|
In deciding which teacher certification program to follow in a school or
faculty of education, or in a teacher training college, you need to know
if the certification process is well-balanced and well-defined. In
a teacher certification program there will be invariably be practicums or
field experiences course in which you interact with a host teacher and
field experience supervisors Those personnel and the structure of the
practicum or field experience, along with the preparation and
support you will get for the field experience are critical. Your
success in the teacher certification program, its evaluation of your
suitability for becoming a primary or secondary school instructor, will
be based on those experiences.
Question - pointing to or calling for best practices
- Are host teachers screened for their class-room management and
subject expertise? Ideally, the host will be a
master teacher, familiar with the nuances and quirks of the local
curriculum and course material.
If host teachers are not screened, the field experience
is become a lottery. In the worse case, an unscreened host
teacher may base your direction in the field experience and the
judgment of your suitability for becoming a high school instructor on
your knowledge of substandard practices. The use of
untrained or unguided host teachers with unscreened people and
content to make pass-or-fail judgments on student teachers contradicts
assessment practices taught in schools and faculty of education, and in
the large, university codes for fairness and due support in assessment
of student teachers. .
- Are there any guidelines or training for the host
teachers?
If there are no guidelines, if any thing the host
teachers wants is satisfactory in the certification
program, the degree of support and direction is not
governed, and what is provided and sanctioned may depend on the host
teacher inclination. Since host teacher varies, the ease or difficulty
of your certification journey will depend on chance.
- How are the field experiences structured? Is there any
advanced notice to students of who will be their host teacher(s) and a
course to be met.
In some teacher certification programs, a field
experience is a random event. You are assigned a host teacher at
random, and two or three days after arrival in the host teacher
classroom, you are expected to deliver lesson plans and lessons. And in
that randomness, the subjects meet may be one of 5 plus, and you will
not have time to prepare. In other field experiences, you will
meet the host teacher before the start of the school year and
collaboratively plan or anticipate your interaction while building up
trust and identifying far in advance the subject or topics in which you
will have to plan and deliver lessons. The latter represents a best
practice.
- What is the certification program field experience policy with
respect to students knowledgeable in teachable subject without being
familiar with the local course materials and practices? Often
there are several courses in a high school mathematics program, and if
you have not met them before as a student in them, advance warning would
be useful.
If there is no policy that indicates the teacher
education program in question may fail to give you the support you need
and so let you fail. So If you are an older student starting a teacher
certification program, go the program office which monitors
student teaching and ask what will happened when a student teacher,
familiar in general with a subject is not familiar with the
current course materials and practice? That question is
important. If there is no special consideration for that circumstance,
there may be tacit assumption that you are familiar with the current
course materials and practices
Key Questions: Doe the teacher certification program describe in
sufficient detail the high school program in your field? Is local
course material clear and sufficient for course planning and delivery.
Are their undocumented practices? Is there nonsense or bureaucratic
bullshit in course materials and course definitions? Do you have
to ask for dozen examples of past finals to reverse engineer course
content.?
- Are field experience supervisors expert, master
teachers, in the course material in which your practicum or field
experience will occur? Will they be able to provide check and balance for
host teacher quirks? The question is important where professor of
mathematics education are not the field supervisors, or where professors
of education are expert in delivery style but not content. There is
no guarantee in North American that your professor of mathematics
education will know mathematics. He or she may have become a professor of
mathematics education without a good undergraduate knowledge of the
subject in schools and faculties where "style" is more important than
substance.
The certification program needs to provide access to a
master teachers familiar with the course material and its nuances or
quirks to provide a check or balance on the host teacher's expectations
practices. The assumption that a certified or qualified teacher is
course material and delivery expert often fails in secondary schools
where compulsory subjects like mathematics have to be given regardless
of whether or not the subject is in the zone of comfort of the host
teacher. I have met cases where substandard textbooks or course
material are approved and required. If your first encounter with
such substandard texts is in a field experience, and master teachers
are not available to provide aid, to supervise your field experience,
and to check or balance nonsense in course materials and your
unscreened host teacher behavior. your do-or-fail field
experience may end in a disaster.
- Does the teacher certification program provide instruction on
classroom management?
