supposed to observe and analyze with little time to reflect. In the third month of my internship, I wrote in my journal , “I am preoccupied with the daily interactions with the students.” This book addresses this common condition; it will help you create a framework for understanding your classroom observations. It will also give you an advance organizer for concepts you will learn in your teacher-preparation classes. By now you (the reader) have taken or are enrolled in initial coursework in human development, educational psychology, and education. This course work is a xiv Author’s Note good foundation; it will help you sort through the jumble of academic and social observations that you make during your practice teaching. Now that I have told you the purpose of this book, let me tell you what it is not. It is not a comprehensive educational text that reflects the current discourse on major issues facing the education community. This text does not address multiculturalism, students at risk, mainstreaming special education students, social justice, increased testing, or any of the seven “isms” (for example , racism, classism, bodyism). It does not discuss the history of education, the ethical basis of teaching, or the qualities of a good teacher. These topics are addressed in teacher-preparation programs. I hope you will profit greatly from the explanations and discussions of these important topics in your college or university. We who work in universities are often accused of living in ivory towers and not knowing about the real world. This charge is often leveled at education faculty whose teaching experience was years ago. To get real-world experience of teaching in the new millennium, I recently taught high school for two years. I taught world geography and earth science at one small-town high school of 1,200 students and Spanish in a small rural high school of 470 students . Although I am currently working in a think-tank environment, my high schoolteachingexperienceinformsandshapesmywork.Manyoftheexamples in this book come from my experiences teaching and observing in secondary schools. Much of this book has been used in monograph form at York University in Toronto since 2000. It has been field tested, and I have received dozens of comments from readers. One comment struck me as worthy of mentioning. Much of classroom praxis is “common sense.” I am reminded of a quote attributed to Voltaire: “Common sense is not so common.” In our multicultural world, what is common sense to one person may not be common sense to another. If your life experience and cultural background are similar to mine, much of what I write may be familiar to you. However, if your life experience and worldview are different, perhaps you will find this book to be less intuitive and familiar and not based on common sense. Participating in a school-based assignment (for example, student teaching, internship, or practicum) often comes with uncertainty and anxiety. Common anxieties include...