Guest Speakers

Henry Becker, Barbara Means, & Margaret Riel

During my practicum, we videotaped our lessons, brought them to class and were critiqued by peers, professors, and our teacher mentors. Watching ourselves at work, with pointers from more experienced teachers, was enormously helpful. Part of the Kentucky Reform Act required student teachers to spend far more time in the classroom than in previous years, and in most cases tripling the time. Mentoring continued throughout the first year of teaching, and unfortunately, stopped following those requirements. Because teaching is so solitary, having a team in several of my schools was immensely helpful. However, even in the best of times, team members could not leave their own classrooms to offer suggestions, monitor, or help with teaching strategies. The idea of videotaping did not occur to me, but it would have been a good idea in learning from more skillful teachers, and in getting feedback for my own strategies.

I would imagine most teachers feel a "need for reform" as Becker stated. Those who see behaviors as the primary challenge would like a number of reforms implemented, academic, administrative, community, parental, and the list goes on. Academic changes are necessary if teachers are not successful at imparting information to or facilitating learning students. However, change for change's sake is not good enough when dealing with experienced educators. They must have valid and compelling reasons in order to alter teaching styles.

Because Kentucky has been involved in reform from the beginning, right on the heels of Florida, most educators have been working on teams for the past seven to eight years, creating alternative (authentic) assessments, and using collaborative methods in class. Despite those efforts, educators are still crying out for support from administrators and asking for more time off for professional development. Judging from the complaints of my former classmates, chaos is the rule in many schools, and principals are so inundated with paperwork that they have little time for their teachers. There are few follow-ups on newer teaching strategies, and inservices remain the same, where teachers are talked to (or at). Enormous changes were thrown at practicing teachers from the outside, and they were expected to comply within very limited time frames without adequate backup.

A wiser approach to all of this would have been, as Barbara Means suggested, to find out from the teachers and staff what the schools really needed. Giving people the respect of their years of experience, asking them for input, and letting them share what they do best, creates an atmosphere of cooperation, rather than one of rebellion. Because this did not happen in Kentucky, we lost many excellent educators who could have contributed so much to the reform.