Spring
2004
"Teaching Against
the Grain: Resisting the Culture of Schooling"
Masters in Teaching Program Year Two
** Click here for a word version of the program description**
In the Spring Quarter of the second year, you are full time Teacher Candidates in public school classrooms for ten weeks. You are assigned to your schools for 11 weeks, one of which will be your district's Spring Break. Thus, you will be in the classroom for ten full weeks, ending on May 21. You should work closely with your Cooperating Teacher-Mentors, and teach full-time solo for a minimum of three consecutive weeks. Solo teaching means that you assume the full-time planning, teaching and assessment responsibilities of the Cooperating Teacher-Mentor. You must participate in the school activities that are expected of a teacher, including being on site for at least the full teacher contract day (usually 30 minutes before and after school start/finish times) , as well as for staff meetings, committee meetings, and special school events.
You need to plan,
enact and assess developmentally appropriate activities for children consistent
with the course of study provided by the school district and EALR’s.
Creating lesson plans, reflective writing, videotaping, and weekly Field Seminar
discussions with colleagues and faculty provide opportunities for discussion
and the integration of constructivist theory and practice. Faculty and Cooperating
Teacher-Mentors will observe you and meet with you for a formative assessment
at mid-quarter and a summative assessment at quarter's end, using Evergreen’s
Student Teaching Assessment Rubric.
WEEKLY FIELD SEMINAR
Seminars are designed to cluster Teacher Candidates both geographically and
by grade band for discussions that bridge theory and practice.
Betsy - Seminar 3151 - middle school primarily (diffendb@evergreen.edu)
Sonja - Sem. 3153 - elementary primarily (wiedenhs@evergreen.edu)
Gery - Sem.3155 - high school primarily (2001-jubilado@comcast.net)Jan - Doubletree Southcenter - middle and high school, North (kidoj@evergreen.edu)
Field Seminar Schedule - Thursdays, 4:30 - 6:30 p.m.
Regular weekly assignments | |
Dates |
Assignments |
Week 2 (March 18) |
|
Week 3 (March 25) |
|
Week 4 (April 1) |
|
Week 5 (April 8) | |
Week 6 (April 15) | |
Week 7 (April 22) | |
Week 8 (April 29) |
|
Week 9 (May 6) |
|
Week 10 (May 13) |
|
Week 11 (May 20) | |
Week 12 (May 25-29) |
|
Week 13 (June 1- 5) |
|
Last two weeks |
DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS OF OTHER ASSIGNMENTS
LESSON PLANS (neccessary lesson plan components)
Put your completed, typed lesson plans into your Presentation Portfolio in chronological order as soon as you begin designing and teaching your own lessons - due for faculty check-off in class Tuesday, May 25.
For the first week or two, your Teacher-Mentor may let you use his/her lesson plans as a way to get started, or he/she may want you to begin by working from a textbook or taking a small group as he/she teaches. This is fine and you need not put your teacher's lessons in your portfolio.
- As soon as you are given added responsibility for particular lessons of your own design, you must prepare a plan for each lesson you design and teach and put it in your Presentation Portfolio with end-of day reflections - hand written reflections are fine.
- Give your teacher a typed copy of your lesson plan before you teach so that he/she can review it and give you feedback in time for you to make any changes. Ideally, you should give them the plan at least two days before you teach. Your Teacher-Mentor is like an experienced coach…use her/him to help you learn to plan more effectively.
- All lesson plans must contain at least the components attached to this link. You may use whatever format for your lesson plan that you found most useful last quarter in your curriculum unit development or one in the packet of Lesson Plan Formats handed out last spring.
- Your solo teaching unit plan, with overview and rationale, for the minimum three week period must be drafted and reviewed by your Mentor Teacher before your solo teaching. Even if you change it, after receiving feedback or after beginning to teach, your Teacher-Mentor must have a copy of your unit plan enough in advance of your solo teaching that s/he can give you feedback.
- Whenever you teach, you must have a plan for your lesson typed and available in the classroom for the teacher, or the Principal, if s/he should visit, or for your faculty who will make observation visits. On days when faculty are scheduled to visit you, be sure to give us a copy of your lesson plan that we can take with us.
- After you have taught a lesson, make changes on your master copy of any modifications you may have made, (or would make if you taught it again). Include a post-lesson reflection at the end of every lesson plan you teach that answers the question “What would I do differently if I taught this again?”
