with 3-year-olds. Moreover, being an older corps member, I
thought I should enroll in a program that better matched my
career goals as soon as possible.
When it came time to write lessons,
I was ahead of the curve.
What I Learned at the University
I enrolled at Chicago’s National Louis University in fall
2009 and hit the ground running. When it came time
to write lessons, I was ahead of the curve. When
my practicum professor articulated the merits
of using backward design in planning our
instruction, I thought to myself, “Is there
any other way?” Many of my classmates
struggled with turning state learning
standards and benchmarks into
lesson-sized learning objectives, but
for me, thanks to Teach for America’s intensive summer training,
these tools of the trade felt more
instinctual and less like a new language to master in short order.
However, my traditional
program offered one important
element that was unavailable in
the Teach for America model:
time. Over 16 months, I had
time to delve deeply into domains
two, three, and four of Danielson’s
framework for teaching— classroom
environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities. Although corps
members address these domains during
their two years of teaching, my Master of
Arts in Teaching program gave me the chance
to do so before taking the helm of a classroom full
of young people. I had the time to build skills and then
practice those skills with support, a truly scaffolded learning
experience.
I observed teachers in at least five different classrooms, and
I student taught under the watchful eye of a veteran teacher. I
made strong connections in my student-teaching community
(which takes time) while knowing I could look to the university for guidance and support. I had the steady hand of
an expert cooperating teacher, who had her own deep roots
in the school neighborhood, to show me tricks of the trade
and teacher-tested techniques that I use in my classroom
today. Just as our students need time to master skills in the
classroom, as a preservice teacher, I needed time to absorb,
make sense of, and find ways to implement my own budding
ideas about teaching. The traditional program afforded me
that time.
This wasn’t the case in Teach for America. There, we
wrote classroom management plans during the third week of
training, after having worked with students for no more than
40 hours and without the benefit of having watched master
teachers manage their classrooms. (We did watch four or five
videos, each 10 minutes long, of particularly effective Teach
for America teachers.)
© neil Webb
