AN OVERVIEW OF EDE 5940: SUPERVISED TEACHING
Teacher education without continuing
contact with schools, teachers, classrooms and children is insufficient and
incomplete. Thus the Elementary Education program requires that all students in
its masters degree program, who are without previous experience in an
elementary classroom, spend one hundred sixty hours in a school setting. Since
students are at varying places in their degree/preparation programs and are
taking a variety of different classes, the experience is not prescriptive. It
is designed, instead, to be self-constructed between the student, the classroom
cooperating teacher, and the course instructors with whom the student is
working.
Each student is expected to construct his/her own experience with assistance from individuals who are available to help. The student, however, is responsible for:
These materials have been prepared to assist you in your self-construction process. You will find the following sections:
Arranging and Scheduling
Placement
Planning the Experience
with Course Foci
Monitoring the Experience
Documenting Florida
Accomplished Practices
Meeting Course
Requirements
Forms
Students will register
for one to four credits of EDE 5940 each semester prior to their internship.
Each one-semester hour requires forty hours of classroom participation. This
assignment will normally take place in a public school classroom in Leon
County. On occasion, students living in
other counties can arrange placements in their home counties.
The placement process
begins with your major advisor. Contact him/her for placement assistance. You
may, however, arrange a placement on your own. Placements may come from an
existing relationship with a school due to employment as an aide or substitute,
or from a previous placement in EDE 5940, or through personal contacts.
Students using this alternative placement process should contact their major
advisor with details of their arrangements.
Planning your school
experience is a cooperative activity involving your major advisor, your
cooperating teacher, your course instructors, and yourself. Most of the
planning will take place in initial meetings with your cooperating teacher. As
you plan, you will want to take account the following items: into
a.
the school,
b.
the communities it serves,
c.
the teacher(s),
d.
the students, and
e.
the instructional program.
As you plan your
experience, don't forget to plan your own professional image. This refers not
only to your dress and physical appearance, but also to:
PORTFOLIO AND INTEGRATING
THE
FLORIDA ACCOMPLISHED
PRACTICES IN THE EXPERIENCE
You should create and build a portfolio of your
work as you go through the field experience that includes your documenting your
evolving growth in the Florida Accomplished Practices, including:
The reason these
classroom experiences are required is, simply, the belief that your preparation
as a teacher will be better with continued contact with classrooms and
children. This condition, however, will only be true if you take the time and
make the effort to integrate the experiences in the school classroom with the
college coursework.
First, do a self-analysis
by answering the following questions:
as a teacher?
as a planner?
as a disciplinarian?
as an observer?
as a questioner?
as an evaluator and diagnostician?
as a manager of small groups?
as a manager of individualized instruction?
as a classroom assistant?
Then, do a self-analysis
of yourself in relation to the content and perspectives for each course in
which you are enrolled. From the analysis, determine what in-school/with
implications result.
Finally, discuss with each
of your professors early in the semester what he/she would like to do, to
observe, to record, as you work in the classroom. Some professors will have a
to do, to observe, to record, as you work in the classroom. Some professors
will have a long list of requirements sequentially organized through the
semesters; others will have general requirements that are left to you to plan
and organize; and, still others will leave relation between EDE 5940 and their
course entirely up to you.
When completed, prepare a
plan for the semester WITH your cooperating teacher.
Teacher education is a
journey-not an event, a course, a singular noun, or a series of activities. As
a journey, each segment (course, paper, experience, activity, etc.) must be
planned and monitored. It has been said that if you don't know where you are
going:
...the route you're
taking doesn't matter
...you're not very likely
to get there, and
...MOST IMPORTANTLY, your
colleagues, teachers, and advisors can't help you get there!
The last step of the previous page reiterated
what was said during the planning section.
PREPARE A PLAN FOR THE SEMESTER.
Preparation of the plan, however, is only half the
battle. Monitoring your progress on this journey is JUST as important.
Do this by:
At the end of the semester, reflect upon the
entire experience-both alone and with the assistance of others. In doing so,
prepare to update the list of strengths and weaknesses as part of the
self-analysis activity described above. Use that updated list as the starting
you did point for your work the following semester.
The requirements for EDE 5490 are few but
specific:
1.
Maintain log of
time spent at the school-simply a list of days and hours you worked at the
school, prepared by you and countersigned by the teacher. It is due prior to
the last day of class for the semester. An example:
August
27, 9:00-1:00
September
3, 9:00-1:00
September
10, 9:00-1:00
2.
Keep a journal
of your observations, reactions, feelings etc. Plan to write at least for 20
minutes after each school experience. Use the journal for discussions with the
teacher, your professors, and as a source for your own reflection. Your
professors may ask to see it, but you will not be turning it in.
3.
Hand to your
major advisor a completed evaluation form prepared by your teacher and
countersigned by you. It is due prior
to the last day of classes for the semester.
A blank copy of the form is attached.
4.
Create a
Portfolio for documenting your evolving competencies in the Florida Accomplished
Practices.
Attached you will find an attendance record,
and an evaluation form. DO NOT USE THESE ORIGINALS. Arrange to have these forms
copied so that you can preserve the original. (You may make a mistake in
preparation of one or more!)
YOU ARE THE RESPONSIBLE AGENT FOR THIS
COURSE. You must see that a placement is arranged for or by you, that the
experience is planned, that the activities are integrated with your program,
and that your progress is monitored and evaluated.
From here on I’ve requested to have the forms retyped—so wait for these forms.