May 2000
| Volume 57 | Number 8
Keeping Teaching Fresh
Marge Scherer
Table of Contents
Jim Burke
Like the mythological character who was condemned for eternity to roll a boulder up a hill, we all have our inevitable burdens to carry. How do we continue to enjoy learning and adding new challenges to our daily tasks?
All teachers need to belong to various communities to keep teaching fresh, but often teachers can be most energized from what happens in the classroom. In the author's third year of teaching, he faced a wall of indifference and resistance to reading from his students. He wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper, inviting the general public to respond to the question, Why is reading important to you? The class was inundated with letters—from 3rd graders, musicians, even felons from the state prison. All the letters served as an inspiration both to the teacher and to his students. The author learned a valuable lesson: Like Sisyphus, the mythological character who was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill each day, we all have our inevitable burdens to carry. But we must continue learning and adding new challenges to our daily tasks. Keeping teaching fresh might be a juggling act, but through juggling new routines, we keep learning from and for our students and ourselves.
Table of Contents
Esmé Raji Codell
Children's literature can be an exciting and imaginative way to spark the interests of students—and it can also inspire meaningful teaching. Instead of adopting traditional textbooks and using literature only to supplement them, the author describes her indefatigable desire to use trade literature in the classroom. In one example, she builds a time machine out of cardboard and aluminum foil so that students can physically enter into the magical world of their imagination and read about different times, events, people, and places. But what about the concern for standardized test scores? By reading literature, students' scores do not suffer, and they prepare not only for standardized tests, but for the many unstandardized tests that will occur throughout their lives. Equally important, teachers must have faith in whatever approach helps them communicate with their students and inspires them to learn. For the author, using children's literature does just that.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Donald H. Graves
People, especially those in the United States, are living fast-paced lives, filled with infinite amounts of information. This fact is reflected in schools, as evidenced by crowded curriculums and exhausted teachers and students. To help teachers and students feel energized and enthusiastic, they need to study topics in-depth. One strategy is to focus on people—whether historical, living, or fictional. For example, students can learn about early 20th century U.S. history by starting with an architectural drawing or a doll left at Ellis Island. In each case, the artifact leads to people who lived during that time and allows students to see that time period through contemporary eyes. To help students learn more about people and topics, they need to learn interviewing skills. These skills can also teach students to consult others for help.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
David Hagstrom, Ruth Hubbard, Caryl Hurtig, Peter Mortola, Jill Ostrow and Valerie White
Drawing on personal interests and passions to write metaphors for teaching can help focus and energize educators and be the catalyst for change. A cross-departmental committee of professors at Lewis and Clark College discovered that writing root metaphors helped them grow as teachers and writers and allowed them to share ideas and to make connections across disciplines. Motivated by their success, the professors asked teacher interns to write metaphors about being an intern teacher and shared the responses with supervising teachers. The exercise helped the supervising teachers brainstorm ideas about how to help the preservice teachers they would be mentoring. The authors offer examples of their own and their students' metaphors.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Beatrice F. Birman, Laura Desimone, Andrew C. Porter and Michael S. Garet
To identify effective staff development, the authors surveyed a nationally representative probability sample of more than 1,000 teachers who participated in professional development sponsored in part by the Eisenhower Professional Development Program. They also conducted six exploratory case studies and 10 in-depth case studies in five states. They identified six key features of effective professional development. Professional development should focus on deepening teachers' content knowledge and knowledge of how students learn particular content, on providing opportunities for teachers' active learning, and on encouraging coherence in teachers' professional development experiences. Schools and districts should pursue these goals by using activities of greater duration and that involve collective participation. Although reform forms of professional development are more effective than traditional forms, the advantages to reform activities are explained primarily by greater duration of the activities.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Patricia V. Magestro and Nancy Stanford-Blair
In recent years, the emphasis in education has shifted from teaching to learning, making it essential that educators receive staff development opportunities designed to help them extend, build, and enrich their knowledge and skills related to effective student learning. The authors created a template that helps staff developers create learning opportunities that allow educators to replicate the process in their own settings within limited time frames and tight budgets. The authors provide the template and a sample module on the topic of rewards and student motivation.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Miriam Gamoran Sherin
During classroom instruction, teachers are often too caught up in the here-and-now to evaluate classroom interactions. Video clubs can provide unique opportunities for teachers to investigate their teaching practices. In video clubs, teachers can focus their attention on a specific type of classroom interaction, reflect on what they observe, and explore their observations with other teachers.