Contents of the Presentation Album must include at least:
Section I - Spring Quarter Lessons . Separated into your ten teaching weeks, each week to include:
- Lesson plans for all of the lessons that you designed and taught, with all handouts and materials used. Your own solo teaching unit/plans must be of your own creation. You can include photographs from your classroom e.g. room arrangement, student projects, work groups, etc. to bring your portfolio to life.
- Written reflections on lesson plans.
Section II - Two of your best constructivist lessons.
- Choose from among all that you teach in the Spring at least two lessons that demonstrate your best shot at constructivist planning and EALR assessment. You may revise ones actually taught for this part of the Album, since these can become a part of your Professional Portfolio. Again, you may want to include photos, samples of student work (with names deleted), and/or student assessments of the lessons.
- Written analysis of why you chose these lessons -- how they demonstrate your ability to create constructivist lessons. Use the Constructivist Checklist we provided last Spring or last quarter’s book by Brooks and Brooks, The Case for Constructivist Classrooms, Daniels’ Methods That Matter, and Stiggens Student-Centered Classroom Assessment to help you as you do this. The checklist is on the Web connected to this syllabus if you can’t find yours.
Videotape yourself teaching and fill out attached Video Self-Evaluation form - due Thursday, May 6 in field seminar.
As we did last Fall Quarter, you need to videotape yourself teaching at least one complete lesson. Ideally, you will be able to have a student or the teacher help you tape more than one lesson. As in the Fall, you will want to use these videos to examine your own teaching. We won’t have time to view them in Field Seminar this quarter, but you may want to edit the tape to include as a more polished part of your Professional Portfolio for the Spring.
Since you might show parts of this video to a school hiring committee, in your letter of introduction to the parents of the students you will be student-teaching, you will want to let them know that you will be videotaping yourself teaching and there is a possibility that a picture of their child could be on the tape; what the tape will be used for; and how they can contact you if they don’t want their child’s picture included on any tape used for your portfolio.
EALR’s Project (guiding questions for the planning and writing)
due week of May 17th, 11th week - you can bring it to 3 way conference
As we did during the Fall Quarter teaching, when you solo teach in the Spring you are responsible for meeting the Washington Administrative Code requirement that you "demonstrate a positive impact on student learning", by assessing the impact of your teaching on helping to move your students toward one or more learning goals expressed in the EALR’s for your grade/ subject matter area. See the details of this project which are spelled out on page 14 of Section 1 of the Student Teaching Handbook and the more detailed version handed out in Fall and attached to this syllabus.
Cultural Encapsulation
Take notes on your own "cultural encapsulation" during the Spring teaching experience. You will prepare a final statement for discussion with your colleagues during the final two weeks on campus.We will continue our self-examination of the cultural beliefs, values and experiences (or lack of experiences) that we bring to the classroom. These topics should be a part of many field seminars, with the question : "How is your teaching addressing second language, disabled, low status and/or historically marginalized students in your classrooms?"
As defined in Section 2: Assessment Guide of your MIT Student Teaching Handbook, p. 24, learning to reduce"cultural encapsulation" refers to "The degree to which an individual is able to acknowledge and critically reflect upon his/her own received cultural perspectives and comes to know how one’s perspectives influence his/her understanding of and actions towards individual from groups different than his/her received culture."
As a part of your work during your second quarter of student teaching, you will be planning lessons/units and systematically filing your lesson plans in your Spring Presentation Album. These materials, as well as photographs of your classrooms, and videotapes of yourself teaching, will provide rich material for the development of a more compact and selective Professional Portfolio of your own design.
The materials from your two Presentation Albums will give you an opportunity to select and assemble your best work. For those of you who want to develop a full Web based Professional Portfolio, you can add selected constructivist lessons and images to what you have begun. If you prefer both a Web and/or only a paper Professional Portfolio, you can assemble it to include your letter of introduction, resume, philosophy of education, "best" constructivist lesson plans, classroom photos, student work, etc. in a slim volume that demonstrates your best professional work for job interviews.
During Year Two of the program, your Self-Evaluations and Faculty Evaluations need to be submitted in final form each quarter. Since you will need to send your transcripts out to districts for hiring before the end of Spring Quarter, your evaluations will become part of your formal transcript when you submit them at the end of each quarter. Bring three copies of your final Self-Evaluation on the correct form to your Evaluation Conference.