Welcome
Ahead of you are months of inquiry and critical reflection; experiences that embody researching, observing, and trying out 'best practices' in teaching, and most importantly, searching to establish a 'best practice' for your own teaching.
Keep in mind that teaching is a life-long experience of professional learning, you will see the benefits of engaging in focused thinking, harnessing creative thinking, employing realistic thinking, learning from reflective thinking, questioning popular thinking and benefiting from shared thinking.
You will begin to search for 'best practices' in teaching mathematics, literacy, music, trades, drama, art, science, social studies and aboriginal education. You will spend time refining your repertoires for managing classrooms and motivating and encouraging students, becoming familiar with the variety and complexity of the special needs which are brought to the classroom by the group of diverse learners you will encounter. You will explore strategies and methodologies for students for assessment, lesson planning and creating a learning community of inquiry within your classroom.
Looking ahead how will you create a sustainable teaching practice? Begin to think more deeply about you as a teacher, about your future students and the world in which you and your students life. What is it that is essential for you people to know and understand about the world around them? What essential goals should your students be setting for themselves and their own children? As their teacher, it will be up to you to encourage and nurture habits of min and the virtues we associate with good teaching: open-mindedness, courage, humility, fairness, enthusiasm, imaginations and empathy.
What I wish for you is to be a model of the kind of work that will sustain and renew you as a teacher. It is a cliche that the world is changing rapidly — but it is — and that changes in education come more quickly all the time, but remember that teachers need not be helpless in the face of change. They can take charge of their learning, master new curricula and pedagogy, and grow in their own practice. This involves individual reflective inquiry — a self-study — and, for you, it begins now.
Carol E Scarff, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Programs
Last reviewed 
1/20/2012 10:44:21 AM