With the advent of compulsory school attendance in
authoritarian societies, instruction was teacher and subject centered,
in a way that manners and good behaviors was required. Otherwise, there
might be stiff penalties. In that environment, students were afraid to
misbehave. But in societies which are granting and recognizing more and
more freedom for their youth, school attendance may be required while
the consequences of not cooperating with the schools and their
instructors become less and less. In many societies today, school
attendance is compelled while poor manners and behaviors are not
enforced. So teachers have to artfully employ the limited means at
their disposal for classroom and hallway order and management. That
being said, your participation in school activities and your teaching a
course in a way that maintains or develops students will to cooperate
and participate in their own education minimizes the need for display
of fairness and firmness. Repeatedly providing students
opportunities for success is one way to encourage the will to
learn and work in each. Tat being said, you will sooner or latter give
a course in which the motivation of most if not all, is success in the
final examination. Good luck. You will be meeting students,
students likely to be well-mannered later on, who are in your face
rude. In all interactions, look for a path or intervention in which the
student or students decide that cooperation is in their best
interest.
- For the subjects you plan to teach, will the teacher certification
program besides describing or exhorting best classroom practice, describe
what is done as well? There again appears the question of style
being touted but not supported by education professors who are style
experts, not content experts. The latter is required for teaching
experience supervision. If the latter is missing, run or take your
chances.
If a teacher training program focuses on what should be
rather than what is, you will missing some necessary preparation
for the field experiences and lesson planning.
Teacher education programs may exhort you to act in a
certain manner and say what should be without focusing on what
is? Besides course on pedagogy, you may need a course from a
master teacher familiar with the current course materials in a
primary and secondary subject program, mathematics, science, history or
a language such as English or French or the language of instruction.
For example in mathematics or science, a master teacher at the
elementary level or secondary level, would describe the ends and means
of each year of instruction, course by course, to identify how later
skills and concepts are erected on earlier ones in a linear or spiral
(repetitive) manner. A master teacher would also describe the benefits
and limitations of current course materials, and identify nonsense in
them. Nonsense can appear and continue in course materials if the
latter are generated, approved and required in the absent of a master
teacher or subject master to object.
- For the subjects you plan to teach, does the college education
library keep on it shelves or computers, full set of course materials
(textbooks and governmental course definitions and final examinations)
for student-teachers and Professors of Education to consult?
The presence of course materials - what you will meet in
the classroom or in your field experiences - will allow you to get a
headstart. And if the course materials or government documentation are
not clearer complete, access to several, preferably a dozen, recent
final examinations may define course content for you. That is
important for subjects or school courses which you have not followed in
your school days due to their newness or because you followed another
path in school days, while or before current materials were in use.
- What are your withdrawal rights for the practicum's or field
experiences? Do they exist? What are the penalties?
In many college or university courses, there is a penalty-free
withdrawal period. So if you do not like the courese or its
instructors, you can withdraw. However, withdrawal in teacher
certification may be deemed a failure. But the right to withdraw
without penalty may be very precocious in field experiences where host
teachers and/or field supervisors and everyoneelse in the chain of
command are not master teachers in the subject at hand.
- If you fail a field experience due to unanticipated
difficulties with course practices and materials in subject will
you be allowed to continue the program at later date after studying the
subject in question in greater depth?
This may be important if you discover you subject
knowledge is not a great as thought, or if you meet undocumented
expectation in the field experiences, or if you meet nonsense and
bureaucratic bullshit in the course material and course definitions
that leaves you in a garbage-in, and hence a garbage out
situation.
- If you fail a field experience due to classroom management
difficulties, will the certification program allow you to re-enter in a
few years time to try again?
With the passage of time, maturity and
out-of-school experience in the workforce may provide the pose and
greater maturity needed for classroom management?
- If you fail and make an appeal, in the appeal process itself, will
there be a master teacher in your teachable subjects, so that any subject
related aspects of your appeal are heard?
- Does the teacher certification program or host institution provide
insurance cover for the possible hazards met in primary and
secondary schools, gentle to tough?
|
|
Teachers & Tutors: Site pages offer better or best practices for providing skills -
simpler than expected & comprehensive but for exercises. For your charges, your duty is to study them alone or in
groups and develop skill building exercises & activities to share. Start now. The effort here is the best I can do.
Others are welcome to refine or exceed it. Please do.
Secondary
Mathematics for Ages 11+, A Practical Approach for home-tutoring or -schooling, or for schools & colleges
with local curriculum control. Study how to include site content - its skill development how-TOs and innovations
into present or future lesson plans - some reading required.
