week

monday If it seems like the students are all over the room & it’s a chaotic mess, but no one’s beating another, the project is going well. Invest in a set of Crayola Washable markers so that you can prepare some of your activities (such as your web) outside of the classroom and you don’t have to worry about getting it done during your prep time. Don’t worry about creating a special lesson just for your mentor during your takeover. If it’s important enough that you’re teaching it, it’s important enough for her to observe.

Don’t slack. This is for your major and for your life. If you don’t take it seriously, or wait until the last minute you are missing out on good experience that sets the foundation of your career. Start early…take it from someone who didn’t in CI 420 but turned it around in CI 421. The difference was like night and day…DO IT! If you’re stuck ask for help. The mentors, Daniel, cohort friends, etc. are there for you! Use them! I have called my mentor at home in a panic, and she calmed me down saying I CAN do this. Get to know the mentors. They’ve been where you are. So use them. Get to know the cohort—they come in handy when you’re stuck and need someone to help you out. We do a lot of work in ECE so the cohort people are the best to talk to. My roommate went on and on about her to-do list, but it never seemed to measure up to mine. Very frustrating.

The Craft dedication: Teaching at the two ends of the schooling continuum, I have learned that teaching is teaching, whether the students are 4 or 20 or 35. Teaching is moving—leading, guiding, pushing, pulling, prodding, manipulating, cajoling—students to acquire and develop knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values. Teaching is not a single endeavor. It takes many forms. But know this: If the teaching is good, the knowledge will be meaningful, the skills useful, the attitudes forceful, and the values deep.

dedication cont. I have learned the most about teaching, not surprisingly, from teachers—many wonderfully masterful teachers. Some were experienced. Others were wet-behind-the- ears novices. Some taught in classrooms; others, on sports fields and ice rinks. All amazed me in some way. Thinking about them, I continue to be amazed.

introduction...teachers, poets, engineers, physicists, writers, artists, musicians, cabinet makers, camp counselors, and so on—people who produce, who contribute to the common good. a craft has a base of –knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values under the visible hour many invisible hours every master of a craft knows many tricks, but tricks won’t make you a master of a craft

naturals

Donaldson review to turn an existing state of affairs into a desired one requires understanding the existing one –what are kids actually like –who do we want them to become need to reconsider widely held beliefs about what kids are like

Wednesday The Good Preschool Teacher “All teachers who enter: Be prepared to tell your story.” (p. vii) “If teachers are to continue to grow, they must at some point begin to study themselves.” (pp. vii-viii)

Ayers’ assumptions Teachers are a rich and worthy source of knowledge about teaching—about the details of everyday practice. Because teachers are chief instruments of their own practice, self-awareness is valuable, perhaps indespensable Teachers draw on training, skills, experience, habit, personal values, art, science, and native wit to do their work.

Darlene “These kids have a hole in their trust. That hole needs to be repaired. Some of them, on the street, will just go off with anyone. That’s not trusting, that’s passive and inappropriate. We play a lot of peek-a-boo and hide-and-seek, those kind of things. We kind of go back to the beginning.” (p. 103)

The Craft ch I: good teaching: building the base Good teachers learn, each day, to pat themselves on the back and kick themselves in the butt. The trick is to find the right balance. “It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” (John Wooden)

good teaching cont. The 5,4,3,2,1 model, like any model, attempts to simplify a complex reality, making it more accessible. Teaching is a complex activity. But underlying the complexity are some basic ideas. Make sense of these. Make them part of who you are. Explore cultural images of teaching.

good teaching cont. Good teaching takes many forms, as do good teachers (good therapists, coaches, carpenters, etc.). Personalities differ. These differences are, in contemporary American culture, exaggerated. Good teachers, as do practitioners of any craft, share basic knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values. The base of good teaching, whatever the surface differences, has great similarities. These similarities are what a craft is.

good teaching cont. good teaching requires deep cultural understandings moves students is multi-faceted is demanding requires a strong invisible base is explicit is supportive is perspectival is open-minded takes many forms is respectful seeks invisibility