A Place for Teacher Educators in the Schools

Just because teacher educators have more letters after their names is no reason they shouldn't find ways to continue interacting with children. Mr. Alexander shares his thoughts on the matter and offers suggestions for how faculty members can maintain firsthand experience in the schools. I REMEMBER well my first education class -- Foundations of Education -- some 28 years ago. The professor, not a bad guy at all, was named Max, and as the class progressed I found myself getting more and more enthusiastic about my chosen profession. The setting was a midwestern university, which was once a school. It was one of those places that had been called a state college. Over the years, teachers was dropped from the title, and was changed to You are probably familiar with the place, even if you did not go to school there. In the years when I attended, the university still turned out a number of teachers, but it had expanded into many other fields as well. In fact, its history as a normal school had largely been forgotten. The university operated a school, which mostly catered to professors' children. I think that I taught two or, at the most, three lessons in the lab school before I was sent out to student teach. When I began that endeavor, my college supervisor was a very nice man from the university who had been a high school social studies teacher and a principal. In fact, most of the faculty at the university came from the ranks of school administration. At that time -- 1975 -- I do not recall any Ph.D.'s on the faculty; all were Ed.D.'s and mostly in administration. I also do not recall much happening in the way of research. My supervisor came to see me three or four times during my student teaching assignment. Of course, the cooperating classroom teacher, Luvina, was a great deal of help. Luvina had been a teacher for at least 35 years, most of which she had spent teaching first grade. She was slightly amused at having a man (and a rather large one, I might add) as a student teacher. She had never really thought that men would have much interest in teaching first grade. Still, there I was -- in the field -- for the first time teaching a class on my own (well, sort of, anyway). I had been a pretty student at the university. I had studied hard, taken tests, and usually posted the highest grade in my classes. I had some ideas and thought that I knew how to teach first-graders. Except, I didn't. Not in any real sense, anyway. In one way, I'm glad that those were the days of the dum-dum teacher manuals with such gems as Say: When a word follows the CVVC pattern, the first vowel usually says its name and the second vowel is silent. Or, perhaps, Elicit from the students that the brightness of the moon is due to reflection of the sun's light. This teaching business really didn't seem all that hard. I was sure that I could handle it. Then came a real milestone -- my first teaching job. But my supports, Luvina and Max, who had told me when I did my five-minute micro- teaching that I had good potential, weren't there, and things weren't going so well. I was being attacked on many fronts. First, there was the discipline front. In my university classes, Dr. K. had encouraged us to ignore bad behavior and reward good. I was ignoring like crazy and hunting really hard for something to reward, but things were not improving. I did what Dr. N. had told me about getting students motivated for a reading lesson, but mine didn't seem very motivated to me. Dr. T. had told me how students would act, but I wondered if he was referring to my students. In short, things weren't going quite as I had hoped they would. I was trying, but this job was sorely trying me. Is teaching an art or a science? In what I guess is an unresolvable debate, I opt for art over science. On the one hand, if it is an art, technique can be improved upon, but raw talent cannot be manufactured. …