The author offers suggestions such as selecting a focus and what types of classroom video to view, two key issues in developing a video club. By exploring a particular theme or focus, club participants are better able to explore what happened rather than what might have happened in the classroom. When selecting a video, teachers do not have to select a lesson that illustrates their best teaching. Instead they should choose a portion of classroom interaction that is worthy of interpretation by the group.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Shari M. Goldberg and Ellen Pesko
Recognizing that effective professional development in literacy must include a sustained, personal examination of how readers interact with reading, a group of teachers formed the Teacher Book Club. The book club offers opportunities to connect personal knowledge about literature with pedagogical knowledge for teaching literature. They began by selecting works of fiction of interest to them. As they read and discussed the books, they explored what they did as readers. For example, what did they do when they were puzzled about the meaning of a text or when they found it hard to "get into the book"? The book club experience led to two important outcomes. First, the teachers reconnected to their love of reading. Second, they became more aware of the reading process and the needs of readers. They began to use certain techniques with their students, such as offering uninterrupted blocks of time for reading, and comprehension strategies that required interacting directly with the text, such as underlining and using sticky notes to mark important passages.
Table of Contents
Lloyd Duck
Teaching should be a continuing journey of self-discovery, from growing toward the profession as a student to growing in the profession as a practitioner. Building solid practices and positive attitudes from their first days of preservice education classes prepares teachers for the inevitable twists, turns, and necessary course corrections that they will experience as their careers progress. Reflecting on growth toward the profession and planning for growth within the profession are essential for maintaining the freshness of self-renewal and the stamina for effectiveness throughout a career. The author shares the12 important principles of teacher education that he uses with his graduate students as they prepare to assume the role of teacher. Some of these principles are remembering effective teachers they have known, sharing their love of the subject matter with their students, blending personal and professional growth, finding a teaching style and a classroom management style, and developing a portfolio.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Karla Jenkins
Just as actors, opera singers, and athletes hone their crafts by reviewing, analyzing, and reflecting on their performances, teachers can improve their practice by becoming certified through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). An elementary school teacher describes how she became certified as a Middle Childhood Generalist. The experience helped the author to identify her professional strengths and weaknesses and gave her the skills to analyze and reflect on her work. In the process of improving her practice, she gained renewed passion and enthusiasm for teaching and translated those feelings into a passion for learning for her students. The best way to improve teaching is for teachers to understand what good teaching is, to constantly analyze their practice and compare it with those standards, and to network with other teachers.
Table of Contents
Philip Bigler
The 1998 National Teacher of the Year describes his year as ambassador for the profession. The author briefly outlines the process for becoming Teacher of the Year. When Bigler was honored with the title he became a spokesperson for the teaching profession and realized that teachers must become more active and aggressive in defining teaching as a profession. He affirms that teaching takes enormous talent and skill and suggests that society must learn to respect and appreciate teachers and teaching. A sidebar to the article offers information on several national teacher award recognition programs.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Valerie A. Middleton
As part of a professional development school partnership, Colorado State University offers a general methods and assessment course at a local high school for students who are one semester from student teaching. Teachers of all levels of experience at the high school mentor the teacher candidates and also attend the course. The course offers opportunities for educators to share ideas and to work and learn together. High school students reap the benefits of better-prepared student teachers and an atmosphere of lifelong learning. The author describes several classroom scenarios from the general methods course.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Beverly Daniel Tatum
Not everyone feels comfortable talking about racial issues with students, but to break the cycle of prejudice, educators need to address these issues in school settings. A professional development program helped educators examine their beliefs about race and become agents of change to promote antiracist behavior. Educators made action plans, in which they applied what they learned in the course to the classroom. In their action plans, most participants developed curriculums that were more multicultural and inclusive. Some participants sought more interpersonal contact with students of color and their families. A few participants created plans that challenged the institutional policies and practices of the school. In all cases, educators were empowered to address issues of inequity, to become allies of students of color, and to be antiracist role models for all students.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Margaret Riel, Jennifer Schwarz, Heather Peterson and Jill Henricks
