English Education Professor

Good Blog Topics for First-Year Composition | Kairosnews
My own thoughts are not to assign topics at all. Last semester, I taught a first-year course where we used blogs extensively (http://woi.brynmawr.edu) and we didn’t assign topics. What we did do is spend time in class discussing topics that were getting more attention than others and what topics *they* thought were appropriate. In talking to students afterwards, some of them said they’d never been asked to come up with topics on their own. To me, this is something that’s very important to learn and a blog is a good place to learn it.

LESSON PLANNING: POTENTIAL PROBLEMS
# Aimless wandering
# Failure to achieve objectives
# Needed teaching materials or equipment not available, and
# Poor connection with preceding or subsequent lessons

Herbart. Herbart stuck even more closely to the Kantian view-point, but, like other followers of Kant, he sought to eliminate the conception of an unknowable reality, and press forward to the ultimate nature of things. He adopted Kant’s analysis of consciousness, but in a psychological sense, and found that the transcendental reality consists of a plurality of simple substances. These he called “reals.” They are psychical in nature and analogous to the monads of Leibniz. Through their relations to one another and to human consciousness the phenomenal world is brought into existence; and from their teleological cooperation Herbart deduces a divine, creative intelligence, analogous to the monad-monadum of Leibniz, thus opposing sharply current poetic naturalism and Spinozism. Herbart’s practical and social philosophy, which is based on the judgments of the soul as to the relations of the “reals” to each other, particularly on judgments expressing like or dislike, also tends toward rationalism. On account of the method employed here, Herbart calls the result aesthetics, to which he subordinates ethics. In his view the ideal society would be one based on the insight and activity of the educated, and on the rational education of youth, and realizing in its organization the natural and fundamental ethical ideas. Herbart thus became not only a reformer of psychology, but of pedagogy as well.

German Idealism [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

I spent some time trying to track down the the history of “lesson planning.” Here’s what I came up with:

1880’s. When Teacher College, New York City, merged with Columbia University, teacher training for the first time became a college academic endeavor. Professors assigned to the task of teaching teachers scrambled to discover and create materials appropriate for the new academic standards. Historians, not educators, wrote history of education textbooks. Philosophers, not educators, wrote philosophy of education textbooks. (It is important to remember that at this time psychology was still a very young field, so the study of psychology was not as significant in teacher education as it is now.)

One of the two areas of concern for the professors was to find a scientific approach to lesson planning which would not only be useful to their students but also be academic enough to merit scholarly study. They found their answer in 1892 when students of the German Philosopher Herbart introduced his ideas to American professors.

Based on the Herbartian concept of the mind as an appreciative mass, his students developed a five-step lesson plan appropriate for all teachers. It included:

1. Preparation

2. Presentation

3. Association

4. Generalization

5. Application

The methods professors note had something to teach and they taught it thoroughly. From 1892 until John Dewey published Democracy in Education in 1916, this plan of American Herbartianism dominated American education. It was not just a possible lesson. It was the lesson plan. Teacher manuals, plan books, and evaluation instruments were all organized around the five-step lesson plan.

A White Paper on Lesson

Accelerated Reader: New Research
Accelerated Reader

Handbook: Chpt 5, p.3

Another flawed assumption is that teachers themselves are avid readers. Wrong again. Some aren’t even occasional readers, as Jan Lieberman found out in January of 2000.

Vital Statistics
1) Estimated number of U.S. elementary and secondary school teachers: 3.5 million

2) Percent increase in the number of teachers from 1990-2004: 27

3) Average teacher salary (2004): $46,597

4) State (excluding District of Columbia) with the highest average teacher salary (2004): Connecticut ($56,516)

5) State with the lowest average teacher salary (2004): South Dakota ($33,236)

6) Percentage of teachers who see teaching as a lifelong career: 74

7) Percentage of teachers who leave the profession within five years: 46

Number of states that finance mentoring for new teachers: 15

9) Number of teachers with National Board certification: 47,356

10) Number of states that provide financial incentives for teachers to become Board certified: 37

11) Average per-pupil state expenditures (2003): $8,041

12) Percent increase in average state per-pupil state expenditures from 1994-2003: 21

13) Percentage of California public school teachers expected to retire in the next decade: 32

14) Odds that a 6th grader in the lowest-achieving quartile of California public schools has had more than one teacher without certification: 3 in 10

15) Odds that a 6th grader in the highest-achieving quartile of California public schools has had more than one teacher without certification: 1 in 50

16) Number of states that finance incentives for teachers in high-poverty or low-performing schools: 14

17) Average number of hours each week that public school teachers spend on non-compensated school-related activities: 12

18) Average amount public school teachers spend out-of-pocket each year for student needs: $443

19) Percentage of public school teachers who are male: 21

20) Approximate percentage of public school teachers who are African American males: 2.4

21) Approximate percentage of schools in the United States with no teachers of color: 40

22) Number of teachers who entered the profession in 2004-05 through alternative-certification routes: 35,000

23) Number of teachers hired last year through Texas’ Temporary Teacher Certification program, which allows districts to instantly certify qualifying college graduates: 1

24) Number of states that finance professional development for teachers: 39

25) Percentage of teachers who say that recent professional development made little difference in their performance: 50

26) Number of states (including the District of Columbia) that use multiple choice questions in tests to measure student achievement: 50

27) Number of states that use portfolios as a measure of student performance: 1

28) Percentage of teachers who say that standardized tests are a seriously flawed measure of true student achievement: 53

Sources:

1) National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2004; 2) Ibid; 3) Education Week, Quality Counts 2006; 4) Ibid.; 5) Ibid.; 6) Public Agenda, Stand By Me, 2003; 7) National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, No Dream Denied: A Pledge to America’s Children, 2003; Education Week, Quality Counts 2006; 9) Ibid.; 10) Ibid.; 11) Ibid.; 12) Ibid.; 13) Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, Status of the Teaching Profession, 2005; 14) Ibid.; 15) Ibid.; 16) Editorial Projects in Education Research Center; 17) National Education Association, Status of the American Public School Teacher 2003; 18) Ibid; 19) Ibid; 20) National Education Association, Status of the American Public School Teacher 2000-2001. 21) NCES, 2003, cited in the National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force’s Assessment of Diversity in America’s Teaching Force, 2004; 22) National Center for Education Information, Profile of Alternate-Route Teachers, 2005; 23) Texas Education Agency; 24)Education Week, Quality Counts 2006; 25) Public Agenda, Stand By Me, 2003; 26) Education Week, Quality Counts 2006; 27) Ibid; 28) Public Agenda, Stand By Me.

“Reading for Audience and
Situation: Applications of Kenneth Burke to Writing Pedagogies in the Disciplines.” Dr. Selzer is a well-known Burke scholar and one of the foremost authorities on rhetoric and composition as well as technical and professional communication. His talk will be held at the noon hour on Feb. 6 in Bate 1028.

Submitted by Chris Shea:

A University of California, Los Angeles survey of freshmen at 142 schools found that 33 percent said they skipped occasionally. The survey, conducted last fall, also found that 43 percent were bored and that 58 percent had fallen asleep in class.

[object HTMLImageElement]