The cerebrum -- which is just Latin for "brain" -- is the newest (evolutionarily) and largest part of the brain as a whole. It is here that things like perception, imagination, thought, judgment, and decision occur. I hope you are thoughtful as you leave your comments on this blog.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
EDU 560: Spring 2011
Read "What it Takes to Become a Great Teacher" by Susan Engel and respond with your thoughts about this article as they relate to the author's assertions about what we need to do to improve education.
Blog by Laura Johnson to: “What It Takes to Become a Great Teacher” by Susan Engel
According to Susan Engel, the number one way to improve education is to train teachers to become great teaching professionals. If there are intelligent, efficient, determined individuals in the teaching field then students will be able to learn and be successful individuals themselves in the real world. I believe that teachers have an important role in students’ lives. In order for students to learn, it is up to the teachers to provide them with the knowledge that they need. Teachers can be smart, know the subject that they teach but teaching is much more then book knowledge. Teachers must have the ability to deal with their students, know how to teach each individual and make the lessons fun so that the students do not get frustrated and not want to learn. The school community affects the students as well but for the main portion of the day, students are instructed by the teachers. Without “good” teachers, students wouldn’t be able to learn. I agree that individuals who are studying to become teachers should have more experience in the classroom before they have to teach on their own. I hear stories from my sister about all the different things that happen in her classroom and she handles it well because she has experience. The more you do something, the more comfortable you are and the more confidence you have which will allow you to do your job in your classroom. I agree that by making teachers better the educational system will improve. A school’s purpose is to educate all students and provide them with information that will allow students to become successful citizens. The number one source of this information is teachers. This is why teachers are so essential to the learning process and are the main factors in whether a school succeeds or fails.
Title of Article: “What It Takes to Become a Great Teacher” by Susan Engel
I enjoyed the way the author of this article compared what it takes to become a great surgeon to what it takes to become a great teacher. Both professions need a great deal of training and I agree with the fact that there is no such thing as someone being born as a great surgeon or a great teacher. I also believe that in order to become great at either of these professions, you need to have a passion for it. Passion for our profession is what makes us great at it. Unfortunately, passion is not something that can be trained to achieve. This article addresses this issue and asks how to find a way to get people more interested in the teaching profession. The author explains this can be done by creating better teacher education programs. At first, I couldn’t see the author’s idea on how creating better teaching programs can attract more people and create a passion for teaching in people. Even if the program is great and it is exclusive to enter into, the end result will still be the same job of working with children and teaching them everyday. Therefore, a person would need a passion for the job itself and not just in the program. After I thought about, I realized that if teaching programs were made so that it trained teachers on important parts of teaching and how to teach in engaging ways, it can definitely attract more people to the field. If the teachers education programs were improved, not only can it attract more people to the field, but it can also make the passion to teach that certain people already have, even stronger. Another interesting part of this article was when the author stated that it is important for teachers to learn about their children. The example of the teacher from New Jersey is exactly the kind of teacher many of our classes tell us to become. We need teachers that can understand children and their behavior. Having more experience and knowledge on this well help educators teach more effectively. Therefore, it is definitely necessary to add more classes in the program that will help teachers learn more about children and how to interact with them. The last part I agree with is that we need to have programs in which student-teachers can have a chance to develop their skills. The author compares this to the training of medical students. It is necessary for student teachers to get on the job training before being put in charge just as it is for medical students before they begin working on their own. Similar to the medical field, teachers also play a great role in people’s lives and therefore should get a similar amount of training.
This article is quite refreshing compared with the usual articles that our STEP classes provide. Although we have heard often enough that we must be innovative, creative, understanding, and flexible, we have never really been shown how to be these things. Granted, we should have some of the basic understandings but as this article says, they must be fine tuned. I really like the idea that she presents of creating a stronger educational program. In order for us to be successful we need more than to observe for one hundred hours and then be pushed into student teaching for only one semester (two if you’re lucky). Financial backing is the issue; just look at NYC and the teacher cuts they plan on making. What if we did have the backing? What if we could be more selective and provide a broader yet more specified education? We need to be educated in many things, as Engel says, but we must also be able to study not only our major and education but how students behave, why they behave this way, how we can communicate better with them. Engel also makes a good point when she says that we do not have enough planning time allotted. This should be a time when teachers communicate with each other as to what the best method is of weaving their curriculums together while making them interesting and still meeting standards. If more teachers who were educated in the same manner were placed in the same school, then there would be a higher chance of cooperation and discussion. Some teachers not schooled in this manner may stick to their textbook only methods, unwilling to change to better suit the students’ needs. Some schools do provide time for teachers to work together but is it enough? I believe that some teachers and even some schools forget the needs of the students. We are not doing well on an international level intellectually but this can be changed. How? We can make our subjects more interesting, interrelated, and valuable in “real” life. It is also important to remember our students. As Engel says, “… a teacher’s young clients are all very much conscious.” I feel that I would benefit entirely more from a program developed in Engel’s mind than other programs offered.
Grace Polson "What it takes to become a great teacher" by Susan Engel
I agree with Susan Engel on the fact that the education system has been circling around the real problem of trying to maintain good schools. For good schools to thrive, there needs to be good teachers. The term "good" seems utterly too general. What does it take to be a "good" teacher then? According to Susan Engel, teachers who "provide guidance, information, skills, and motivation to a huge and diverse population of children", are considered good teachers. Teachers take part in a huge proportion of a students life. Therefore, whatever the teacher does, impacts how the student reacts to the teacher. If the teacher provides a genuine respect and care for the student, the student will return those qualities in the classroom. To me, it doesn't matter if you are a difficult child or not, students desire respect and care, so it is up to the teacher to give it to them. Every student deserves the knowledge necessary to become successful in their future. Not every student has the same learning style. A good teacher would implement a lesson to adhere to every students learning pattern. This is often difficult and takes a good understanding of how the student desires to learn. Teachers should come down to a students level and learn what the student is interested in and incorporate it into the classroom. Besides the skills and information in teaching, teachers should have an enthusiastic charisma relative to that of a student. In that way, both the student can learn from the teacher, and the teacher can learn from the student.
Susan Engel mentioned a few good points. It's important to have uprising teachers to go through the necessary training that will be required to become more accustom to in directing a class. Clearly, we have all been in a classroom environment as students and observers. It's only the beginning process in becoming a teacher. Engel mentions how it takes passion to become a great teacher. I believe it's the same when we go as observers. Unfortunately, some students do not take the observation process too serious.
I agree with Laura's comment on the teaching experience. The experience will give the teacher a better picture on things. Also most importantly too is for a lesson evaluation during the first few times for a new teacher. It's beneficial for the teacher to be aware of mistakes and positive things. There's always room for improvement.
Teachers should come down to a students level and learn what the student is interested in and incorporate it into the classroom.
While I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, I think the current emphasis on standardized testing leaves little time for topics that lie outside the scope of the test materials. All too often I have seen good teachers "teach to the test" and make no bones about it. Perhaps the subject I have chosen to teach, Living Environment, has something to do with that, since it is one of the core regents tests high school students take.
Teachers are evaluated based on their students' test scores. And while standardized tests probably are a fair way to measure comprehension, at what cost? Science really needs to be taught with an inquiry-based, hands-on approach for students to fully appreciate and enjoy the topic. I believe the root of many students' dislike for science stems from the frequent "drill and grill" format in too many Living Environment classrooms.
Susan Engel's call for a new instructional approach for training teachers is great idea. Fledgling teachers need more time in classrooms before having one of their own. Perhaps starting from the ground up (with new teachers) is the way to go. However, in a classroom where the teachers' performance is evaluated based on the results of a standardized test, there may be difficulty getting even new teachers to "take a lively idea and weave it into good curriculum" over more traditional, albeit painfully dull, teacher-centered approaches.
According to Susan Engel, schools need teachers who will be the architects of a new world in which every teacher engages in a lifetime of study on the teaching. The answer to raising standards and holding our profession accountable,to ensuring that every student becomes a long- life learner lies not in teacher-proofing the profession but in teacher- education. We often hear that teachers play an important role in students' lives. Therefore,I am agree with Engel that teachers need more training into the classroom to learn how to deal with their students. Most of the times,teachers do not do an effective job because they do not how to teach each student and create lessons to motivate a huge and diverse population of children. This article emphasizes how important is to be a teacher and I like how the author compare the teacher profession with the surgeon profession.
“What It Takes to Become a Great Teacher” by Susan Engel
An accomplished educator can wear one or more of several different "hats" during any school day. The more hands-on experience an aspiring educator has, the better prepared he or she will be to face the 200 unexpected situations we will see daily. The ability to improvise and adapt to the unforeseen can be taught, and should be learned by all classroom teachers. For this it would be of great benefit to draw upon the experiences of current teachers, not only those in our area of concentration. It is all together possible one or more of these unexpected situations have been dealt with successfully by another.
I strongly believe with what I perceived the main point of the article to be; reform in education must begin with reforming the educator's education! I've lost count of how many times I've been lectured to about how I should not lecture. I agree with my colleague’s assessment of how we have been challenged to be more creative, more differentiated and more diverse than our predecessors. Yet we have not received the direction we had hoped for, only given a destination. Change can be a slow and laborious process, but it almost always begins with an individual. I will let that person be me.
Teaching is not a job, it is a profession. Our responsibility to our students does not remain behind when we leave school grounds, nor does it begin and end with the opening and closing school bell. It is something that we must totally commit ourselves to. We as teachers will link the past to the future, our future.
I absolutely agree with what Susan Engel is arguing in this article. I feel that many education programs at different colleges, including Adelphi, are trying to shape themselves around what Engel is saying. The STEP program tries to do many things that are discussed in the article but I think that their organization should be a bit better. The professors and professionals running this program also need to pay more attention to the student as an individual and work within the disciplines of the other departments on campus to allow the students to have a proper schedule for what their courses require. This is kind of off topic, but the article reminded me of what the STEP program at Adelphi is trying to do with its education majors. For example, the model program and the Bellmore-Merrick internship are examples of ways to create the type of teachers discussed in Engel’s article. These programs are limited to only a number of students. Even if the student has the potential to be a great teacher, there could be a student that is just a little more up to par than this student, the better applicant will get the position over the student that fell slightly short of what was expected. There should be ample opportunities for everyone who has the potential to be a great teacher. Again, I agree with Engel in stating that good grades are important and you cant educate unless you yourself are well educated, but what if a student with straight As has no ability to speak in front of a group of people but it going to school to become a teacher. Next to this student is a student with decent grades but has a few Cs here and there in their transcript. This student has an amazing out-going personality and the passion to teach and holds qualities that some of the best teachers out there hold, which student gets the job? The one that has straight As but won’t be able to teach the material or the student who does decent in school but will be able to teach the material that is provided in an interesting way.
Susan Lastorino's response to Susan Engel's article, "What it Takes to Become a Great Teacher".
I believe that children are like seeds. With a little knowledge, encouragement, and faith; eventually the child prospers to become an endeavoring, intellectual student.
Teachers need to be open minded and accepting, never biased. A successful classroom needs: 1) a guiding teacher, 2) students that are not afraid to express their opinions and use their struggles as the foundation to learning how to succeed, and 3) a positive, respectful atmosphere.
I believe that teaching and learning are lifelong processes. With each passing day, I learn something new: a lesson, a strategy, a fact, an opinion, etc. Being patient, determined, and remaining open minded are what's key to educating and becoming educated. Education doesn't only come from teachers and books; we learn from our family, friends, and even complete strangers.
I believe that failure is natural and that when you're down, there's no other way but up. The only way to encourage a failing student is to remind them that nobody is perfect and they should use their mistakes as the lessons of life and learn to progress.
Creating good teachers is one of the best ( or probably the best) way to create a foundation for the best education. Teachers require empathy, passion, patience, intelligence and drive. When people generally think about teachers they say, “ Oh, they get a lot of holidays”, so they automatically think it’s an easy job. Well, to those who’ve never done it, it’s not. I think what makes teaching difficult now is all the restraints we have in the school system and all the giving up we allow to happen. What I mean by “giving up” is that if students give up and then the administration and teachers give up on them, students will surely drop out. When I look at the number, 6.2 million, I think, “well I can’t even count, let alone write the amount of numbers that go up to 6.2 million”, I’m not even sure if anyone can but how can we let 6.2 children drop out? They have simply become a number and passed along the education system because we’ve become simply “tired” of “dealing” with them. If we don’t start hiring good teachers then we’ll continue to foster bad teachers and bad administration. I do agree with Engel in terms of making teacher training more alluring but I think one thing she fails to speak about is: well after we create good teachers, how do we make new teachers stay? There are some teachers who are good teachers and fit into what a “good teacher” should be, but after two years in, for example, a low income school, they quit. Why? We need teachers but a lot of them who are good, don’t want to be where we need them. I think one of the other roots, besides creating good teachers, is creating good administration.
Title of Article: “What It Takes to Become a Great Teacher” by Susan Engel
Its obvious that everyone agrees that something needs to be done to better our education system. However, no one can really agree on what exactly needs to be done to help better the future of our children. Susan Engel’s article looks past the education system itself and places the problem with the education of our educators. I agree with Engels when she says that not everyone is cut out to be a teacher and that there are definitely certain qualities one should possess before they attempt to become a teacher. I also agree that possessing those qualities isn’t enough to be a great teacher, you really need to know exactly what your doing, as well as what to do when something doesn’t go the way you planned. One needs to be taught to be a great teacher, if that makes any sense at all. I love kids, I’m pretty smart and energetic and I have a passion for my discipline but, I would never be able to just take that and know how to teach a classroom full of a students who are relying on me to make their future brighter. I liked her idea on making education free for teachers because we are the people teaching the future of America, but even past that I think that teacher sand those who want to become a teacher need more support from society. I constantly hear "oh, you're becoming a teacher? That must be easy." and "O your lucky, you only work for 9 months." People thought I was becoming a teacher because it was a cop out of going to law school. How can society expect great teachers to educate our children when the teaching profession is always being put down. It’s more then knowing where the comma in a sentence goes or how to spell big words, it’s genuinely caring for these children and working with them to create a brighter future for themselves, which in my opinion is a lot more satisfy then going to law school.
This article main focus was what makes a good teacher. I really enjoyed this article especially her contrasting metaphors of teachers and doctors. This article was surprising for me because it was structured from an angle that I had never considered: A great teacher becomes great when they communicate with other like-minded teachers. I definitely agree with this statement although I would not have considered it what makes a good teacher. I definitely see the benefits not only through advice on discipline, lesson plans, and guidance concerns. There is strengthen in numbers, teachers would be able to tackle administration and student problems better.
Susan Engel says that teachers can have 200 unexpected events in a day. That reaffirms my belief that teaching is a trial and error. Learning how to adapt is very important to being a teacher. On an academic level teachers should be willing to try different methods to help pupils learn. Also, Students often are not very mature and often see the world from an individualistic perspective thus it would help in discipline cases to be observant first.
I agree with Engel that teacher’s should spend more time being mentored, observing different teaching styles, and co-teaching before they are given a classroom of their own. I have been able observe many different classroom since I was a sophomore in college because of my job. I am surprised at what teachers have to overcome just to be able to connect and teach with the students.
Engel stated that schools have an even more challenging job because “society’s unprecedented expectations for the education system: teachers are supposed to provide guidance, information, skills, and motivation to a huge and diverse population of children.” I feel that although this is true it was also true to some degree 100 years ago. It seems that teachers always had the role of the second parent. One thing that Engel did not really discuss in this article was the need for students to bond with their teacher. I strongly believe that if students can relate to the teacher in some form and respect her then they will be more willing to learn. Teachers should reach out and honest connect with their students on a level outside of the academic sphere.Another thing that I would add is a great teacher encourages and challenges her students constantly to do more.
Susan Engle creates a recipe for successful teachers: an understanding of the complexities of childhood development, flexibility and adaptability in the classroom, expansive knowledge of your discipline that goes beyond that acquired through undergraduate training, recurrent reading in the field of education, and finally, updated and modern graduate schools that cater to the present needs of the school system. Susan Engle leaves nothing to be added, in fact, Adelphi University could take some cues from this great advocate. I myself was somewhat dismayed to see that Adolescent Experience courses on campus do not evaluate the psychology of teenage brain maturity. Where are the dense readings, however convoluted, that educate young teachers in training on the human stages of intellectual maturity? Perhaps clinical observations of the science of teenage cognition would help illuminate the reasons why its necessary to design lesson plans in such a way, or how to effectively organize information in curriculums enabling children to easily retrieve information from the stores of their brain. Susan Engle has a valid point. Extensive training in the field and a solid undergraduate education in humanities are essential to building the characteristics of an excellent teacher. But for a teacher to reach students, there has to be something more – passion. While I was always fascinated by the natural sciences – dinosaurs, ancient Egyptians all living things once breathing in past lives now fossilized testaments to their existence, it wasn’t until Advanced Placement US History that my zeal for social studies was untapped. Mrs. Lange was a bird-boned, thin woman who was rather dry and unimaginative. It was the work, the meticulous, organized, well-planned handouts, handwritten to perfection and detailed reenactments of events, that urged me to listen to her words with intent, to place great care in homework assignments and essays. At the time the Internet was somewhat novel in the homes of average Americans. But I painstakingly poured over websites, through a low-speed dial up connection, in search of all the facts I could accumulate on a given subject. Mrs. Lange inspired me to become knowledgeable. A great teacher ignites a desire to learn independently. He or she gives you the academic tools, but also the inspiration and drive to seek out what interests you in the field.
14 comments:
Blog by Laura Johnson to: “What It Takes to Become a Great Teacher” by Susan Engel
According to Susan Engel, the number one way to improve education is to train teachers to become great teaching professionals. If there are intelligent, efficient, determined individuals in the teaching field then students will be able to learn and be successful individuals themselves in the real world.
I believe that teachers have an important role in students’ lives. In order for students to learn, it is up to the teachers to provide them with the knowledge that they need. Teachers can be smart, know the subject that they teach but teaching is much more then book knowledge. Teachers must have the ability to deal with their students, know how to teach each individual and make the lessons fun so that the students do not get frustrated and not want to learn. The school community affects the students as well but for the main portion of the day, students are instructed by the teachers. Without “good” teachers, students wouldn’t be able to learn.
I agree that individuals who are studying to become teachers should have more experience in the classroom before they have to teach on their own. I hear stories from my sister about all the different things that happen in her classroom and she handles it well because she has experience. The more you do something, the more comfortable you are and the more confidence you have which will allow you to do your job in your classroom.
I agree that by making teachers better the educational system will improve. A school’s purpose is to educate all students and provide them with information that will allow students to become successful citizens. The number one source of this information is teachers. This is why teachers are so essential to the learning process and are the main factors in whether a school succeeds or fails.
Leya Martin
Managing Inclusive Environments
Title of Article: “What It Takes to Become a Great Teacher” by Susan Engel
I enjoyed the way the author of this article compared what it takes to become a great surgeon to what it takes to become a great teacher. Both professions need a great deal of training and I agree with the fact that there is no such thing as someone being born as a great surgeon or a great teacher. I also believe that in order to become great at either of these professions, you need to have a passion for it. Passion for our profession is what makes us great at it. Unfortunately, passion is not something that can be trained to achieve. This article addresses this issue and asks how to find a way to get people more interested in the teaching profession. The author explains this can be done by creating better teacher education programs. At first, I couldn’t see the author’s idea on how creating better teaching programs can attract more people and create a passion for teaching in people. Even if the program is great and it is exclusive to enter into, the end result will still be the same job of working with children and teaching them everyday. Therefore, a person would need a passion for the job itself and not just in the program. After I thought about, I realized that if teaching programs were made so that it trained teachers on important parts of teaching and how to teach in engaging ways, it can definitely attract more people to the field. If the teachers education programs were improved, not only can it attract more people to the field, but it can also make the passion to teach that certain people already have, even stronger.
Another interesting part of this article was when the author stated that it is important for teachers to learn about their children. The example of the teacher from New Jersey is exactly the kind of teacher many of our classes tell us to become. We need teachers that can understand children and their behavior. Having more experience and knowledge on this well help educators teach more effectively. Therefore, it is definitely necessary to add more classes in the program that will help teachers learn more about children and how to interact with them.
The last part I agree with is that we need to have programs in which student-teachers can have a chance to develop their skills. The author compares this to the training of medical students. It is necessary for student teachers to get on the job training before being put in charge just as it is for medical students before they begin working on their own. Similar to the medical field, teachers also play a great role in people’s lives and therefore should get a similar amount of training.
This article is quite refreshing compared with the usual articles that our STEP classes provide. Although we have heard often enough that we must be innovative, creative, understanding, and flexible, we have never really been shown how to be these things. Granted, we should have some of the basic understandings but as this article says, they must be fine tuned.
I really like the idea that she presents of creating a stronger educational program. In order for us to be successful we need more than to observe for one hundred hours and then be pushed into student teaching for only one semester (two if you’re lucky). Financial backing is the issue; just look at NYC and the teacher cuts they plan on making. What if we did have the backing? What if we could be more selective and provide a broader yet more specified education? We need to be educated in many things, as Engel says, but we must also be able to study not only our major and education but how students behave, why they behave this way, how we can communicate better with them.
Engel also makes a good point when she says that we do not have enough planning time allotted. This should be a time when teachers communicate with each other as to what the best method is of weaving their curriculums together while making them interesting and still meeting standards. If more teachers who were educated in the same manner were placed in the same school, then there would be a higher chance of cooperation and discussion. Some teachers not schooled in this manner may stick to their textbook only methods, unwilling to change to better suit the students’ needs. Some schools do provide time for teachers to work together but is it enough?
