Tonight I’m going out for dinner where Darin works with Rhonda. She has gained her Certificate IV in Workplace Training today and I am delighted. I’m happy for her but I’m also happy for the kids she will get to teach. She is a great teacher and has positive learning relationships with students. We’ve worked in the classroom together a few times and they have been the best years. She makes a difference to students and their learning.
I think it would be great if teaching were an apprenticeship. It would be awesome to have an apprentice to be in classes with you, assisting in all the ways an extra adult in the room can. Giving you feedback about what worked and what didn’t. I remember when I had a student teacher I sat up the back of the class and saw my students in a whole new light. I noticed some where totally engaged, just not in what was going on at the front of the room. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d been at the front of the room!
It would be great for the student as they would get hands on learning and watch all the real things about teaching like classroom management, rapport building and other things that you don’t always learn in a book. I’ve seen many students do the whole teaching course and then find they hate teaching. This way, you would get a pretty good idea quickly.
There are so many resources available to teachers now that I think the idea of a person who is all knowing as a teacher is redundant. I have taught a number of subjects over my teaching career that I learnt alongside my students. I could never be an IT teacher if I hoped to know the most in the room. The best teachers know how to build great relationships with students and understand them and their learning styles. They need to like the students enough to find a way for them to learn what they need to learn, in order to get to where they want to go. They need to be assertive enough to create a safe space, so students are free to learn. They need to love learning themselves and model that to young people. Anyway I reckon Rhonda can do all those things, hands down.
More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given
~ Bertrand Russell quotes
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The last thing I claim to be in life is an expert on teaching but from my life’s experience: 1/2 the teachers I know hate their job and most of the others arent very good at it, so any type of change in selection and training can only be for the better.
I also note from being an oldie who has been around for quite a while, that what is suggested here was basically how it was “in the olden days” before university degrees became the be all and end all of all professions.