Posts tagged Teacher Certification
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First-year teachers, part 3: Training is important, but all new teachers need on-the-job help
In the first two parts of this series, we surveyed various routes to teacher certification and discussed the challenges of learning to manage a classroom. New teachers also need targeted coaching, opportunities to collaborate with and observe experienced teachers, and help with lesson planning. Keeping order in the classroom may be the toughest skill for new teachers to master,… Keep reading…
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First-year teachers, part 2: How do you learn to keep a classroom from spiraling out of control?
Yesterday, in the first part of this series, we examined three different pathways to teaching. Today, we look at one of the biggest challenges for any new teacher: classroom management. One veteran of Teach for America (TFA), now in his third year of teaching at a DC charter school with a high-poverty population, says that what’s needed for effective classroom management… Keep reading…
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First-year teachers, part 1: Is there any way to make new teachers more effective?
Yesterday we heard from a college senior trying to decide how best to prepare herself for a teaching career. Today we begin the first of a three-part series drawing on interviews with first-year teachers who came to the profession in a variety of ways. Nationwide, between 40 and 50% of teachers leave the classroom within their first 5 years. For DCPS, that figure rises to 70%,… Keep reading…
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What’s the best way to prepare myself to teach?
Midway through my college career at Georgetown University, I decided I wanted to teach. Now I need to figure out the best way to prepare myself to do so. As an entering freshman, I had no idea of the educational inequities just a few miles outside Georgetown’s front gates. But my very first semester I joined an organization called DC Reads, which focuses on literacy… Keep reading…
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Three linchpins of education reform
What’s the one thing we need to do to make the District’s public schools great? There is no one thing. We need to do many things, all important and many interconnected. But there are three things on which we should focus, starting now. Keep reading…
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Residency programs make teachers effective from the start
It’s hard for new teachers to get the practical skills they need, whether through traditional schools of education or more recent alternative routes to teacher certification. A new model trains teachers like doctors, giving them hands-on, supervised classroom experience. For decades, there have been complaints that schools of education have low admissions standards,… Keep reading…