South Home
The Good Teacher
Pitfalls of Experience

K-W-L Technique

Venn Diagrams

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School and Society
South Option
2000-2001

Instructor: Dr. Karyn Cooper
Office: 10-1 14
Phone: 923-6641 ex. 2715
E-mail:
kcooper@oise.utoronto.ca

 

Course Description

 This course will help teacher candidates develop a critical awareness of the intersections between schools and society within the changing context of the learning environment. The course addresses the varieties of students who enter the classroom in terms of their diverse social origins, cultures, identities and social status. The course helps new teachers understand the ways in which their professional work (inside and beyond the classroom) helps prepare these diverse students to be active participants in a changing society. It engages participants in an examination of the purposes for education, education policy, and of teachers' responsibility to work productively with school colleagues and other adults to achieve equitable access, experiences, and outcomes for all students.

 Rationale

 While the course does not emphasize or recommend the use of any particular teaching strategies, actions or decisions, it intends to help prospective teachers understand (1) that the teaching choices they make and the actions they take are rooted in their own identities and locations as teachers and, whether these choices and actions reinforce or challenge taken-for-granted practice, there are important social and political consequences; and (2) that there are historical as well as context-specific (e.g., province, board, community, school, teacher, student, etc.) factors that must be investigated and understood in order to anticipate the possible consequences of particular choices and actions. The course should provide teachers with the analytic and investigative skills to understand their own positions and roles and to inquire into the nature of the contexts in which they teach and their students learn.

Objectives

To provide students with opportunities to explore the interrelationships between the personal and the professional within the context of becoming a teacher through:

a. Examining the impact of prior experience on the way one lives and acts as a classroom teacher.

b. Encouraging participants in greater understandings of themselves, the students they teach, and the larger cultural framework within which teachers live and work.

ASSIGNMENTS AND COURSE EVALUATION:

There are 4 assignments. Each will be discussed in greater detail (and written instructions given) for "About Me" and the Burning Issue assignment. Written assignments that are submitted late normally will not be accepted without prior arrangement with the instructor.

Common Place Book Assignment 30%

Participants will be required to keep a Common Place Book throughout the class. The Commonplace Book, rather than a journal or a diary, is a gathering for quotations, comments, poems, reflections, and responses to articles and narratives to be written and responded to. A culminating assignment will ask students to draw from the entries in this book to develop a burning issue. Commonplace Books will be submitted to the instructor approximately every two weeks. Participants will be given a grade of A provided that the entry or response is of acceptable quality (this will be discussed further in class). Consistently excellent work will be recognized with an A+.

You may use entries from your Common Place Book when preparing the Portfolio Project in the Teacher Education Seminar (TES).

Serving as a discussant/facilitator once during the term 10%

Your role will to be to prepare discussion questions and / or scenarios for working through ideas, for small group exploration of concepts covered in the readings for that class meeting and facilitating the task given to all the small groups by the instructor for that day. You will identify your preference for dates/ topic preferences, and turn in your notes regarding key ideas in the readings and your discussion questions.

 "About Me" 30 %

Each participant will be asked to create a book about themselves. In addition to celebrating who you are, this book will give your peers, professors, school personnel and prospective students an opportunity to get to know you. This project is integrated into the language component of the south option and as such will be jointly celebrated with the language arts instructor, but only one grade will be recorded.

Due date: October 16, 2000.

Burning Question 30%

Participants will be asked to explore one issue or concern. This assignment will be an opportunity for you to formulate a burning question that is of interest to you. The final project (about 2-3pages in length) will include your question, your reasons for choosing your question, your resources, classroom implications, as well as any practical applications. This project is integrated with the Action Research project in the Teacher Education Seminar (TES) Asessment Rubric

Due date: April 9, 2000.