Starting my position of Faculty Associate last September and leaving behind my class, department, school and district, I was challenged in my beliefs about education. I came into the position with experience and an open mind, but my experiences within the program have transformed, deepened and solidified the way I think about teaching and learning. In addition to this, I am now past the half way point in my Masters of Education Program. Spending time every couple of weeks with a dedicated group of teaching professionals has also given me more time to reflect on my practice and the system as a whole.
My Role as a Faculty Associate:
- Responsible for the supervision of student teachers during their school placements
- Mentor pre-service teachers as they develop their practice
- Evaluate and recommend successful student teachers for certification
- Provide a liaison between SFU’s Faculty of Education and the public schools
- Develop module programs for individual and group instruction
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Create a classroom and an online community
(through the use of twitter and SFU’s online application – Canvas)
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Promote the study of education literature and
the examination of education issues
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Prepare and implement workshops on a variety
of topics including: planning, assessment, motivation, relationships with
students, teaching strategies, aboriginal education, and special education.
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Provide opportunities for students to practice
skills
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Provide feedback on student reflections and student
progress within the program
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Being a research based profession, and on a life long learning journey, I feel that educators should spend time as both learners and mentors. As we find out more about how students best learn our teaching practice needs to change with these new understandings. We should always be striving to find new and innovative ways to reach all of our students, grounded in research. In addition to this, the act of mentoring provides both the learner and the mentor with new insights and can greatly strengthen everyone's practice - which benefits all students. I believe that all teachers should spend time both learning and mentoring others in our profession. Becoming a Faculty Associate has been one of the best professional development opportunities I have had.A few nuggets from topics we explored in our module this past month:
- Building a strong community is essential for learning
- Outdoor education helps connect students to the Earth and enhances learning
- POE - Predict, Observe, Explain: an open-ended strategy for inquiring into science topics
- Boys Emotional Literacy: boys are told a single story of who they are that often supresses emotions and encourages violence
- Sharon's Super Seven: explicitly teaching group collaboration skills
- Making Just One Change - How to teach students to formulate good questions for inquiry
- Formative Assessment
- External versus intrinsic motivators
- Mindfulness: Encouraged through the Minds Up Program and Yoga practices
- Reflection: through writing and visual journaling
In addition, as Faculty Associate I was introduced to two new government mandates:
(1) Develop and demonstrate an understanding of First Nations and Indigenous pedagogy as well as issues relating to historical and current context of First Nations, Inuit and Metis
(2) Learn and practice ways of accommodating and valuing student difference in the classroom with particular attention to those students with exceptional or special needs
Though I attended to both students with special needs and students with aboriginal ancestry in the past, my more recent learning has increased my understanding of the particular needs of these students. From my time spent reading the statistics, delving into the research, and discussing with pre-service teachers about how to best incorporate our new understandings into our classrooms, my own understandings around diversity and differentiated instruction have also deepened. How we attend to these issues in the classroom will be reflected in how people with special needs and people with aboriginal ancestry are treated in society. I believe that as educators we need to learn how to best support the individual needs of all our students within our schools.
During my time as Faculty Associate and in my Master's Program, I came across a number of books that challenged or deepened my thinking. The following is are a few that I highly recommend.
Influential & Recommended Readings:
- The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer
- The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King
- The Short Bus by Jonathan Mooney
- Drive by Daniel H. Pink
- Braiding Histories by Susan Dion
- Mindful Teaching and Teaching Mindfulness by Deborah Schoeberiein and Suki Sheth
- Spirals of Inquiry by Judy Halbert and Linda Kaser
- Bridging Cultures: Indegenous and Scientific Ways of Knowing Nature by Glen Aikenhead and Herman Michell
- Making Just One Change by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana
- The Future of Education by Keiran Egan
- Learning in Depth by Keiran Egan
- Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher by Stephen Brookfield
- Tuned Out by Karen Hume
- Redefining Fair by Damian Cooper
- A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades by Ken O'Connor
- An Imaginative Approach to Teaching by Keiran Egan
- The Educated Mind by Keiran Egan
More to come...
