Teacher Education Leaders Speak Out: Tim Slekar: Educators Must Be Advocates For the Needs of Our Students
Today I am sharing the third interview with a leader in teacher preparation. This week we have heard from Kevin Kumashiro and Francisco Rios, who explained their programs, and discussed the challenges schools of education now face. Today we meet Tim Slekar, who has been an outspoken advocate for educators through his writing and podcast, At The Chalkface.
1. Can you tell me a bit about how your school approaches teacher education?
I am the Dean of the School of Education at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin. Edgewood is a private Catholic college founded by the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa.
Our school approaches teacher education first through our college's Dominican values of truth, justice, compassion, community and partnership. These values guide our approach and serve as a foundation. On that foundation Edgewood attempts to build a program that helps our future teachers become competent in the content their teaching but also engaged in the work of helping students understand that teaching and learning take place in historical, political, and social contexts. These contexts are extremely important conditions that frame the teaching and learning environment. Therefore it is very important that teacher education students understand deeply the content and the students they are going to teach and the conditions in which learning occurs. However they must also have a conscious connection to the communities in which they will work and be sensitive to socio-cultural issues that impact a student's experience with school.
2. How does this relate to how you expect the teachers your program graduates to engage in the work of teaching?
I think I touched a bit on this question above but let me try to simplify it a bit. Since taking over as Dean last June, I have been asking our faculty to reimagine our jobs. I have done this by asking them a simple question: What if we stopped preparing teachers and instead prepared advocatesthat were teachers? If we truly took this question to heart, what would we do differently? Seriously, think about the transformative power of the image of an advocate that teaches. How much of the reformation nonsense would we have to resist? How many pedagogically inappropriate activities would we have to stop? If we were advocates for the needs of our students think of the joy that would flow back into the profession of teaching.
3. What are some of the pressures your school of education faces in this data-driven paradigm we are in?
For me this question really comes down to how some of the "reporting" we are required to do actually disengages us from the work of preparing future educators. After going through NCATE Teacher Education Leaders Speak Out: Tim Slekar: Educators Must Be Advocates For the Needs of Our Students - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher: