Course Goals |
Word Wall from Emily Greenspan's Classroom. Emily is teaching in East Harlem, NYC. |
One professional hallmark of the
accomplished
teacher is the ability to strategically radiate more than one
instructional
environment in the classroom setting. This means that organizing and
managing the classroom, including the disciplinary context of the room,
results
from
intentional action with various classroom structures. Management by
autobiography
and doing to others what was done to you are the hallmarks of
thoughtless
practice. Good management is comprised of an ongoing series of
intentional
decisions that fine tune the ecological system of the classroom.
Great management is the appearance of doing this effortlessly.
Goal One
This
seminar experience
will enable you to exercise those decisions with increasing
sophistication by teaching you to view and effect classroom behavior by
using psychological
and sociological theory in your critical thinking process. You will
learn how to understand and
manipulate
individual and group behavior as part of the same interrelated process.
The first goal of this course is that you "manage" a variety
of encouraging classroom environments by gaining control of
yourself.
Goal Two
A second professional hallmark of
an accomplished
teacher is the realization that relationship is at the heart of the
teaching
and learning enterprise. Relationship just doesn't happen. Accomplished
teachers know how to exercise and teach a set of leadership and group
processing
skills so that learners feel membership in their learning
community.
Communities can feel magical, but there is no magic to their
construction. Learning communities properly constructed can
give each child a feeling of courage to step across the borders of
their current learning zone. Therefore, a second goal of this course is that
you become a builder of
community so that each child becomes en-couraged as a unique member of that community.
Goal Three
The third goal of this course is
that you continue to be a reflective and critical problem solver.
More than
any other time in this elementary education program, you will be asked
to join theory to
practice and practice to theory through the disposition of articulate
critical reflectiveness. Our theoretical perspectives
will blend behavioral psychology (Positive Discipline) and the
sociology of small groups (Complex Instruction, Expectation
Theory). You will advance your developing expertise as a become
a competent, intentional problem
solver. Goal Three is manifested in your development of your professional portfolio, a task now achieved under the 188 umbrella.
If these three goals are met, the
fourth goal
for this course is achieved. You will be well on your way to becoming a leader among peers, a
teacher
who will simultaneously know what it takes to advance
equity, academic excellence, and social justice in America's
schoolrooms. This is not idle fantasy. Each year we get
letters - letters from our teaching graduates who let us know that what
they know
and can do in their school settings is quite extraordinary.
It
will be so with you. Trust us on that one!
Charlie and Cindy