1.1: Subject Matter
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate their knowledge of and commitment to subject matter through their teaching.
Rationale
Teachers must know what they teach. The centrality of this idea is most evident in the arguments of the perennialists, for example, who believe that only this is required to teach well. Clearly, teachers must strive to convey their excitement about their subject matter and demonstrate its relevance to students’ lives. To do so, teachers should know their subject matter, new developments in their field, and ways to connect their subject matter to their students’ lives. They should value their content area openly, displaying their own excitement of its possibilities and applications. Finally, they should be able to relate their subject matter to other disciplines, perhaps by teaching in thematic or interdisciplinary contexts with colleagues in other content areas.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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1.2: Teacher as Learner
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they are effective models of the learning process.
Rationale
Teachers are models for their students. One central way that teachers can be positive models for their students is to display that they are active, life-long learners themselves. They are excited about their disciplines, but also other activities and avocations in their lives. They are always engaged in learning more. Good teachers demonstrate their learning interests in their daily lives. And, they are open to learning from their students. Therefore, they should know a variety of ways to learn, both formal and informal; they should value the act of learning and display an avid enthusiasm for their own learning in ways that are evident to their students; and they should be able to develop ways to share their excitement for learning with their students.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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1.3: Learning Materials
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they can critically review learning materials.
Rationale
Given the diversity of students in our public schools, teachers constantly need to seek additional resources to enrich their teaching. Teachers need to be able to discriminate between engaging material and material that does not connect to students’ lives. Teachers must know the different kinds and quality of learning materials available, which materials are appropriate for different classrooms and students, and when and how to use them. They must value the importance of obtaining materials that provide varied content and viewpoints. They must be able to identify materials appropriate to their particular subject matter and the developmental level of a variety of learners. They must also be able to identify the qualities that make materials engaging.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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1.4: Teaching Reading and Writing
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they can effectively incorporate reading, writing, and thinking activities into their day-to-day instruction.
Rationale
Language is an important medium of teaching and learning. By interacting with students and encouraging them to interact with each other through reading, writing, speaking, and listening, teachers are able to analyze how students learn and help them to communicate more effectively. Through engagement in reading and writing activities, students have to reflect on the content of their activities. As facilitators of this reflective interaction, teachers should know the theories and research findings that indicate that activities involving reading, writing, and critical thinking promote better understanding and encourage students to improve these skills. They should value the importance of reinforcing reading, writing, and critical thinking, thereby helping their students to pursue their own individual interests. They should be able to provide students with opportunities to engage in reading, writing, and thinking about stimulating subject matter in their day-to-day activities.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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2.1: Individual Development
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they understand the cultural, physical, cognitive, psychological, and social-emotional dimensions of their students’ development.
Rationale
Theory is an important guide to practice. Teachers should know several theories of adolescent development and understand the influence of developmental characteristics on behavior. To be effective, a teacher must understand and acknowledge the uniqueness of each student and value their individuality, how they differ physically, cognitively, socially, and psychologically. A teacher must be able to identify the level of each student's self-esteem and his or her need for psychological and social support.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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2.2: Self-Directed Learners
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they can help their students to better manage their own learning.
Rationale
One of the lessons of the hidden curriculum is that it’s the teacher and our society’s agendas that count in school. Students, particularly older students, typically must unlearn this lesson in order to develop a measure of independence and to begin to structure their own learning activities. Developing this independence is a very individual matter. Teachers need to know the defining issues at various stages of this developmental process. They need to value independent behavior in their students, and they need to be able to foster self-direction in each individual, providing enough structure and direction to get him or her started on a project or persisting at it, but not so much that he or she is simply following someone else’s agenda.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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3.1: Using School Specialists
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they are aware of their own strengths and limitations and that they can respond to their students’ specific needs by seeking the help of others when appropriate.
Rationale
Teachers often face dilemmas while working with students who have extraordinarily difficult academic or interpersonal problems. Occasionally a student picks a teacher as the person to confide in with personal dilemmas/situations. When possible, that teacher is morally and ethically obliged to attend to that need. Teachers need to know their limits and to be able to judge when a student is best served by confiding in them or by developing a new relationship with a skilled school specialist. Additionally, teachers must understand the talents and skills each school specialist brings to the school experience. Teachers need to value the role of school specialists, but also their own personal and professional capabilities. And they need to be able to diagnose the severity of each student's situation and, when necessary, to help a student develop a new relationship with a fellow professional who, for the moment, is a stranger to the student.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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3.2: Multicultural Understanding
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they can function effectively in multicultural settings.
