Teacher educators constantly face the tension between preparing pre-service teachers to work in schools as they currently are and preparing pre-service teachers for schools as they could be. Let’s begin a deliberate conversation about how teacher certification programs can advance the work of Coalition schools and get new teachers ready to both work in schools already focused on equity and teacher-driven instruction and (maybe more importantly) be effective advocates and change agents for such instruction in schools that have not adopted practices consistent with Coalition philosophy. A small number of public school-university partnerships have been effective in preparing beginning teachers to work in equity-minded classrooms and schools, the guidelines for the sort of university-school partnerships that could prepare beginning teachers to be advocates for Coalition principles needs updating. This conversation as an opportunity to do that work with consideration of questions such as: How could teacher certification programs be structured in order to most effectively advance the principals of student-centered and teacher-driven schools? What are some fundamental experiences beginning teachers need in order to foster such principals in their emergent practices? What are some essential readings or ideas that certification students should be familiar with in order to function effectively in a classroom and school based on the CES Common Principles? Such a conversation between experienced Coalition teachers and teacher educators could be a new way to approach this ongoing challenge.
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
