Teacher Training As 'Part Theater, Part Sport'
Rain beats against the windows of a downtown New York City building on a soporific Friday morning. A high school teacher is reading out loud from a sample recommendation letter when she notices a few students fidgeting and texting.
"I'm not seeing all eyes ..." she says, her voice trailing off.
Naama Wrightman, who is coaching the teacher, jumps in.
"All right, pause. It's the right correction. How can you frame it positively? ... Take out the 'not.' "
"All eyes on me?"
"Exactly, give that quick scan again."
The teacher starts reading, pauses, looks around, and says, " ... All eyes on me, up here?" but it sounds more like a question.
"I'm going to pause you again," says Wrightman. "I want you to say it with that confidence."
"Up. Here."
"Yes, there it is!"
For student teachers in their first year at Relay Graduate School of Education, Friday mornings are all about sweating the small stuff — down to the intonation of a single word.
Relay set out nearly a decade ago to prepare a new generation of teachers for the nitty-gritty of the classroom in the way, critics have long charged, traditional graduate schools of education do not.
A now-famous 2006 report found that 62 percent of new teachers said they didn't feel Teacher Training As 'Part Theater, Part Sport' : NPR Ed : NPR:
