Here I will reflected on ideal interpersonal relationships within the school, problems that they hope would not develop, and strategies for solving problems. The importance of maintaining positive relationships at school needs to be in the mind of every student teacher. Things may not always go smoothly, yet a professional should have some ideas on how to handle tricky situations.

Ideal relationships at school help make each day a pleasant day for everyone…teachers, students, support staff, administrators, and parents. Ideal relationships involve the exchange of kind words, good manners, teamwork, and positive attitudes. If such relationships are in place in the school setting, staff can work together in a supportive way to solve problems and to help each other. The staff would care about others and not just their own well-being. Lines of communication would be maintained. The entire staff of the school would work together for the good of the students and to sustain hardworking, dedicated employees. The students would be sure to thrive in such a positive, supportive environment. Furthermore, parents might be more apt to be involved in their child’s education if they felt welcomed and appreciated. This is a brief example of what some ideal relationships within the school setting; however, this is not always the reality.

While student teaching, problems between the pre-service teacher and administrator, support staff, students, colleagues, cooperating teacher, and/or faculty advisor can develop. For instance, one hopes that the issue of differing educational philosophies will not hurt a pre-service teacher; however, a student teacher’s philosophy may be subject to scrutiny, as s/he does not have the experience that other staff members might have. Another possible issue of contention is that many teachers deal with an enormous number of tasks and issues and often need to vent their frustrations.

Unfortunately, this negative energy may get a student teacher into trouble if s/he partakes in these conversations. Communication barriers may be another problem that can develop between support staff, the cooperating teacher, administrators, and so many more. Some people do not have interpersonal skills, and student teachers need to make sure that s/he does not prejudge based on a look. Additionally, one always hopes not to run into the staff member who just does not care anymore, as this can be harmful to all involved. Finally, not establishing effective classroom management techniques from the beginning with students is a problem that can develop, and one that teachers should avoid at all costs.

Several strategies can and should be implemented when solving problems. First, when dealing with administrators, support staff, colleagues, cooperating teachers, and faculty advisors, confrontations must not occur while a student teacher is emotional. Furthermore, as stated previously, many individuals will express their frustrations to others as a way to cool down. This should not occur in the workplace. The student teacher should ask to speak to the person privately. When solving problems, a student teacher should never use you statements. “You made me mad when…” should be “I felt upset when….” Numerous problems arise due to miscommunication. A student teacher should be willing to listen actively and to try to see the situation from the other person’s viewpoint.

When dealing with students, student teachers must first know the expectations and rules of their cooperating teacher. If a cooperating teacher gives permission to actively work through problems with students, a student teacher must maintain composure. Students can sense when a teacher is frustrated, and this will potentially create an explosive situation. The student teacher should talk to the student in private and try to see the problem from the perspective of the student. The student teacher should not be afraid to talk the problem over with his/her cooperating teacher, and when deemed appropriate, the student’s parents and/or the school counselor. Many times a fresh viewpoint provides a solution. If a student has a child study team, the child study team should be made aware of the problem, and depending on the severity of the problem, the administrator should also be notified.

This paper was an attempt to reflect on ideal interpersonal relationships within one’s school, problems that they hope will not develop, and strategies for solving problems. When dealing with other individuals, problems will occur. Humans are innately different and possess differing viewpoints and perspectives. This can and will lead to conflict. Everyone has an opinion of an ideal relationship, but an ideal relationship is different from a real relationship. When working with people, whether they are adults or children, a student teacher must pick his/her battles. Not all battles are meant to be fought, and not all battles will be won.

The battles worth fighting for are those with the goal to make both sides better for having fought and to create a win-win situation for all parties involved. A student teacher must remember that s/he is not only in the classroom to teach but to be taught. Student teachers should see problems as doorways to learning and growth and not as hurdles to be charged through and overcome.

Rebecca Schauffele: Teaching is my PASSION. I am fun-loving and really enjoy working with kids. Through my work, I hope to make a difference in the lives of youth and inspire them to dream big and work hard to reach their goals.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rebecca_Schauffele

Man has been asked to set aside land, change our cultivation, harvest, hunting and fishing practices for the sake of endangered species.

Well, I am convinced after 33 years in Education that our battle cry needs to become “SAVE THE TEACHER!”

Each week I meet more and more quality educational professionals who are leaving teaching.