Rationale
In contemporary American society, multicultural education strives to free individuals from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic class, age, ability, sexual orientation, and religion. Teachers should recognize cultural diversity and affirm it as a valuable resource to be preserved and extended. Therefore, teachers should know about the historical points of view, contributions, and experiences of different groups and their lack of equal opportunities to learn. They should value the importance of a multicultural environment which is free of prejudice and stereotypes and in which social justice for all groups is guaranteed. They should be able to help their students develop more positive attitudes toward those who are culturally different.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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3.3: Diverse Learners
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they can function effectively with their students with diverse abilities or special needs.
Rationale
The reality of today’s typical classroom is that it contains a very diverse group of students. Society’s aspirations for integration, inclusion, and equal access place complex demands on teachers. Effective teachers strive to create learning environments that honor individuals and define them in terms of their strengths rather than their deficiencies. Further, accomplished teachers design individual and group instruction that honors each student's strengths and assumes each student can learn. An effective teacher must know about diversity, value students for their strengths as well as their needs, and must be able to implement programs appropriate to each student.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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4.1: Teaching for Problem-Solving
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they can develop their students' critical thinking, decision-making, and inquiry abilities.
Rationale
Through its actions, much of schooling has presumed students to be passive recipients of information. To counteract these forces, teachers are learning to consider their students as active, critical processors of information. Accordingly, teachers should know the dynamics of critical thinking processes and the specific adaptations to the subject area being studied. They should also value a good question as much as a good answer and work to develop a climate of inquiry in their classrooms. To accomplish this goal, they should be able to promote their students’ critical thinking, decision-making, and inquiry abilities.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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4.2: Variety in Instruction
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they can employ a variety of instructional approaches.
Rationale
Each of us is different. As such, we learn differently and require different modes of teaching. As facilitators of learning, teachers should expose their students to different learning experiences and adapt the learning environment to the needs of individual students. They should know a variety of instructional approaches and how and when to use them. They should value the importance of actively seeking to promote learning by all their students by providing them with an appropriate learning environment. They should be able to determine students’ learning styles, strengths, and needs, and identify effective and appropriate instructional approaches.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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4.3: Technology
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they can use state-of-the-art communication and information technologies (CITs) to enhance their teaching.
Rationale
Ours is a society marked by rapidly evolving new technologies that allow us to access more and more information in increasingly efficient ways, transforming our concept of where, how, and when learning takes place. Many of these technological developments have led to innovative, web-based learning environments, instructional techniques such as networked electronic workstations, on-line information services, CD-ROM databases, and interactive video that significantly enhance opportunities to learn. These advances become allies in breaking the physical and psychological boundaries of the classroom and of the school. Therefore, teachers should know the various technologies available to enhance education. They should value technological development and the way it can dramatically enhance teaching and learning, even when it makes new demands on the teaching role. And they should be able to use communication and information technologies (CITs) effectively and work with colleagues to tailor technological applications to their classroom needs.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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5.1: Fostering a Sense of Community
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they can employ a variety of approaches to foster a sense of community within the groups of students with which they work.
Rationale
Our society suffers a crisis of community. We seek ways to reconnect with each other. Schools play an important role in this endeavor by giving students numerous opportunities to participate meaningfully as members of a community. Therefore, teachers should know how to foster community within their classrooms and their schools. They should value community as an essential foundation for much of what they strive to accomplish with their students. And they should be able to build communities out of the collections of individuals with which they work.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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5.2: Classroom Management
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they can employ a variety of approaches to design and manage daily classroom routines.
Rationale
Classroom management continues to be a major challenge in most schools today. Teachers are asked to instruct a wide range of students, some of whom come to school with emotional distress or underprepared for the social expectations of the school culture. It is important to have information about how to organize and manage today’s diverse classrooms so as to maximize productive student learning and behavior. Teachers should know how to determine students’ personal, psychological, and learning needs and how this translates into organizational and management plans for the classroom. Teachers should value establishing positive teacher, student and peer relationships that help meet student needs and build a community of support. They should also be able to respond effectively to inappropriate student behavior and use a wide range of counseling and behavioral methods that involve students in examining and correcting their own behavior.
Activities Offered as Evidence
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6.1: Verbal Communication
Our teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate that they can write, speak, and listen effectively.
Rationale
Teaching is communicating; your effectiveness in teaching depends on your ability to communicate. Teachers should be able to write, speak, and listen effectively. Therefore, they should know what constitutes appropriate verbal communication in a variety of teaching settings; they should value communicating clearly and accurately to their students and others; and they should be able to effectively deliver their lessons and messages in oral and written communication to students, colleagues, families, and the community. They should be able to listen and determine if others have understood their meaning and to make sure they have understood the communications of others.