Comments on: Re-Imagining Teacher Education http://langwitches.org/blog/2010/01/31/re-imagining-teacher-education/ The Magic of Learning Thu, 24 May 2012 03:28:10 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Anthony Manzo,Ph.D. http://langwitches.org/blog/2010/01/31/re-imagining-teacher-education/comment-page-1/#comment-36623 Anthony Manzo,Ph.D. Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:37:38 +0000 http://langwitches.org/blog/?p=5701#comment-36623 Teacher Education is a bit of a myth...but it need not be so... Why is it so difficult to understand that no combination of teachers with students, under-paid, over-paid, in public schools, or in charter schools can make a difference? The reason is simple: Professional Education is missing fundamental standards found in all other professions. There is no standard curriculum, no sincere effort to identify Best Instructional Practices, and truckloads of weak consultants and players with diluted degrees serving up their own brands of Faculty Development. One way or another, to be called a profession a career path needs to convene a rolling forum to collect and prioritize the core content of principles and practices that every member ought to know. Ironically, Teachers worldwide are being held to standards for Annual Yearly Progress of their students. Meanwhile, Professors, Learned Societies & commercial schools, and some painfully self-serving non-profit foundations and Universities never even address the need for solid pedagogic content. The current crop of self-proclaimed “Leaders” dangerously resembles the Investment Bankers who remain in charge of the economic systems that they nearly bankrupted. A leveraged operation like a major newspaper, teacher organization or more ideally the overly politicized US Department of Education should hold an ongoing “convention” of the nation’s leading educators to consider and endorse a covenant of principles and more importantly prescriptive practices. This should be done on a website that transparently allows entries to be challenged, tweaked and further specified for different age-grade-situational conditions. Sadly there is no free market in which monitored packaged bids & buys help to identify the best ideas and practices from the toxic ones. If all of this necessary systemic change seems near impossible, you might draw strength from Tom Payne who said: Efforts “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” Please consider joining the websites below offering a potential catalyst for jump-starting and getting the current system moving in the right direction for all who teach and all who must learn. Taxpayers would be grateful since increasing classroom effectiveness (and adding differentiated staffing) could bring about efficiencies that could save billions of dollars with even the smallest degree of early adoption. With your support we hope to formally organize ourselves around the title: The Galen Project in honor of Claudius Galen (131-201) a great teacher-practitioner, compiler and systematizer of Greco-Roman medicine, physiology, pharmacy and anatomy. Please join the narrative at: http://teacherprofessoraccountability.ning.com/main/invitation/new?xg_source=msg_wel_network And…http://bestmethodsofinstruction.com/
 Or our newest site for Professional Teachers: http://anthony-manzo.blogspot.com/2010/05/race-to-top-accountability-leaves.html Anthony V. Manzo, Ph.D. Teacher Education is a bit of a myth…but it need not be so…
Why is it so difficult to understand that no combination of teachers with students, under-paid, over-paid, in public schools, or in charter schools can make a difference? The reason is simple: Professional Education is missing fundamental standards found in all other professions. There is no standard curriculum, no sincere effort to identify Best Instructional Practices, and truckloads of weak consultants and players with diluted degrees serving up their own brands of Faculty Development. One way or another, to be called a profession a career path needs to convene a rolling forum to collect and prioritize the core content of principles and practices that every member ought to know. Ironically, Teachers worldwide are being held to standards for Annual Yearly Progress of their students. Meanwhile, Professors, Learned Societies & commercial schools, and some painfully self-serving non-profit foundations and Universities never even address the need for solid pedagogic content. The current crop of self-proclaimed “Leaders” dangerously resembles the Investment Bankers who remain in charge of the economic systems that they nearly bankrupted. A leveraged operation like a major newspaper, teacher organization or more ideally the overly politicized US Department of Education should hold an ongoing “convention” of the nation’s leading educators to consider and endorse a covenant of principles and more importantly prescriptive practices. This should be done on a website that transparently allows entries to be challenged, tweaked and further specified for different age-grade-situational conditions. Sadly there is no free market in which monitored packaged bids & buys help to identify the best ideas and practices from the toxic ones.
If all of this necessary systemic change seems near impossible, you might draw strength from Tom Payne who said: Efforts “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” Please consider joining the websites below offering a potential catalyst for jump-starting and getting the current system moving in the right direction for all who teach and all who must learn. Taxpayers would be grateful since increasing classroom effectiveness (and adding differentiated staffing) could bring about efficiencies that could save billions of dollars with even the smallest degree of early adoption. With your support we hope to formally organize ourselves around the title: The Galen Project in honor of Claudius Galen (131-201) a great teacher-practitioner, compiler and systematizer of Greco-Roman medicine, physiology, pharmacy and anatomy. Please join the narrative at:
http://teacherprofessoraccountability.ning.com/main/invitation/new?xg_source=msg_wel_network And…http://bestmethodsofinstruction.com/

Or our newest site for Professional Teachers: http://anthony-manzo.blogspot.com/2010/05/race-to-top-accountability-leaves.html

Anthony V. Manzo, Ph.D.

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