Current research shows concern over upcoming teacher shortages, as baby-boomers retire and as many young teachers are only lasting 3 years or less and then leave teaching.

Teacher burnout and turnover are real and present dangers.

Our nation is at risk of having shortage of teachers and many of those staying in teaching are endangered physically and emotionally.

In researching endangered species, I found that the three major causes: environmental changes, pollution and overkill, are applicable to teachers.

This article will discuss these and how to SAVE THE TEACHER from extinction.

Environmental Changes

Teachers are at risk due to environmental changes. By this I do not mean a volcano erupting, a drought, or an earthquake ,but forces many times more devastating.

Schools erupting with volcanic fury into places of violence where teachers feel powerless to protect themselves and their students. Where children live in fear of terrorism and uncertain lives thus creating a climate of meanness and self preservation.

This is not a natural eruption but one that has take place because we have failed to take a stand against small acts of violence and have gradually seen these escalate.

Schools must be places where everyone feels safe.

Having distinct boundaries and expectations for students in very important and keeping discipline meaningful and fair is a priority.

It seems to me that when we started worrying about whether students felt good about themselves rather than whether they were learning we got gun shy and began to pander to the misbehaviors of students.

This pandering is now being rewarded by violence and disrespect.

If you look at the success stories that have been highly publicized in the media, where schools became safe places where ALL students could achieve, they had very strict boundaries and discipline policies. Students were encouraged to excel and empowered to do so. The abundance of the child was magnified and threat removed.

This eruption must be stifled in order to protect not only our endangered teachers and students, but our society at large.

A drought has hit our schools. This blight is in spirit of our teachers. After feeling helpless and impotent in many areas teachers are doubting their own capabilities.

They have been surrounded by criticism, disapproval and condemnation.

Standardized assessments, which fail to truly assess learning are held over teachers as clubs, trying to “motivate” them to teach better.

Academic freedom is disappearing and the age of the one right answer, all on the same page, education is drying up creativity.

Teachers need to drink from the well of encouragement, as do students. I have become acutely aware of the lack of support in many schools for teachers as professionals.

They need to hear, “We trust you,” “You’re doing a great job,” “thanks for caring,” from administrators, colleagues and community.

One way I have found effective to fill the wells of these drought stricken spirits is through creating teacher support groups.

These groups of professionals meet to share their successes and receive aide from one another.

These are not draining, site based management councils in which teachers are committeed to death. Those many times add to the deflation of the spirit due to impotence and ineffectual leadership.

These collegial communities support one another when there is no support.

Also, let the community know what a great job we are doing. In my article “A Call to Be Businesslike”, schools were encouraged to toot their own horn.

Teachers need to pull together and make the community and themselves acutely aware that “I’m a teacher, I touch the future!”

Every few years an earthquake hits American schools.

These pendulums crash through our school systems creating chasms, destruction and frustration. As the “newest, greatest” innovation is touted by publishers and administrators it divides staffs and creates gaping holes in relationships and curriculum.

Many this these pendulum swings are so so extreme that they are destructive to the quality of teaching and learning as teachers told to throw out “traditional” ways of doing things. This many times means throwing out the baby with the bath water.

The devastation of pendulum swings is also seen in teacher frustration. I constantly hear, “I was just getting used to…” “They want me to…but no one has taught me how to…” “I am so frustrated… I thought I was doing a good job… and now…”

These are but a few of the cries from the hearts of teachers who have been buffeted around by the pendulum.

We must establish a sifter (Stop the Pendulum,) to establish and reject those fads that do not fit; how students learn, best practice, sound research, and management possibilities, etc.

When we take control of the pendulum, teachers will be less at risk of extinction because our clientele will be less critical and more supportive. And we will be more secure in our position and achievements.

Pollution

Another force that has endangered our wildlife is pollution.
When I began to delve into my metaphor I found that pollution in also endangering teachers.

This happens when the curriculum grows and the responsibility grows but the time allowed for teaching doesn’t.

Our classrooms are polluted with separate subjects and areas of study that “someone” deemed necessary.

As I began to narrow my focus to become more effective as a professional, I found it essential to begin by identifying the roles in the classroom. By clearly knowing that I wanted was for all of my students to become effective Gainers of Knowledge and Communicators of Knowledge, I could focus and head in the right direction.

I constantly asked myself, “How does the activity achieve my goals?”

The other air clearer was to integrate the curriculum.

This way children could be involved in process, products and practice within a meaningful context.

Reading, writing, speaking, listening, thinking and producing are not isolated self sufficient skills. Neither is content isolated from learning these tools.

I find that I am less in danger when I have my goals set and integrate my curriculum to provide meaning, purpose and engagement.

Overkill

I know that talking about teachers with a word like overkill is drastic, but I am concerned because I see teachers that are killing themselves for the sake of teaching.

We as teachers need to practice “SAVE THE TEACHER” techniques that will improve our efficiency. Some tips include:

1. Plan with a partner.

This way you can divide and conquer the tasks of planning, researching and creating materials.

2. Do with students not for them.

Always look for ways in which students can aide in the process instead of teacher doing it all.

For instance, don’t edit student writing; teach students how to peer edit and facilitate step by step editing conferences.

Also, practice nagging. As students war working roam the classroom nagging for the right answers or appropriate skills.

Students do not see this as a criticism but will have much greater success if you nag.

3. Give responsibility to students for ANY task they can do.

I always had a policy that I didn’t do anything for a student that they could do for themselves.

This included cleaning, organizing, correcting, attendance, lunch count, keeping track of assignments, etc.

4. Curb the interruptions that discipline causes by:

o Proximity – be up and near students.

o Participation – be a learner in your classroom, this adds respect.

o Politeness – treat your children with politeness and firmness. Pandering or sarcasm defeat discipline.

o Positive position – Your students need to know your expectations.

Mine was “I will stop no one from doing their job (gaining or communication); I will always make it easier for them.

I work with this principle at the application level with students.

Asking key questions such as; what are you doing? (help identify the behavior) How is that helping…gain, communicate? (identify change you desire to see made) What will you do next time?

I do all this in a whisper during proximity with my hand on their shoulder.

o Promote pride – I strive to assist my students down the road of success by using encouragement rather than praise.

I focus their attention of specific personal accomplishments and self pride.

This is done quietly and without the fanfare which many times accompanies praise.

I want my students to gain character and to build their spirits and self perception.

o Provide an inclusive community where children are valued and esteemed by each other.

Where appreciation and active listening are the norm and put-downs don’t exist.

These are but a few of the strategies to resist overkill which I share in my seminars.

I find teachers welcome ideas that will help them to have “LIFE BEYOND THE CLASSROOM!”

SAVE THE TEACHER needs to become our cause.

We must rally together, pool our resources and share our passion in order to help our species survive and thrive.

It is not only imperative for our sake but for the sake of our nation’s youth and our nation as a whole.

Join me in more than chanting: SAVE THE TEACHER. Live it!

Phyllis Ferguson MEd., inspiring Save-the-Teacher.com [http://www.save-the-teacher.com] founder, lives by her motto, “Make Teaching and Learning a Joy”.

As an award-winning, seasoned educator, Phyllis enthusiastically shares her “work smart, not hard” techniques for integration and literacy development in the K-6 classroom.

In addition, she is unreservedly applauded as she consults, provides in-service training, and presents live events throughout the United States and Canada. She is also the Director of Oasis School in Richland, WA as well as teaching K-2 multiage.

Phyllis has a comprehensive background in research-based literacy development, curriculum integration and brain-based instruction. Listen to Phyllis’ Save-the-Teaher Podcast

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Phyllis_Ferguson

Education is sacrosanct to national development. Education and national development are the two sides of a coin that mutually reinforce and challenge each other. Jega [1997] affirmed, “Education is generally regarded as a necessary and essential requirement for national development. It is central to socioeconomic and technological advancement, and it is critical to self-sustaining and self-generating process of positive transformation of modern society.”

The government appreciates the significance of education to national development and will marshal its resources to attain its avowed goal of a reinvigorated public service. Odumosu [2004] said, “Education in Nigeria is … a huge government venture that has witnessed evolution of government complete and dynamic intervention and active participation. The Federal Government has adopted education as an instrument per excellence for effective national development.”

It is antithetical that service delivery in the education sector is unattractive despite its strategic role in effective national development. It is palpable that the sector is a not-for-profit public enterprise. There is, however, a general consensus among stakeholders ranging from government supervisory agencies, practitioners, parents and the press to learners that the standard of education falls far below expectations.

