Darren Kuroptawa has been doing some collaboration with a preservice teacher in Alabama, (as well as some amazing work in his classroom) and she posts at length about the curriculum she’s built for her class. It’s the kind of experience every new classroom teacher needs to have.
I want these “soon to be teachers” to make an informed choice as to if and why they should embrace these concepts– not to just take my word for it– but let’s go find “real” teachers online who are out there doing this. I want to get “buy-in” from them– so they will become an ‘agent of change’ once they hit the schools running. I want to develop teacher leadership potential and awareness so that as Stephen Covey says, they can “begin with the end in mind” -that end being principled changes in the way their schools deliver curriculum. I want to model best practice and let them see what seamless integration of information tools in learning looks like. So we use these technologies to master my objectives in my classroom, hoping they will make the connection to their objectives in their classroom. I want them to see I can use established objectives and assessments and that even though we are constructing knowledge as we go– I can indeed assess to prove mastery of the objectives with pencil and paper if needed.
That’s a pretty impressive mission statement for how we need to be looking at preparing teachers, especially with the incredible turnover rate that we’re experiencing now. While our younger teachers are certainly more facile with using the computer, very few of them seem to have the level of literacy needed to understand the “construction of knowledge” that is required today. And the best part is that Sheryl is modeling it for them, just as Darren and so many others are starting to do for their students.
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