Good teaching
One thing I learned this week at the TBR institute is that good teaching is good teaching no matter what age. After a week of talking about Benchmarks, GLEs (grade level expectations), Objectives, Standards, and Guiding Questions, none of which we ever talk about at the university level, we spent Friday doing actual teaching and the CMAT (content master area teacher) did the same kinda stuff that I did at the University level.
The big controversy is STANDARDS and ACHIEVEMENT. The rhetoric of TBR (and EBRPSS, I imagine) is that regardless of your access to resources, regardless of the culture of your school, and regardless of the historical and material circumstances of the student(s), good teachers can still raise students to their expected level of achievement. I don’t know how I feel about this. In some ways I think it’s too easy for the failures to be laid at the feet of the teachers. In other ways, I think it minimizes the ways in which students are overdetermined to fail. But, on the flip side, it’s easy to set up self-fulfilling prophecies that prevent students from doing the best they can do according to their ability. It’s a hornets’ nest of problems. I just hope I can be one of those teachers who can make a difference and I hope I don’t burn myself out.
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Okay, as the wife of an Assessment Director at an state University I’m going to agree with you — but reservedly on your observation about University teaching and the whole “objectives, standards, guiding questions” issue. I think teachers at the University want to get at the things such questions provide, however, the terminology, or rhetoric, is a problem — especially in the humanities. The idea of measuring “objectives” whether course of student identified is an uphill battle. There is always the teacher who claims “I am the expert in my field and only I can know if the students in my class got what I say they get.” On the other hand, progress is being made. I’ve seen many more faculty working to give evidence of student progress and proof of the standards they hold to get this progress. It’s the neverending college parodox that your degree gives you expert status, but it doesn’t prove you can teach what you know.
I am very interested in knowing whatelse you are getting in the institute. It all sounds like a lot to process in a short time.