I never did student teaching myself -- private school -- first job was maternity leave replacement, so full-time but only for a few months. Classics MA and a year as a teacher's aide under my belt -- five classes, four preps -- go!
Well, at least I had small class sizes and kids whose parents would smite them if they didn't work. My sister-in-law's student teaching was so awful she had to switch to a different school.
And yeah, there's a ton of ways I'd do it differently if I were God. Having new/student teachers responsible for everything, just like 20-year veterans, is a recipe for burnout. Having the theory and practice phases of teacher education so separated is simply stupid. Give people fewer classes, give mentors release time so they can actually mentor, support and train the mentors while you're at it, let new & student teachers have time set aside in the schedule when they can talk to each other, let them have more time set aside for seminars where they read and discuss theory as it actually applies to what they're doing...
Finding the money to pay for this, of course, is someone else's problem ;). Though I encountered someone actually doing something like this recently -- http://www.edutopia.org/building-a-better-teacher, scroll down to the bit about Emporia State. And apparently only 7.2% of their graduates have quit teaching after 3 years -- so maybe that's how you pay for it, by not having to continually conduct job searches...
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rosecarmine
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Date: 2008-01-01 03:15 pm (UTC)Well, at least I had small class sizes and kids whose parents would smite them if they didn't work. My sister-in-law's student teaching was so awful she had to switch to a different school.
And yeah, there's a ton of ways I'd do it differently if I were God. Having new/student teachers responsible for everything, just like 20-year veterans, is a recipe for burnout. Having the theory and practice phases of teacher education so separated is simply stupid. Give people fewer classes, give mentors release time so they can actually mentor, support and train the mentors while you're at it, let new & student teachers have time set aside in the schedule when they can talk to each other, let them have more time set aside for seminars where they read and discuss theory as it actually applies to what they're doing...
Finding the money to pay for this, of course, is someone else's problem ;). Though I encountered someone actually doing something like this recently -- http://www.edutopia.org/building-a-better-teacher, scroll down to the bit about Emporia State. And apparently only 7.2% of their graduates have quit teaching after 3 years -- so maybe that's how you pay for it, by not having to continually conduct job searches...