Tuesday, March 15, 2016

What Would Happen If We Moved Student Teaching to Freshman Year?

As the Kansas Teacher of the Year, I get the privilege of speaking to pre-service teachers from around the state of Kansas in conjunction with the other Kansas Teacher of the Year Finalists. This responsibility has proven to be one of the best rewards of the KTOY recognition! Having the opportunity to spend time with this team of finalists has been the best professional development I have experienced. I have been able to gain a much broader view of education; I have been able to zoom out from the view of my own classroom and look through the lens of teachers from kindergarten through twelfth grade (and beyond), from darn near Missouri to darn near Colorado, and from impoverished to affluent school districts. I have learned so much from this amazing group of educators!


Awhile back, I shared what I think K-12 school should look like; you can read my thoughts here. However, I've been spending a lot of time on college campuses speaking to future teachers, and I've been thinking about what teacher training could look like. I have learned so much from my time in front of pre-service teachers. I have been so impressed with the young people who are choosing to pursue a career in education! Their energy and excitement is contagious! However, after hearing their concerns and answering their questions about teaching, I have realized there might be a better way to prepare our pre-service teachers for the classroom. I think Project Based Learning would revolutionize teacher education!


Project Based Learning Is Essential (Even in College)

One of the topics the KTOY Team talks to future teachers about is Project Based Learning (PBL). We explain that PBL is a teaching strategy where students learn by doing. We also talk about how powerful of an experience PBL is for learners. Yet, I see very little PBL happening in education classes at the college level until senior year! In my opinion, we need future teachers in classrooms much earlier and much more frequently. Want to learn to be a more effective teacher? Get yourself in a classroom and teach. Then, take some time to reflect on the experience so you can learn and grow. This technique is far more powerful than taking three and a half years of courses; then, trying to apply everything you learned in a semester of "real world" experience.


Let me be clear. I am not talking about classroom observations. I am talking about putting college freshmen and sophomores in classrooms to TEACH. I want them to experience how terrifying teaching can be if you're not prepared, and how amazing teaching can be when you make a connection with a student. Want teachers to pay attention to your lecture on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? Put your students in a high poverty classroom and ask them to teach... anything... I hear new teachers say all the time, "I learned more in my first month of teaching than I did in all my years of college." Yet, we hold these valuable experiences from pre-service teachers until the very end of their "schooling." I think we have it all backwards. Let's give them the experience, then coach and teach our future teachers how to be more effective.



Another advantage to putting future teachers in the classroom early and often is it allows students to get a taste for teaching before they commit to a career they may not like. If you don't LOVE teaching, it is difficult to put in the time and energy it takes to hone your craft. On the other hand, if you are in a career that you are passionate about, there is no obstacle that can stop you from being successful! We should help our youngest college students find their passion, so they can be successful. It's difficult to find your passion behind a textbook. We should use project based learning (learning by doing) to help students find their passion! Want to change the face of education in this country? Put a passionate teacher in every classroom; someone who is so committed to inspiring students that there is no road block that will stop them from this pursuit!


Despite what the media and some politicians would like you to believe, our education system is not broken. We don't need a complete overhaul of the PreK through Post Secondary system. There are many things our school systems do really well. And, there are a few things we need to improve. In my opinion, we should focus on making small changes that could have a huge impact on student success. We should constantly be looking for tweaks that we can make as individuals and as school systems which will help our students adjust to this changing world. Project Based Learning is a small change I implemented in my classroom, and it's made a big impact for my students! I think the face of teacher education could be changed for the better if we implemented the concepts of Project Based Learning in our teacher preparation programs! We have brilliant young people studying to pursue careers in education because they want to have an impact on the world; let's make sure we are helping them in the best way we know how!