Chapter 4 of "The Global Achievement Gap discusses problems in our educational system have come from teacher education. I was shocked to read this because teachers are collaborating with students and other teachers on a daily basis but the importance of it is lacking. Collaboration is key to success but one thing teachers do not have is time. Teachers are given an amount of days for each chapter, book, etc. and the teachers are rushing through to keep up with the pacing guide. Teachers work on their lessons before school hours and after school hours without pay and it is just to keep up and stay on track. Giving teachers more time would result in more pay and would require districts to administer longer contracts which is currently an issue.
I can identify with teacher unpreparedness for the profession because I feel the program has been helpful but they are leaving out what we will face when our teaching careers begin. They have offered helpful guest speakers but they need to discuss with us what are the expectations of technological use and violations as teachers, what exactly a pink slip is, meetings over the summer, what our rights are as teachers, our right to representation, how much to put in our 401K through the district, etc. I am grateful the program has allowed us to spend a lot of time in the classroom and develop our understanding of what it is like to be a teacher. I like having classroom time to practice what we are learning at CSUSM and the time allowed to reflect as well as prep for the next class. I like we only have class once a week plus our Methods course and we spend the rest of the week at the school site teaching, planning lessons, and being part of the department team.
I can identify with teacher unpreparedness for the profession because I feel the program has been helpful but they are leaving out what we will face when our teaching careers begin. They have offered helpful guest speakers but they need to discuss with us what are the expectations of technological use and violations as teachers, what exactly a pink slip is, meetings over the summer, what our rights are as teachers, our right to representation, how much to put in our 401K through the district, etc. I am grateful the program has allowed us to spend a lot of time in the classroom and develop our understanding of what it is like to be a teacher. I like having classroom time to practice what we are learning at CSUSM and the time allowed to reflect as well as prep for the next class. I like we only have class once a week plus our Methods course and we spend the rest of the week at the school site teaching, planning lessons, and being part of the department team.