Throughout this class, one major question has been on my mind: What qualifies a person to teach? My husband is currently in the Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program at Westminster. When he graduates, he will be a Math Teacher for Junior High or High School students. All of his classes, as you can imagine, are focused in one area or another of teaching (such as Curriculum Design and Management or Classroom Management).
As my husband and I discuss various things that he is learning in his program, versus what I have learned in this class as well as other MPC classes, it makes me wonder what makes a good teacher, and what is fair to the students being taught.
Being that most college professors have no pedagogical training, is it fair to their first groups of students that they don't know the different types of learning styles, or how to design and implement curriculum or lessons? (They may not have any idea of where to even start with classroom management.)
Don't get me wrong, even with training, it still takes time for new teachers to get the hang of it--but I wonder if it takes less time for trained teachers, versus those of us who want to try it out without much training.
Am I being pessimistic? I think there is quite a bit of merit to training; otherwise we would all have jumped into teaching without even thinking to take this class, right?
As you are all in some way wanting to teach--I am curious as to what your thoughts are about this. Is this the reason some of us may have serious concerns as to whether or not we can do this? Is one class reasonable to help us into the classroom and is it fair to our future students?
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4 comments:
I would say that one class certainly doesn't qualify one to teach, but I do think it's a start. Honestly--as unfair as it may be--much of what you learn about teaching happens through trial and error. But one way to mitigate the impact on students is to tutor and/or student-teach first. Barring the opportunity to do that, I think shadowing an experienced teacher is the best way to learn the kinds of things you need to learn on the job. Just my two cents...
Student teaching seems the best way to enter the teaching field to me. I have definitely begun to question the university system and its particular foibles.
Jen, so do you think student teaching allows one to overcome the foibles of the university system? I'm just curious about how one balances those things. (I mean, I know how I do it, but I'm not sure if there's a particular way that we could go about teaching those kinds of strategies).
I am so glad someone brought this conversation into our view. I have always thought it strange that k-12 teachers receive so much training in teaching strategies and college professors receive little to no formal training. Since college professors are teaching even more difficult content, shouldn't they need more training than k-12 teachers? Then again, perhaps the old white men who created the system back in the day supposed that students should have already learned how to learn for themselves by the time they reach college. I think perhaps there a disconnect has developed between how high school students view themselves and how academia views high school students...
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