I just came across a great (and pretty funny) blog post by Steve J. Moore on how new teachers are treated in schools.

Can any of you relate? Which model does your school support: Bambi or There will be Blood?

He raises some interesting questions: Where will you be in five years? What will you say to new teachers in ten years?

Thanks Elana for the blog mention, I've gotten great feedback on that post thanks to the educator community on Twitter. As a new teacher, having these kinds of conversations is so valuable and encouraging.

I know if I could go back to my education department and share something with them, it would have to do with exposure to real classrooms. Chemistry majors spend hours and hours in the lab each week during their undergraduate programs. They start with maybe 2-4 hours as freshman, but by the time they are juniors and seniors it is usually between 8-12 hours of direct lab experience weekly.

How much time did I spend in the classroom before student teaching? 40 hours. That's as much time as a freshman chemistry major spends in lab before the end of the first semester.

What's wrong with that picture?

I second Mr. Moore's comment: there has to be more exposure to classrooms--not observing, but teaching!--for pre-service teachers. I graduated this spring, and I can't tell you how many times I often felt frustrated with my undergraduate program... Personally I think theory classes are great, but what is it's purpose if it cannot be applied in real settings? IMHO, you learn from experience and mistakes...you can only watch and observe so much.

I am lucky that I had 2 practicums and a student teaching experience that lasted 5 months... but I still didn't feel that was enough. I am glad though that the district had changed its model to a collaborative one this year for the new influx of preservice teachers... practicum 1 and 2 students are assigned to the same class year long, and follow the class as they progress together through the grades. Preservice teachers co-teach with mentors and cooperative teachers. They receive more and more exposure as they go from Pract 1 to Pract 2 to Student Teaching, where they take over the class completely for the last year. Too bad they didn't switch to that model when I was still in the program!

Your program sounds very similar to the one I went through. I had two practicums, but they were separate and disconnected. There was no connection of my observation to the college course and I was only required to "teach" once.

It's strange to me that they defined when we should "teach" as though there is a time when a pre-service teacher shouldn't be engaging students.

It was even worse when I got to student teaching. Not only did they have separations between "teaching" and "contact" time but I had to quantify it in triplicate as though I was monitoring a cancer patient's IV flow and hear trate: neither of which helped me to become a better teacher before graduating.

My lesson plans were combed over for their structure, format, adherence to vague guidelines, and (I swear) penmanship. What was worse than that was my university's failed attempt at using a portfolio (an idea which I like very much) in conjunction.

What ended up taking place as instruction through the portfolio was tantamount to telling a marathon runner which color of laces her shoes should have. I nearly failed to complete the requirements because I had named some files wrong in my portfolio (not file paths, simply file names) days before commencement. It was a ludicrous antediluvian system that I am still angry about (it's not obvious is it?).