Modeling Best Practices in Teacher Education

Ever since I worked at the District level to support our New Teacher Induction Program (NTIP) almost a decade ago, I had always harboured a wish to work with pre-service teachers at the Faculty of Education. That wish was granted this school year and I was grateful to have the opportunity to work alongside a knowledgeable and supportive team at Lakehead University where I taught one section of a year-long course called, Planning, Evaluation and Classroom Management to first year teacher candidates. We began with 9 weeks in class, after which I was able to oversee them as their Faculty Advisor in their 1st placement, had another 9 week in-class block followed by their 2nd placement. To say the experience was both challenging and rewarding would be an understatement.

Grounded in the theory of observational learning by Albert Bandura which says that learning happens through the observation , I knew that I wanted to model student-centered practices as much as possible. I also wanted to be very intentional about my “teacher facilitation moves”. This meant that I was teaching content while also stepping aside to explain why I chose a particular strategy or protocol while asking my students what was effective about it. I then created a document called a “Strategy Harvest” whereby I indicated the strategy I used and how it fit in with adolescent cognitive development (one of our first lessons based on Teaching with Purpose: How to Thoughtfully Implement Evidence-Based Practices in Your Classroom by Karen Gazith). I also indicated if it could be used as a community builder, classroom routine or whether it would work during the Minds On, Action, or Consolidation part of the lesson.

I have included a copy in case you might find it useful.

I also wanted to model the ability to give students feedback as you go. In the book, Hopes for School: A Student’s Perspective and Ideas for Educational transformation, one of the student spotlights, Namya Joshi shares:

“[M]eaningful feedback helped the students to know how they are progressing and where they need to improve. The regular feedback that is specific, constructive, and actionable helps students to learn from their mistakes and make progress toward their goals.”

I tried to provide feedback in a variety of ways. When we had learning stations, one of them was dedicated to peer and teacher conferencing so they could get oral feedback. Because we used an LMS which allowed video and audio feedback, I tried to experiment with this option as well (You could use the tool Mote for audio feedback as well).

The most consistent way I was able to provide feedback was by using a Google Form with doc-appender. I would go around to check work or I would have it open when I was looking at discussion questions and when I inputted my notes into the Google form, it updated a Google doc in real time so at any given moment, students could look at how they were doing. Setting this up meant creating a doc for each of my students along with the Google form, but the time I saved later and the ability to give regular feedback without having to do any additional work was well worth it. Most importantly, giving feedback in this way, allowed me to focus on learning skills rather than grades. I created a video of my steps in case you would like to try it.

In my new podcast, Hopes for School, the question I ask guests is to give me an example of “school done right” in their experience; the answers have been really insightful. One of the biggest benefits of working with pre-service teachers as they went into placement was the ability to go into many different schools to observe my students. There is something so affirming about going into a school which doesn’t just have motivational posters on its entrance walls, but also I had the experience of being greeted by every student who walked passed me. In one classroom, after observing students at vertical whiteboards doing lots of thinking and math talk around circumference, I later found out that their poetry unit will culminate in a student-made poetry anthology which every family could order! I shared about it on Instagram-check it out here! There were so many examples of school done right!

As much as the school system doesn’t work for some students, it absolutely does for others. You could really tell when students felt safe, loved, and valued in their classes and this was reflective of the relationships the mentor teachers had with their students. My pre-service teachers learned so much about what they would and wouldn’t emulate in their own teaching journeys and I have made note of the way in which I too will approach my course differently as a result of observing them and teaching them.