I believe that some teachers and even some schools forget the needs of the students. We are not doing well on an international level intellectually but this can be changed. How? We can make our subjects more interesting, interrelated, and valuable in “real” life. It is also important to remember our students. As Engel says, “… a teacher’s young clients are all very much conscious.” I feel that I would benefit entirely more from a program developed in Engel’s mind than other programs offered.
Grace Polson
"What it takes to become a great teacher" by Susan Engel
I agree with Susan Engel on the fact that the education system has been circling around the real problem of trying to maintain good schools. For good schools to thrive, there needs to be good teachers. The term "good" seems utterly too general. What does it take to be a "good" teacher then? According to Susan Engel, teachers who "provide guidance, information, skills, and motivation to a huge and diverse population of children", are considered good teachers. Teachers take part in a huge proportion of a students life. Therefore, whatever the teacher does, impacts how the student reacts to the teacher. If the teacher provides a genuine respect and care for the student, the student will return those qualities in the classroom. To me, it doesn't matter if you are a difficult child or not, students desire respect and care, so it is up to the teacher to give it to them. Every student deserves the knowledge necessary to become successful in their future. Not every student has the same learning style. A good teacher would implement a lesson to adhere to every students learning pattern. This is often difficult and takes a good understanding of how the student desires to learn. Teachers should come down to a students level and learn what the student is interested in and incorporate it into the classroom. Besides the skills and information in teaching, teachers should have an enthusiastic charisma relative to that of a student. In that way, both the student can learn from the teacher, and the teacher can learn from the student.
Susan Engel mentioned a few good points. It's important to have uprising teachers to go through the necessary training that will be required to become more accustom to in directing a class. Clearly, we have all been in a classroom environment as students and observers. It's only the beginning process in becoming a teacher. Engel mentions how it takes passion to become a great teacher. I believe it's the same when we go as observers. Unfortunately, some students do not take the observation process too serious.
I agree with Laura's comment on the teaching experience. The experience will give the teacher a better picture on things. Also most importantly too is for a lesson evaluation during the first few times for a new teacher. It's beneficial for the teacher to be aware of mistakes and positive things. There's always room for improvement.
Teachers should come down to a students level and learn what the student is interested in and incorporate it into the classroom.
While I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, I think the current emphasis on standardized testing leaves little time for topics that lie outside the scope of the test materials. All too often I have seen good teachers "teach to the test" and make no bones about it. Perhaps the subject I have chosen to teach, Living Environment, has something to do with that, since it is one of the core regents tests high school students take.
Teachers are evaluated based on their students' test scores. And while standardized tests probably are a fair way to measure comprehension, at what cost? Science really needs to be taught with an inquiry-based, hands-on approach for students to fully appreciate and enjoy the topic. I believe the root of many students' dislike for science stems from the frequent "drill and grill" format in too many Living Environment classrooms.
Susan Engel's call for a new instructional approach for training teachers is great idea. Fledgling teachers need more time in classrooms before having one of their own. Perhaps starting from the ground up (with new teachers) is the way to go. However, in a classroom where the teachers' performance is evaluated based on the results of a standardized test, there may be difficulty getting even new teachers to "take a lively idea and weave it into good curriculum" over more traditional, albeit painfully dull, teacher-centered approaches.
According to Susan Engel, schools need teachers who will be the architects of a new world in which every teacher engages in a lifetime of study on the teaching. The answer to raising standards and holding our profession accountable,to ensuring that every student becomes a long- life learner lies not in teacher-proofing the profession but in teacher- education.
We often hear that teachers play an important role in students' lives. Therefore,I am agree with Engel that teachers need more training into the classroom to learn how to deal with their students. Most of the times,teachers do not do an effective job because they do not how to teach each student and create lessons to motivate a huge and diverse population of children. This article emphasizes how important is to be a teacher and I like how the author compare the teacher profession with the surgeon profession.
“What It Takes to Become a Great Teacher” by Susan Engel
An accomplished educator can wear one or more of several different "hats" during any school day. The more hands-on experience an aspiring educator has, the better prepared he or she will be to face the 200 unexpected situations we will see daily. The ability to improvise and adapt to the unforeseen can be taught, and should be learned by all classroom teachers. For this it would be of great benefit to draw upon the experiences of current teachers, not only those in our area of concentration. It is all together possible one or more of these unexpected situations have been dealt with successfully by another.