Who is a Teacher?

Achimugu [2000] stated that Nigerian Teachers Union NUT (1994) defines a teacher “as a person who has the registrable professional qualification, which enables him to be appointed to teach at any appropriate level of recognized education in any nation and who is of sound mind and who is mentally alert.”

The World Book Encyclopedia [1985] expanded the scope to include “those of a school counselor, school psychologist, general supervisor or supervisor of a subject area, reading specialist, coordinator of guidance, school principal, director of vocational education, teacher of handicapped children, superintendent of schools, director of instruction, dean of students, college administrator, or teacher in a demonstration school.”

In Search of A Better Performance Management System

The traditionally appraisal method of evaluation that polarize the performance of teachers between qualitative and quantitative indices is an annual or biennial ritual in the school system today. Unfortunately, it has become a routine. It is ineffectual because of the prevalence of teachers’ suboptimal performance and poor service delivery. The method is subject to abuse by supervising officers who disregard meritocracy for the ‘Nigerian Factor’ variables such as nepotism, length of service and godfather syndrome to adjudge teachers’ performance and promote the lucky few despite glaring gaps in output and absence of total quality management.

The major problem policy makers and administrators face aside getting teachers with requisite quality is that of guaranteeing quality service from these teachers. The recommendation of Afe [2001] that “When well-qualified people are recruited into teaching, high standards are ensured” cannot achieve this objective. The performance of these qualified and productive teachers will not be measured and sustained if the system of performance management is defective.

Concept of Balanced Scorecard

Kaplan and Norton [1992] developed Balanced Scorecard [BSC] in 1992 at Harvard Business School in United States of America. The Balanced Scorecard is a strategic management system that enables institutions to spell out their vision and strategy, and transform them in actions capable of achieving its mission. It is fundamentally used to determine organizational performance using financial and non-financial measurement in four perspectives: financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth.

Kaplan & Norton [2002] said,

“We created the Balanced Scorecard because financial measurements had become insufficient for contemporary organizations. Strategies for creating value had shifted from managing tangible assets to knowledge-based strategies that created and deployed an organization’s intangible assets, including customer relationships; innovative products and services; high-quality and responsive operating processes; skills and knowledge of the workforce; the information technology that supports the workforce and links the firm to its customers and suppliers; and the organizational climate that encourages innovation, problem-solving, and improvement.”

The Balanced Scorecard is a performance management approach that is flexible and adaptable to fit any size institution. It aligns vision and mission with stakeholders’ expectations and the day-to-day activities of the institution, manages and evaluates strategy and guides operation efficiency plans. It also assists to develop organization capacity. The scorecard allows the institution to measure financial and customer results, operations, and organization capacity as shown in Figure 1 below:

Figure 1: Balanced Scorecard Links Performance Measures [Source: Kaplan S. R. & Norton P. D. [1992] The Balanced Scorecard – Measures that Drive
Performance, Harvard Business Review Magazine – January-February 1992 Edition, Boston, Massachusetts]

Figure 2: Howard Rohm’s Design of Balanced Scorecard Performance System [Source: Performance Management in Action - A Balancing Act. Perform Volume 2, Issue 2]

Balanced Scorecard in Education

The Balanced Scorecard takes into cognizance that mission is the key driver of the performance of institutions in the public sector. In application to the education sector, therefore, the scorecard framework will change from profit making in Figure 2 to reflect its mission-driven nature stated in Figure 3. The Federal College of Education [Technical] Akoka as a not-for-profit institution has a mission to train quality teachers that would in turn educate learners in lower levels of the education sector, and empower entrepreneurs to establish micro businesses to boost the economy of the nation. Balanced Scorecard will entrench strategies to measure the performance of teachers in the College to determine their operational efficiencies in curriculum implementation and classroom teaching towards the actualizing of its mission.

Figure 3: Design of Education Sector Balanced Scorecard [An adaptation from Howard Rohm design of public sector balanced scorecard]

There is a paradigm shift of emphasis in the focus and positions of the perspectives of the basic design of the public sector scorecard system in Figure 3 in contrast to the generic Balanced Scorecard performance system in Figure 2 because of the emphasis on Mission in the former. Employees & Institutional Capacity in Figure 3 substitutes Learning & Growth in Figure 2 to underscore the relative significance of teachers as a leading element to synchronizes other components for achieving institutional mission. Again, budget in Figure 3 is preferred to financial perspective in Figure 2 because of the importance of budget formulation and execution processes in the management of government funds.