Road
Safety Messages and Questions: When and why should you face
traffic when walking along a road or cycle path? Is it a good
idea to hang limbs outside of cars etc? What gives more
protection in a crash: a car, motorbike or bicycle?
See too, the BBC-Belgium story Texting and
Driving - texting & the impossible test - the article links to a gruesome utube video on the subject
The Logic of Injustice:
How Texas sent
an innocent man to his death - The wrong Carlos. Some judgments are irreversible. Procescution: Where and when prosectors play to win rather than for
justice, guilt beyond a reasonable doubt goes unrespected due to prosecutors who putting winning
first, those innocence before the law may be convicted. Some procescutors offices in continuing to accuse after a pardon
due to reasonable doubt or innocent being shown, may sucessfully oppose compensaton for false convictions
by asserting a pardon individual is still under suspicion. Then the pardoned individual or the latter's estate
is not compensation for years or decade
of improper or false imprisonment, or for execution. Site chapters on Logic
and some in Pattern
Based Reason may slowly lead to greater precision in reading, applying and
writing laws.
May 2012, Composition Starting:
Pre-School and Primary Mathematics - Quantitative Skills, An
Intellectual View, Feedback Welcome:
The 8 Most Popular Site Inlinks
Parent Center: Help your child or teen
learn:
Parent-friendly
Work Booklets for ages 3+ to 13 Use these or others to check
or build skills. Other booklets are available but these booklets
allow parents unsure of themselves in mathematics to help their
children. The selection acquired in Canada is published in the
USA. So it has a US orientation. In retrospect, the selection
shows parents what to check with the booklets or by other ways,
the choice is theirs. But in retrospect, the selection does not
cover integral and fractions liquid weights and measures - ask
the publishers to correct that! For ages 9 to 12 say, parents may
compensate by showing boys and girls how to use weights or mass,
and further measures in food preparation. Beyond that children
may be shown how to measure and calculate angles, lengths and
areas [proportional amounts too] directly or by using maps and
plans drawns to scale. Learning how to gather and measure all the
ingredients, pots and pans for a dish or a meal, along with
cleaning up sets the stage for like activities or experiments in
science courses, and in developing organizational skills,
gives boys and girls a head start. Good luck. At the other
extreme, more comprehensive than light, if your motto is
McCainian: drill, drill, drill then Toronto
mathematician and actor John Mighton's jump math organization has jump math
workbooks for at least grades 3 to 8 for at-home and in-school
use - training sessions for teachers available. Jump math has
been expanding to cover older students. Jump Math Samples: plus
Fractions for
Grades 3-4 & Grades 5-6 [Read] Free Resources grades 1 to 8
[unread - likely to be good]. and
Mathematics
Skills For Ages 3 to 14 - technical!
Skills with take
home value - A few ideas
Basic skills include
time-date-calendar Matters; money matters; map, plan and
scale diagram matters;counting, measuring and figuring;
decision making with logic and likelyhood; being careful and
being aware of the domino effect of mistakes; reading and
writing with precision.
Is your child able to add, subtract and multiply amounts
of money, work with fractions, work with clocks and calendars,
work with maps and plans, and measure length, weight-mass and
volume? Schools may promote your son or daughter without
providing basic skills in reading, writing and
arithmetic.
Arithmetic
and Number Theory Skills
Algebra
Starter Lessons
Geometry
- maps plans trigonometry vectors
More
Algebra
70
Calculus Starter Lessons
Calculus Lessons Elsewhere:
-
How to Ace Calculus: Street Wise Guide - Mostly
Text.
-
Flash
Video for Calculus Phobics
They cover basic topics in ways likely to complement your
notes, your textbooks and site material. When Goldilocks
trespassed in the house of the three bears, she found three bowls
of porridge, two not to her liking, and one just right. Different
bears have different tastes. As invited guest here and elsewhere,
if one or more explanations is not to liking, try another. It may
be better or just right.
Unsolicited Advice
Learning to do and high marks if it comes to easy is often
deceptive - light rather than deep. For that reason, students
with learning difficulties determined not to let it get in their
way may go deeper and farther than those with none. High marks,
if the come easy, may be deceptive - provide a too light and not
a deep mastery. That could have been your problem in secondary
school, one that leads to comprehension shock or difficulties in
calculus and more generally in the first year of college. Bon
Appetite.
|
|