Neither TFA nor edTPA. Becoming a teacher.
Thanks to Debbie Meier for posting this article, Great Teachers are Not Built Overnight by Vanessa Rodriguez.
Teaching is not a skill that you either have or don’t have. It is not a skill that is stagnant, nor is it a skill that grows and approaches some maximum upper limit that everyone will reach eventually. The teaching skill that is being exhibited in a classroom by an experienced, thoughtful, aware teacher is not at all the same skill exhibited by a toddler, a teenager, or even your average parent. While looking at how children and parents teach can help us see the basic elements and characteristics of teaching, it doesn’t allow for a deep understanding of what a professional expert educator does. What makes an expert teacher?
Like learning, teaching is many things at different times and in different people. It’s a skill that develops over time and can be honed to the level of expertise by those with natural ability (all of us), training, experience, and great effort and dedication. In fact, we often argue over whether teaching is a trainable skill or an art form. That’s the wrong argument. It stems from an inadequate definition that equates teaching with a tool for learning: an individual static variable that delivers information to learners. Redefining teaching as a natural human skill that develops over time, as we’ve begun to do, means it is both a trainable skill and an art form, making it similar to many other skilled professions. Not surprisingly, at its onset skill Neither TFA nor edTPA. Becoming a teacher. | Fred Klonsky:
Our family time on Block Island is winding down. Tomorrow we take the ferry back to Point Judith and after stopping to see an old friend in the Catskills, we will dead-head it back to Chicago getting home by Wednesday.
We will celebrate the end of our glorious week tonight by going to the Block Island Maritime Institute’s oyster festival down by Payne’s dock.
Fifteen buck for all the raw oysters you can eat. I can eat plenty, but will https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2015/08/29/keeping-retirement-weird-call-your-state-rep/
