Teacher Candidate Dispositions Essay Cover Sheet
English Education Program
Teacher
Candidate: Karen H. Saravia-Orellana Semester: ___Spring 2005 _________
Course
(check one): _ _ I:
EGL449/CEF551 X_II:
EGL450/CEF552 ____
Seminar EGL 454/CEE590
Instructor:____Michael
LoMonico _
What does it mean to be a professional, ethical English teacher? What kinds of issues should good English teachers think about as they go about the daily tasks of planning, conducting and evaluating lessons? How should they include others in their decisions about teaching and learning? What approaches should teachers consider as important and sometimes difficult social issues arise as a result of class discussion? These are difficult questions with no one right answer.
To address these kinds of questions, several important educational organizations have developed documents, which we will work with in the English Education program:
· The New York State Education Department’s “Code of Ethics”
· The Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium’s Dispositions from their “Model Standards for Beginning Teacher Licensing and Development: A Resource for State Dialogue”
· The National Council of Teachers of English’s “Attitudes for Teachers of English”
Directions to Teacher Candidates: In connection with the above documents, you have written an essay that responds to scenarios from English classrooms. Please carefully examine your essay and list the numbers of the codes, dispositions, and attitudes to which your essay speaks. In this manner, you will demonstrate your awareness of and your ability to address these points. It may not be practical for every essay to speak to every code, disposition and attitude. Since you will complete three of these essays in your work in the English Education Program, please pose as a goal for yourself that you will address each of the codes, dispositions, and attitudes at least once by the time you have written all three essays. This cover sheet and your essay should be included in your Teacher Candidate Portfolio.
|
|
NYS “Code of Ethics” |
INTASC “Dispositions” |
NCTE “Attitudes” |
|
Dispositions Essay Title: |
1, 2, 6 |
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10 |
Teaching the Present
For many years the idea existed that students are empty vessels and it is a teachers job to fill them with knowledge. This idea however proved to incorrect because students are people, people with knowledge, opinions and ideas of their own, especially when they reach Middle School and High School. If this idea was put into questions then shouldn’t the idea of a “teacher-centered, lecturing, all knowledgeable dictator where learning is no fun and students always stay in their seats” be put into questions as well? When and who decided that learning could only take place when students sat quietly in their seats taking notes as the teacher lectured? Who decided that learning should not be enjoyable?
In my 100 hours of observation I found that many teachers if not all dedicated entire periods to reviewing vocabulary, reading to the students or listening to books on tape. During this time I saw many sleeping heads on desks and blurred eyes. It made me wonder if teachers were using their class time wisely. I felt that those activities were taking the easy way out of teaching. The students were all bored and most likely forgot at least 80 of the vocabulary words they studied, just an hour after taking the test. There must be ways to engage our students into literature and learning. I observed one English teacher who always had his students in a circle and allowed them to act with their voices as they read. He made them question, not just literature, but life and the world around them.
I also observed a Mass Media teacher who made her students analyze newspapers and propaganda. She stated that we are living in a word where propaganda is being passed of as fact and students are just accepting it. She wants her students to think questions of our world, our government and make their own decisions. These two teachers were some of the very few teachers who saw their students as people, people who could go out into the world and have an impact on it.
When children are young they are born with this innate love and desire to learn. They are not drilled and tested when they are learning how to walk or talk or eat. They learn all these things by observing and repeating. As they grow older and they learn to talk, they begin to questions the world around them and your life is filled with “Why?” Unfortunately, this longing to learn about the world is slowly killed when they start school. And by the time they reach middle school and high school all their longing for the acquisition of knowledge has almost completely extinguished. What happened?
It saddens me to say that teachers happened. Bad teachers who over burden students with lists and lists of vocabulary words, put boring and not well written books in their curriculum and finally they take literature and poetry and do as Billy Collins said, “begin beating it with a hose.” The love of learning is therefore slowly killed and with it any desire to read. Living in the 21st century it is time we start considering what Howard Gardner stated about multiple intelligence. Having out students pass our class or the grade they are in is not enough; it is our job as teachers to engage them in learning. The love of learning can be brought back but it will not happen if we have them sitting there, taking notes.
One way to engage our students in learning is the use of performance. Have them look carefully at the language and consider how each scene could be acted out; let them go into the mind of the character. People complain that children in our days have no imagination because they spend too much time watching television and playing video games. By performance in your classroom you are giving the students the gift of imagination, the ability to see these characters come to life and become a part of their world. Take away their fear of Shakespeare by acting out his plays. As they perform and see their peers perform his plays they will finally understand why we consider these plays so valuable. This knowledge could not be acquired by just reading the text and analyzing it to death. Good teachers choose well-written texts for their students to read, which will serve them to do some thinking and serve them as models of good writing. By reading good literature, students are also taught that good writing is a process.
One way to engage our students in learning is the use of technology. We live in a world in which technology rules. Everywhere we go we are surrounded by all these modern tools and we are teaching to a generation of students who grow up surrounded and embedded into it. Maybe it is time to begin incorporating technology into our curriculums. I think is of absolute importance to ask teacher to “DO NOT use it just for the sake of using it,” but it must serve a purpose and be attractive. Many teachers continue to teach and treat their students as empty vessels, and continue to dominate the classroom in teacher-centered activities. It is time to stop teaching in the past and start teaching for our future leaders, because our future is now.