Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Practicum Teachers

There is another side of taking practicum teachers - the side where the teacher instructors benefit.  A good practicum teacher is worth their weight in gold.  Some of the reasons for taking a practicum student:

  • They are the bees of education, cross pollinating ideas from one school to another and from their own educational background
  • They bring enthusiasm into the classroom
  • They are an extra pair of eyes, ears and hands
  • They lack pre-conceived notions and challenge the status quo
  • They bring fresh ideas, a level of innocence and hope
  • They lack some of our cynicism and crustiness
  • It forces us to re-evaluate our own teaching practices
  • They bring youthfulness into teaching staff
  • It provides some longevity to our own learning when seen in their teaching

Most of all they can be a lot of fun. Once in your fourth or fifth year, I'd heartily recommend taking one for a term.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Lesson plans

I think every practicum teacher goes through questioning why lesson plans are useful.  Some find them odious and don't see the value of creating something that rarely executes as expected.  As a teacher instructor, I find lesson plans a real insight into what is intended by a practicum teacher.  As a tool it forces the practicum student to think about what they intend to do, before doing it.  The lesson plan also provides an opportunity for feedback between the teacher instructor and practicum teacher that can be done before a lesson is run (rather than the trite comment given by teacher instructors with the benefit of hindsight after the lesson).

A quick look at a lesson plan can provide a teacher instructor a wealth of information about how a practicum teacher is travelling.  Here are some things that I look at within a lesson plan.

  • Has the teacher connected the lesson to prior learning?
  • Is timing adequately considered?
  • Is the scope of the lesson being managed?
  • Are the main teaching points identified?
  • Is the level proposed appropriate for the students?
  • Is there adequate opportunity for students to demonstrate competence?

Without a reasonably detailed and well thought out lesson plan, practicum  teachers are placed on the back foot, forever reacting to issues rather than predicting issues and developing skills and knowledge to compensate.  By setting clear goals for performance before a lesson practicum teachers are able to see improvement measured against the goals of the lesson plan.

A note of warning, lesson plans on practicum have a finite life, as practicum teachers start taking full load, timing constraints limit their effectiveness (and can cause burnout towards the end of ten week practicum if detailed lesson plans are pursued).   The full benefit of a lesson plan is gained whilst a practicum students is ramping up. Even with this limitation, lesson plans (for all their odious nature), tied to reflective practices after a lesson, provide practicum teachers a platform to develop their fledgling skills into skilled teaching practitioners.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Classroom presence

I asked a colleague to talk to my practicum student about teaching.. Often a colleague has different viewpoints on teaching and can get to the nub of a problem faster than I can. There was some great advice about establishing presence in a classroom.

Establish space between the whiteboard and the class >1.5m
- use this as performance space. Move towards the class for emphasis and towards the board when teaching.

Establish modes of voice.
- develop a range of tones that can be used to indicate pleasure/displeasure, tied to a range of volumes

Develop affectations to your teaching
- Tapping a whiteboard marker can be more effective than shouting, as can removing or looking over your glasses.

Change your travel path
- ensure that your travel path is giving attention to all students and is not just a convenient way to travel a room.

All of these things will change your presence in the room and were good ideas. I would add a few more - wait for quiet before starting instruction (be patient.. 5 seconds is longer than you think), establish a spot so students know to be quiet when you are standing in it when waiting for attention, ensure that you are giving positive and negative feedback, be warm but not overly friendly and welcome students on entry.

I'm sure there are many more!

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Practicum teachers & Teacher instructors

Practicum is the gateway to the profession.  It ensures new teachers have the experience to have their own classroom and sets clear expectations of performance outside of an tertiary academic environment.

Practicum teachers are a resource that is relatively infinite.  Good practicum teachers are not.  Teaching is an attractive profession to students as it is a familiar environment and one where students see infinite room for improvement.  This gloss can come off to some degree during practicum.

Teachers instructors come in a range of colours and shapes.  Aggressive/passive, lazy/committed,  skilled/enthusiastic (grin),  assessment driven/programme driven and with a range of teaching styles.

Good/bad teacher instructors are relative judgements. They make and break practicum teachers.  Let's see some of the pitfalls for practicum instructors

  • Providing insufficient opportunities to fail
  • Giving insufficient guidance on expectations
  • Providing inadequate encouragement
  • Assuming complete content knowledge
  • Providing inadequate written response
  • Creating insufficient opportunities to show initiative
  • Insufficient direction/focus
  • Insufficient guidance on required scaffolding
  • Overestimating diagnostic abilities
  • Assumption of teaching skills (photocopying, marking, using equation editor, CAS calculator usage, fxdraw, whiteboard usage, interactive whiteboards)

When we look at an incomplete list such as this and then overlay behavior management (which is the usually the primary focus of practicum) we start to realise the hurdle that practicum teachers face.  When I hear about accelerated teaching programmes that reduce the time for undergraduate teaching degrees I fear that policy makers are underestimating the impact that good teacher instructors can make.  Furthermore they are underestimating the impost of the shifting of responsibility from the student during practicum, to the teacher during their first year of teaching.  This will be borne by experienced staff and administration dealing with issues typically dealt with on practicum.

Good teacher instructors are using their full range of abilities to ensure that practicum teachers are maintaining their confidence at appropriate levels and by ensuring student learning is continuing.  The ability of the system to identify good potential teachers is based around the practicum system and bypassing this system has potential for lowering teaching standards further.