Fall 2000

UNDER CONSTRUCTION - Policy changes

This web packet is available only on the web.  It details the purpose, policies, assignments, readings, and projects of the course.  

 

Purpose: The purpose of this course is to provide students with experiences that will assist them in making informed career choices and build a foundation for future education courses. The course is designed to help students explore four questions:

Rationale: One role of teacher preparation is to move learners from a student perspective to a teacher perspective through the examination of teaching, learning, and schools. In this process, students of teaching come to clarify, refine, and apply their personal theories of teaching and learning in classroom contexts.

Teaching is a highly complex activity in which teachers apply knowledge from multiple subject matter domains to develop curriculum, enact instruction, and assess learning. Learning to teach is a lifelong process. Exploring Teaching as a Career provides the context for the formal beginning of career-long development.

• Exploring Teaching as a Career and Theory into Practice -- These are packaged together and are available at Copymat.

• Meier, D. R. (1997). Learning in Small Moments: Life in an Urban Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

• Johnson, L. (1992). Dangerous Minds. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.

In addition to the above, readings will also be assigned from:

• Rethinking our classrooms: Teaching for equity and justice. (1994). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools, Ltd. (You purchased this book for Multiculturalism and Education – EDCI 285)

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INSTRUCTORS

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Your final grade is determined by comparing campus-based points to the distribution of points shown below. 

READINGS
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CLASS PARTICIPATION

A major responsibility that you have in this course is to prepare for class discussion. Class discussions are based on readings from the teacher narratives and readings from the course packet. Other discussions will come out of your classroom-based experiences. This section details how to prepare for discussions.

The teacher narratives (by Daniel Meier and  Lou Anne Johnson) present stories about real teachers and real schools. They require you to think about how you might act in similar circumstances. The readings are relatively short and, on the surface, easy.  The Meier book examines the experiences of two teachers who share one first grade classroom.  We will discuss this book during weeks 6 and 7.  The Johnson book examines the teaching experiences of a first-year high school English teacher.  We will discuss this book during weeks 8 and 9. The readings from these two narratives have been selected to focus on issues that span elementary through high school. To get the most out of these readings, you will need to do more than simply read.  It will be up to you, in your preparation for discussions, to reflect on the guiding questions of the course, questions posed by your instructor, and identify problems and possible solutions. Our discussions will bridge elementary and secondary perspectives by focusing on questions that are pertinent to overarching themes. Here are some suggestions to help you prepare:

Read thoroughly: Start with a quick read to get a general idea of the main characters, the setting, and the situations. Then read it again, using the study questions provided as a guide.

Define the Central Issues: Try to understand the problems involved in each chapter-- both the obvious ones and the more subtle, or hidden problems.

Analysis: Make a list of questions that you have about how this teacher handled various situations.

Discussions are meant to be open-ended, with no single solution as a goal. You must come to the discussion prepared to share your thinking. Be prepared to take a risk. Also be prepared to open yourself to other ways of viewing teaching situations. If each participant prepares in these ways, the discussions will be meaningful and fruitful. It is your responsibility to help make them so.

 

Reading Schedule

Week	Read the following to be prepared for class
1 1/10
2 1/17	Chapter 1 of How to develop a professional portfolio: A manual for teachers
3 1/24	Pages 131-150 of Becoming a Teacher
4 1/31	Ethnographic Observation Chapter 1 of Savage inequalities: Children in America’s schools
5 2/7	Case Study:  Mary Ewing
6 2/14	Learning in small moments: Life in an urban classroom Reading Guide
7 2/21	Learning in small moments: Life in an urban classroom
8 2/28	Dangerous minds Reading Guide
9 3/6	Dangerous minds
10 3/13	Spring Break
11 3/20	Building community from chaos
12 3/27	Pages 150 - 159 of Becoming a Teacher
13 4/3	Materials Provided by Instructor
14 4/10	Materials Provided by Instructor
15 4/17	Chapter 4 of How to develop a professional portfolio: A manual for teachers
16 4/24	Materials Provided by Instructor

AAEE Job Search Handbook. (1998). Evaluate the job market: Put AAEE research to work.

Campbell, D. M. (1997). How to develop a professional portfolio: A manual for teachers. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Fox, C. & Metzger, M. (1985). Two teachers of letters. Harvard Educational Review, 56(4), pp 394-354

Johnson, L. (1992). Dangerous minds. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Paperbacks

Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities: Children in America’s schools. New York, NY: Crown Publishers, Inc.

Meier, D. R. (1997). Learning in small moments: Life in an urban classroom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Parkay & Stanford.  (1998).  Becoming a Teacher.

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WRITING ASSIGNMENTS

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JOURNAL

You will write a journal entry for each visit to your school. Each journal entry should consist of a brief record of your experiences, reflections on those experiences, and reflections on your classroom readings, writings, and discussions. Number and date each journal entry (you should have a total of nine). The journal serves as a place for you to record your reflections and changing feelings about what it is like to be a teacher. The instructor will read and respond to each of your journal entries during the semester. Please provide a copy of your journal entry in the form indicated your course instructor.

The journal you keep in this course can serve three functions:

1. Writing to develop thinking. Writing often helps you organize your thoughts in a way that reading, listening, and speaking do not. 