In the Anaheim, California, school district, teachers and administrators of two elementary schools received a grant to bring technology into their classrooms in meaningful ways. Rather than what is typical—simply to purchase computers and then place them in classrooms with minimal support—the schools realized that teachers need to have maximal experience with technology to make the most of it in their classrooms. Ownership, the authors say, is the key. Teachers received a one-time advanced loan to purchase technology equipment. They pay back the loan through earning professional development credit hours, in which they learn about hardware, software, and curriculum integration. The teachers now report that technology is helping them make innovative transformations in their teaching practice.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Gary DeCoker
When determining how best we can prepare students for tomorrow's workplace, we often stress the importance of technology. But we shouldn't forget that technology is only one piece of a larger curricular focus. The author recalls his attempt to develop a Web page that showcased the work of the department of education in his university. However, as he worked out the kinks in technology, he realized that it was not his computer expertise, but rather his problem-solving skills and his patient determination that helped him figure out how to publish the Web page. Specific technologies will come and go, change and evolve, but when we teach students to develop sound minds, they will be truly prepared to enter the workplace of the future.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Kelly Chandler
A group of teacher-researchers from Mapleton Elementary School in northern Maine extend their school-year research projects into the summer by participating together in a summer retreat. They find that getting away from the daily demands of school and home lets them concentrate on in-depth analysis, reflection, and writing to better teach their students and recommit to their profession. The participants find that three elements are crucial to the success of the retreat: the chance to pursue professional activities of their own choice, data-driven conversations, and sustained time together with no competing concerns. The retreat kindles cross-grade collaboration, enhances team building, and lets the teachers use reflections on their past practices to plan future instruction.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Kay Slattery Shapiro and Judith Enz Clauss
The North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching is a residential facility to which career teachers come throughout the year to refresh themselves intellectually. As they attend sessions of a seminar they have chosen from a wide range of topics, they are put at ease, treated as the professionals they are, and engage in introductory activities that help them relax and build new friendships and trust with colleagues. The teachers quickly realize that they share the same day-to-day struggles to educate children in today's world. Staff members work to maintain group cohesiveness throughout the week. They listen to teachers and address their needs. By the end of the week, a sense of community develops, along with the personal and professional renewal of each individual's spirit. Participants come to realize that teaching is still an important and respected profession.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Margaret D. Tannenbaum
Table of Contents
Diane Duebber
Substitute teachers are often underappreciated by the districts that they serve and ill-prepared for the challenges that they face. After 20 years' teaching experience, one veteran teacher suddenly found herself substitute teaching. Realizing that few schools train substitute teachers, she came up with her own set of guidelines. Successful substitute teachers will be prepared, dress appropriately, arrive early at school, thoroughly review the lesson plans left by the regular teacher, be firm and clear with the students, enforce consequences, have a gimmick, pursue teachable moments, leave the classroom as neat as—or neater than—they found it, and believe that they are more than mere babysitters.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Kim Chase
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
C. S. Perryess
Schools are filled with concerned, caring adults, but many educators are not fully aware of the extent to which their students are affected by bigotry and stereotyping. How can educators wake up to the hatred and the intolerance that limit their students' lives? Sometimes an educator has a student who offers a reality check, but educators also need to be proactive and look to studies to raise their equity awareness. With a critical look around our playgrounds, classrooms, and hallways, educators can identify subtle, easy-to-trivialize comments, looks, and slurs before intolerance escalates to abuse. Students will reach only as high as their own perceptions allow. Educators have the opportunity and the responsibility to encourage their students to expand their horizons and appreciate the contributions of the people in their lives.
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Craig Kridel
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Carolyn R. Pool
Table of Contents
John H. Holloway
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Buy the Article
Table of Contents
Copyright © 2012 by ASCD