Balanced Scorecard Benefits to Education

1. The Balanced Scorecard invents the concept of continuous learning in performance management system of the institutions. It aligns all the staff to strategy in a single framework and eliminates multiplicity of strategy institution-wide implementation. It involves the selection of metrics for the measurement processes, selection of initiatives, cohesively mould these initiatives into a single platform for strategic deployment and Spartan allocation of resources to eliminate waste.

2. It entrenches strategic planning as a way of life rather than as a convenient alternative. It helps to build a rational budgeting system in a tightly regulated economy with finite national financial resources. It ties resource allocations to performance and replaces reliance on intuition in decision making to a systematic fact-based executive decision-making. It forecasts future outcome by generating cause-effect predictions and creating scenarios.

3. It assists to improve the institution’s facilities, perception and rating of teachers in the mind of the stakeholders as well as raises visibility of teachers’ activities in implementing government’s reform programmes, facilities feedback and entrench a culture of public accountability.

4. It enables institutions to benchmark best practices in terms of teachers’ performance and output of service delivery by using performance measurement data collected as a basis of comparison with global data resources.

5. It alleviates the funding burden on government. Education is not only a costly venture but also an economic venture without immediate return. Balanced Scorecard will clarify the budgetary goals of the institution and accelerate its budgeted economic returns. As Colleges of Education gains funding autonomy, the scorecard will entrench a culture of budgetary prudence and fiscal discipline.

Building & Implementing A Balanced Scorecard

This paper proposes a seven-step framework for the implementation of balanced scorecard for measuring teachers’ performance in the education sector in Nigeria.

1. Select Balanced Scorecard Team

A team should be selected and charged with a responsibility to design and implement the balance scorecard. The team will evaluate the institution’s mission, core beliefs, public expectations, budgetary position, short- and long-term goals and outline value creation parameters for stakeholders. It should obtain resource requirements to develop and sustain the scorecard, and develop a rollout communications plan for teachers’ buy-in and resultant support for the changes from stakeholders. This communications plan will involve internal and external public information activities to educate teachers and stakeholders about the Balanced Scorecard initiative and how it works.

2. Clarify Institutional Strategy & Objectives

The institution will design a number of overarching themes that will be crafted into specific institutional strategies. Examples could be to Improve Teacher Education, Upgrade Quality of Teaching Materials or Create a New Venture. Certain level of creative thinking from the rank and file of teachers is required in order to achieve results at this stage. The team should collation of these themes. In the process, it should not impose any premeditated themes on the process. This will eliminate hidden agenda from any interest group and allow for effective selection of specific strategies for adoption.

The next level is to split the chosen institutional strategy smaller components is called objectives. The objectives are the basic building blocks of strategy, that is the components that make up complete strategies. In this instance, the strategy of a central theme of Improve Teacher Education or Create a New Venture could have such objectives as Deploy effective teaching methodology and traditional discipline, Increased Teacher trainers expertise, skills and abilities, Improved Technology Capacity or Effective and Effective and Efficient Corporate Governance, Improved Service Value, Reduce Reliance on Government Allocation among others.

3. Design Strategic Map

The team, at this stage, will build a strategic map for the institution’s overall business strategy. This map is the mechanism that shows how an objective [effect] is dependent on another objective [cause], and how, taken together, they form a strategic thread from activities to desired end outcomes. It usually will use the cause-effect linkages [i.e. if-the logic connections]. Thereafter, the components [objectives] of strategy are connected and placed in appropriate scorecard perspective categories. The relationship among strategy components is used to identify the key performance drivers of each strategy that, taken together, chart the path to successful outcome as will be perceived through the eyes of customers and stakeholders.

4. Develop Performance Measures

The team will develop performance measures to track both strategic and operational progress. At the stage, the desired outcomes and the processes that are used to produce these outcomes are clearly spelt out. Desired outcomes are measured from the perspective of internal and external outcomes, and processes are measured from the perspective of the process owners and the activities needed to meet customer requirements. Relationships among the anticipated results and the process needed to get the results should be fully understood before the team can assign meaningful performance measures. Specifically, the Strategic Map should be used to develop meaningful performance measures for each objective.

