I found a website through my research that talks about the characteristics of new teachers. When I conducted my year-long field experience, I also learned a little about what a good teacher looks like. Some of the things that I learned were, classroom management skills, lesson design, and differentiated instruction. My field experience was in a school for disabled kids, so these skills were vital to survival in the classroom.
But the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory also lists these as characteristics of successful new teachers: Setting up a classroom, responding effectively to behavior and discipline problems, motivating students and engaging them, creating a community of learners, working effectively with ELL students, assessing student performance, understanding the CCCS, Learning to communicate and involve parents, developing time management skills, continuing to develop professionally, connecting theories in college to classroom practice.
Im sure that some of these will be included in our group project for teaching new teachers how to be successful. Take a look at the link if you have the time, it was very informative about providing support to beginning teachers.
http://nwrel.org
Saturday, February 9, 2008
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3 comments:
Thanks for the link, your list is quite extensive. I'm sure many of the topics will be included in our professional development curriculum as well. I surfed the website thanks. I wonder if there's a group like that looking out for schools on he east coast.
It's funny how we always focus on the practice, that is, what teachers ought to do, or the dispositions, the beliefs and attitudes that people have. The reality is that they are intricately tied together. Yes, successful novice teachers have classroom management skills, but what beliefs support them? I tend to run a very structured classroom in terms of moving through activities (which is management), but my demeanor with students tends to be more relaxed (which is also an issue of management). I could be a tyrant and have no structure to my class, but the outcome would be very different. And yet, many people would think my classroom is too relaxed (because of how I choose to interact with students). But, if you look at my convictions and mission, my classroom management is consistent and I get results.
You know when I did my post I didn't even think to add that novice teachers understand the core curriculum standards. I probably didn't think of it because I learned to understand them as I was doing my lesson planning. It is very important for new teachers to understand what they are teaching and how much of it they should go in detail about. I also agree that time management and behavior management is extremely important when you are first starting out.
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