2. Writing for communicating with instructors and other students. Parts of your journal will be read by others and responded to. This process of reading and responding should help us all to understand and communicate better about course content and other issues.

3. Writing to develop self-understanding. It is important for you to think about the process through which you learn to teach. Your ultimate success as a teacher will depend both on your ability to guide and control your own learning and your ability to reflect upon the effectiveness of your teaching.

ASSIGNMENTS

Week to week assignments contribute to your growing understanding of education. Being prepared for class means being ready to discuss new ideas. You will be asked to search for information (library, newspaper, web, etc.), view films, read, and write outside of the regular class period. These assignments are extremely important to complete in a timely fashion.

PROJECTS

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There are four project assignments in this course. The guidelines provided below consist of a question and suggestions on how to gather information and compose a paper for all four projects.

What do I write?

Each paper is formulated in terms of a main question. Address the main question by:

• reflecting on your personal experiences, class discussions, field experience observations, readings, and class assignments; and

• developing a written response to the main question that draws on your reflections.

Writing your autobiography should help you clarify your beliefs about teaching and learning. There are three main parts to this assignment: 1.) an overview of your education; 2.) a description of special events in your education; and 3.) your answer to the question -- Why do I want to teach?

Begin with a brief overview of your education. Where did you go to school? What sort of schools were they? What were the teachers like? What were the students like? Consider questioning your parents and your teachers about what they remember regarding your educational experiences. If you changed schools and communities a number of times, you might consider including a chart showing each grade, teacher, year, and school location as an aid to the narrative.

Next, write about special events connected to your education that influenced your attitudes about school, teaching, or learning. Describe these events in detail, telling what happened, how the event made you feel, and the attitude it engendered.

Finally, describe how these prior experiences and attitudes influenced you to consider becoming a teacher.

The main question addressed by this project assignment is:  Why, whom, and how does my supervising teacher teach? It is important that you experience the life and responsibilities of the teacher in order to assist you with your decision to become a professional educator. We urge you to schedule a thirty minute interview with your supervising teacher early in your visit schedule. After interviewing your teacher, write a summary of your interview. Be sure to include your own observations of this teacher's teaching. Address the three questions: Why? Whom? and How? your teacher teaches. Conclude with a comparison to your own thoughts about why, whom, and how you want to teach.

Suggested Questions:

Why did you decide to become a teacher?

The purpose of this paper is to help you establish a clear statement of what you believe about teaching and learning and your vision of best practice in education.  Your paper will complete the following statements:

1. I believe the purposes of today's schools include...

2. I believe teachers can best help students learn by...

3. I believe teachers can address student differences by...

4. I believe the very best teaching practices include...

5. I believe teachers can create safe and effective learning communities by...

Rubric for the Evaluation of Project #3

 

Project #4

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This project consists of creating your professional portfolio.  The purpose of the portfolio is to provide evidence of your professional growth.  For this project you will create a written and a web-based version of your portfolio.  These two forms will contain the same information, that is, they will differ only in terms of how they are presented.  You should purchase an accordion file or notebook, and a floppy or zip disk.  Your portfolio will contain a matrix, a variety of evidence, and linking integrative paragraphs.

The Matrix:  The matrix is a record of what evidence has been added to the portfolio, when it was added, and what Guiding Principles it addresses.  

The Evidence:  Evidence consists of information about the quality of your teaching, learning, and professional experiences.  You will select three pieces of evidence from this course to add to your portfolio:  Educational Autobiography, Educational Philosophy, and an item of your choice.

Integrative Paragraph:  For each piece of evidence you add, you will write a paragraph that makes an explicit connection between the project and one or more of the School of Education Guiding Principles of Teacher Preparation.  To assist you with this process,  you will construct a paragraph for your Educational Philosophy in the fourteenth class meeting.  This activity will provide a model for writing your integrative paragraph for your Educational Autobiography paper and the evidence of your choice.   

 

Rubric for the Evaluation of Project #4

 

How to Create Your Web Page

After completing the written portfolio, you can easily create a web page portfolio by following the steps listed below.  These steps describe how to create a web page from a computer terminal located in a PUCC lab.  If you are working at your personal computer, then you will need to save your portfolio project to a floppy disk and take it to a PUCC lab.  If you have never used a computer in the PUCC lab, then you may need more assistance than what these directions afford.  If this is the case, then ask your instructor for assistance.

1. If you have never created a web page and stored it to your Purdue Career Account, then go to Step A.  If you have at least one web page stored in your Purdue Career Account, then go to Step 2.

1. Double click on the "My Purdue Career Account Info." icon on the desktop of a PUCC PC or Mac machine

2. Select the "Create My Web Page" link and click it

3. Select the "Create My Web Page" button and click it

2. Double click the Netscape Composer icon and open your project.

3. Some of the formatting may be lost or changed.  Edit your project as necessary.    

4. Save your project to your www folder under the filename edci205.html.

5. Close Netscape Composer.

6. Double click the desktop icon to access your "My Purdue Career Account Info". 

7. Select the "Change My Web Page Permissions" link.

8. Click the "Change My Permissions" button.

9. View your web page at  http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~yourlogin/edci205.html

10. Note: Each time you resave your web page, you will need to repeat step #4.