I strongly believe with what I perceived the main point of the article to be; reform in education must begin with reforming the educator's education! I've lost count of how many times I've been lectured to about how I should not lecture. I agree with my colleague’s assessment of how we have been challenged to be more creative, more differentiated and more diverse than our predecessors. Yet we have not received the direction we had hoped for, only given a destination. Change can be a slow and laborious process, but it almost always begins with an individual. I will let that person be me.
Teaching is not a job, it is a profession. Our responsibility to our students does not remain behind when we leave school grounds, nor does it begin and end with the opening and closing school bell. It is something that we must totally commit ourselves to. We as teachers will link the past to the future, our future.
I absolutely agree with what Susan Engel is arguing in this article. I feel that many education programs at different colleges, including Adelphi, are trying to shape themselves around what Engel is saying. The STEP program tries to do many things that are discussed in the article but I think that their organization should be a bit better. The professors and professionals running this program also need to pay more attention to the student as an individual and work within the disciplines of the other departments on campus to allow the students to have a proper schedule for what their courses require. This is kind of off topic, but the article reminded me of what the STEP program at Adelphi is trying to do with its education majors. For example, the model program and the Bellmore-Merrick internship are examples of ways to create the type of teachers discussed in Engel’s article. These programs are limited to only a number of students. Even if the student has the potential to be a great teacher, there could be a student that is just a little more up to par than this student, the better applicant will get the position over the student that fell slightly short of what was expected. There should be ample opportunities for everyone who has the potential to be a great teacher.
Again, I agree with Engel in stating that good grades are important and you cant educate unless you yourself are well educated, but what if a student with straight As has no ability to speak in front of a group of people but it going to school to become a teacher. Next to this student is a student with decent grades but has a few Cs here and there in their transcript. This student has an amazing out-going personality and the passion to teach and holds qualities that some of the best teachers out there hold, which student gets the job? The one that has straight As but won’t be able to teach the material or the student who does decent in school but will be able to teach the material that is provided in an interesting way.
Susan Lastorino's response to Susan Engel's article, "What it Takes to Become a Great Teacher".
I believe that children are like seeds. With a little knowledge, encouragement, and faith; eventually the child prospers to become an endeavoring, intellectual student.
Teachers need to be open minded and accepting, never biased. A successful classroom needs: 1) a guiding teacher, 2) students that are not afraid to express their opinions and use their struggles as the foundation to learning how to succeed, and 3) a positive, respectful atmosphere.
I believe that teaching and learning are lifelong processes. With each passing day, I learn something new: a lesson, a strategy, a fact, an opinion, etc. Being patient, determined, and remaining open minded are what's key to educating and becoming educated. Education doesn't only come from teachers and books; we learn from our family, friends, and even complete strangers.
I believe that failure is natural and that when you're down, there's no other way but up. The only way to encourage a failing student is to remind them that nobody is perfect and they should use their mistakes as the lessons of life and learn to progress.
Creating good teachers is one of the best ( or probably the best) way to create a foundation for the best education. Teachers require empathy, passion, patience, intelligence and drive. When people generally think about teachers they say, “ Oh, they get a lot of holidays”, so they automatically think it’s an easy job. Well, to those who’ve never done it, it’s not. I think what makes teaching difficult now is all the restraints we have in the school system and all the giving up we allow to happen. What I mean by “giving up” is that if students give up and then the administration and teachers give up on them, students will surely drop out. When I look at the number, 6.2 million, I think, “well I can’t even count, let alone write the amount of numbers that go up to 6.2 million”, I’m not even sure if anyone can but how can we let 6.2 children drop out? They have simply become a number and passed along the education system because we’ve become simply “tired” of “dealing” with them. If we don’t start hiring good teachers then we’ll continue to foster bad teachers and bad administration. I do agree with Engel in terms of making teacher training more alluring but I think one thing she fails to speak about is: well after we create good teachers, how do we make new teachers stay? There are some teachers who are good teachers and fit into what a “good teacher” should be, but after two years in, for example, a low income school, they quit. Why? We need teachers but a lot of them who are good, don’t want to be where we need them. I think one of the other roots, besides creating good teachers, is creating good administration.
Managing Inclusive Environments
Title of Article: “What It Takes to Become a Great Teacher” by Susan Engel
Its obvious that everyone agrees that something needs to be done to better our education system. However, no one can really agree on what exactly needs to be done to help better the future of our children. Susan Engel’s article looks past the education system itself and places the problem with the education of our educators. I agree with Engels when she says that not everyone is cut out to be a teacher and that there are definitely certain qualities one should possess before they attempt to become a teacher. I also agree that possessing those qualities isn’t enough to be a great teacher, you really need to know exactly what your doing, as well as what to do when something doesn’t go the way you planned. One needs to be taught to be a great teacher, if that makes any sense at all. I love kids, I’m pretty smart and energetic and I have a passion for my discipline but, I would never be able to just take that and know how to teach a classroom full of a students who are relying on me to make their future brighter.
