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Teachers.Net Gazette Vol.6 No.3 | March 2009 |
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What’s Wrong With Teacher Education In This Country? | ||
by Howard Seeman, Ph.D.
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Teachers are handcuffed to this professorial-chosen curriculum in order to get college credit, to get salary increments. They dare not buck the system or ask too many reality questions in their education classes that are "off the ivory tower curriculum" for fear of getting a low grade, no credit, and, thus, no salary raise.
Why don't we have more education professors who can teach the priorities of classroom management? Because their training is too conceptual. Unfortunately, teaching (and classroom management) is not just conceptual. Instead: Instead: Yes, it involves learning to reframe one's perceptions, as does a trained counselor listening to his clients; thus, educational psychology is useful. But, like the counselor, one must learn the appropriate responses, how to use one's personality, one's authentic responses in order to help. Notice: Or, teaching is more like playing jazz piano: Or, it is like learning lion taming! where you learn and practice spontaneous decisions, using your feelings, personality, intuition to deliver the appropriate, correct reactions when confronted with the myriad of responses of those to be trained - when that door opens, without having too much time to think. Training teachers in this Performance Art is very important because without it, or with just theories for reframing perceptions, teachers will fall back into just teaching the way they were taught! And, some of these teachers have had some really bad teachers, and/or parents. Since teaching is a Performance Art, then we must face the uncomfortable fact that the most powerful tool in the classroom is not, e.g. the blackboard or even the computer, but the teacher's personality. That is why Johnny can be a brat in period 3, then an angel in period 4. He did not change when the bell rang, his teacher did! This is an uncomfortable fact for some because this means that good teacher training requires teachers to look at their feelings, not just their attainment of cognitive knowledge, or methods. A math teacher who knows his math, even many good methods for teaching it, still falls apart if he cannot manage his class. And he cannot if his personality's interactive-responses, his performance, creates an adversarial relationship with his students. Thus, teachers need to look at their over-reactions, biases, inappropriate responses, displaced anger, and miscalled discipline problems. They need to learn how to correct these, practice appropriate responses: Thus, we need to analyze what is "natural" for some, and turn these intangibles – into tangible, trainable, transferable knowledge and skills for new teachers and troubled veteran teachers. We can. What are some of the crucial skills of this performance art? Here is one, which is also another reason why it is so difficult to train teachers: For example, a teacher who yells: Real, authentic, self aware, congruent teacherpersons tend to have more rapport with their students. Congruent teachers have fewer discipline problems. When someone tries to be a class clown in this congruent teacher's class, the other students tend to say to this class clown: Thus, we cannot train teachers in classroom management by just giving them a recipe of what to do when… If we have them do what is incongruent for them, the students will see they are wearing a "mask" and will try to rip off this phony masked set of responses. One of the key causes of disruptive classroom behavior is when a teacher is incongruent regarding: How can we help teachers with the specifics of what to do in the classroom and at the same time, support their congruence? We need to give teachers guidelines for effective rules, and suggested procedures for homework, warnings, rewards, handling cursing, but, not tell them exactly what to say or do. Then, we need to give them training exercises in these areas, exercises where they can find the responses that feel right for them, and then practice these, within helpful guidelines. We need to help them practice, simulate and role play these tailored-to-themselves suggestions, so they may be effective and still be themselves. We can. Also, school administrators need to be mindful that they should not ask teachers to enforce rules that their teachers feel incongruent with. Thus, they need to allow teachers to participate in the formation of school rules. Or, at least, they need to take the time to explain to teachers the rationale behind such rules in order to enlist the authentic backing of the school’s staff. Furthermore, they need to go out of their way to back teachers' rules in their classrooms, assuming that the teachers are "correct," before declared guilty by a complaining parent.
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