I liked her idea on making education free for teachers because we are the people teaching the future of America, but even past that I think that teacher sand those who want to become a teacher need more support from society. I constantly hear "oh, you're becoming a teacher? That must be easy." and "O your lucky, you only work for 9 months." People thought I was becoming a teacher because it was a cop out of going to law school. How can society expect great teachers to educate our children when the teaching profession is always being put down. It’s more then knowing where the comma in a sentence goes or how to spell big words, it’s genuinely caring for these children and working with them to create a brighter future for themselves, which in my opinion is a lot more satisfy then going to law school.
This article main focus was what makes a good teacher. I really enjoyed this article especially her contrasting metaphors of teachers and doctors. This article was surprising for me because it was structured from an angle that I had never considered: A great teacher becomes great when they communicate with other like-minded teachers. I definitely agree with this statement although I would not have considered it what makes a good teacher. I definitely see the benefits not only through advice on discipline, lesson plans, and guidance concerns. There is strengthen in numbers, teachers would be able to tackle administration and student problems better.
Susan Engel says that teachers can have 200 unexpected events in a day. That reaffirms my belief that teaching is a trial and error. Learning how to adapt is very important to being a teacher. On an academic level teachers should be willing to try different methods to help pupils learn. Also, Students often are not very mature and often see the world from an individualistic perspective thus it would help in discipline cases to be observant first.
I agree with Engel that teacher’s should spend more time being mentored, observing different teaching styles, and co-teaching before they are given a classroom of their own. I have been able observe many different classroom since I was a sophomore in college because of my job. I am surprised at what teachers have to overcome just to be able to connect and teach with the students.
Engel stated that schools have an even more challenging job because “society’s unprecedented expectations for the education system: teachers are supposed to provide guidance, information, skills, and motivation to a huge and diverse population of children.” I feel that although this is true it was also true to some degree 100 years ago. It seems that teachers always had the role of the second parent. One thing that Engel did not really discuss in this article was the need for students to bond with their teacher. I strongly believe that if students can relate to the teacher in some form and respect her then they will be more willing to learn. Teachers should reach out and honest connect with their students on a level outside of the academic sphere.Another thing that I would add is a great teacher encourages and challenges her students constantly to do more.
Susan Engle creates a recipe for successful teachers: an understanding of the complexities of childhood development, flexibility and adaptability in the classroom, expansive knowledge of your discipline that goes beyond that acquired through undergraduate training, recurrent reading in the field of education, and finally, updated and modern graduate schools that cater to the present needs of the school system.
Susan Engle leaves nothing to be added, in fact, Adelphi University could take some cues from this great advocate. I myself was somewhat dismayed to see that Adolescent Experience courses on campus do not evaluate the psychology of teenage brain maturity. Where are the dense readings, however convoluted, that educate young teachers in training on the human stages of intellectual maturity? Perhaps clinical observations of the science of teenage cognition would help illuminate the reasons why its necessary to design lesson plans in such a way, or how to effectively organize information in curriculums enabling children to easily retrieve information from the stores of their brain. Susan Engle has a valid point.
Extensive training in the field and a solid undergraduate education in humanities are essential to building the characteristics of an excellent teacher. But for a teacher to reach students, there has to be something more – passion. While I was always fascinated by the natural sciences – dinosaurs, ancient Egyptians all living things once breathing in past lives now fossilized testaments to their existence, it wasn’t until Advanced Placement US History that my zeal for social studies was untapped. Mrs. Lange was a bird-boned, thin woman who was rather dry and unimaginative. It was the work, the meticulous, organized, well-planned handouts, handwritten to perfection and detailed reenactments of events, that urged me to listen to her words with intent, to place great care in homework assignments and essays. At the time the Internet was somewhat novel in the homes of average Americans. But I painstakingly poured over websites, through a low-speed dial up connection, in search of all the facts I could accumulate on a given subject. Mrs. Lange inspired me to become knowledgeable. A great teacher ignites a desire to learn independently. He or she gives you the academic tools, but also the inspiration and drive to seek out what interests you in the field.
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