5. Champion New Initiatives

The team will now identify new initiatives that are needed for implementation to ensure that the new strategies evolved are successful in the institution. The focal point of Steps 1 to 4 is that it will lead the team to evolve new initiatives. These new initiatives developed at the end of the scorecard building process are more strategic than if they are developed in the abstract.

6. Implementation

This stage involves the implementation of the new initiatives developed through the balanced scorecard by transmitting the details of implementation milestones and responsibilities throughout the institution to the various schools and departments, and ultimately to teachers, non-academic staff and students. The corporate scorecard will be translated into the various schools and departments scorecards that are aligned with the institutional strategy. The team should note that the most effective way of achieve this is to start with the objectives and measures from the institution-wide strategy map, and develop supporting objectives [and measures] for the various schools and department, teachers, non-academic staff and students.

7. Post Implementation Review
At this stage, the Balanced Scorecard gains advantage over other traditional methods of appraisal because it allows of the inbuilt mechanism of post-implementation auto-evaluation. The success of the institutional strategies adopted is reviewed to determine whether the anticipated results have been attained. The team will need to align the overall strategy of the institution [that is, the mission] to ensure that there is no deviation. Feedback mechanism is created to test the strategy assumptions to determine their effectiveness. This feedback is analyzed and public expectations are factored into the analysis for effective review.

Recommendations

The following recommendations are offered to the Federal Ministry of Education to consider Balanced Scorecard approach for achieving better teachers’ performance management in the education sector in Nigeria.

1. Balanced Scorecard should be adopted as a performance management system for teachers and administrators in the school system. The scorecard is not expensive to implement because it can build on existing appraisal methods and synchronize methods into a single platform of performance management.

2. A national central working committee comprising of team of seasoned professionals drawn from the academia and Organized Private Sector should be set up to advance the study of Balance Scorecard beyond the precursory template of this paper and conduct extensive research with the objective of designing a national strategic map for the different levels of educational institutions in Nigeria from the Universities, Polytechnics, Colleges of Education. Competent and resourceful professionals should be appointed into the various scorecard teams at the national and local levels.

3. A phased introduction and implementation of Balanced Scorecard over a period of twelve to twenty-four is advocated. This will allow for effective orientation and dissemination of the communications plans to carry along all stakeholders. Change management will be effective to eliminate resistance and sabotage of the scorecard will be taken care of with this strategy.

4. Government should have the national will to approve the adoption of Balanced Scorecard and make adequate funds and resources like technology, and literature available for its successful implementation.

5. There should be knowledge exchange programme through the use of resource community at the local and international level. This activity will deepen the knowledge and competence of the local and national teams that are empowered to facilitate the introduction and implementation of the scorecard.

References

Achimugu, L. [2000], The agonies of nigerian teachers: nut – friend or foe.
Kano: Baron Press Limited

Afe, J.O. (2001), Reflections on becoming a teacher and: challenges of
teacher education. University of Benin: Inaugural Lecture Series 64

Aghenta, J.A. (1991) Teacher effectiveness in the nigerian educational
system. Edited by B.C. Emenogu, O.V.N. Okoro et al Onitsha, Orient Publishers Ltd.

Berkman, Eric [2002] How to use the balanced scorecard, CIO Magazine Issue of
May 15, 2002. International Data Group Company

Federal Republic of Nigeria (1998). National policy on education. Lagos,

Jega, A.M. (1997): The state and education in Nigeria today, paper presented at
the “Kano Week ‘97, organized by the Kano State Students’ Association,
Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, September 15.

Kaplan S. R. & Norton P. D. [1992] The balanced scorecard – measures that
drive performance, Harvard Business Review Magazine – January-February
1992 Edition, Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press

Kaplan S. R. & Norton P. D. [1996] The balanced scorecard: translating
strategy into action, Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press

Kaplan S. R. & Norton P. D. [2001] The strategy-focused organization: how
balanced scorecard companies thrive in the new business
environment, Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press

Kaplan S. R. & Norton P. D. [2002] Partnering: the new face of leadership,
AMACOM

Odumosu, A. I. O. [2004] Basic principles of education and methods of
teaching. Ibadan: Olu-Akin Publishers

I am 35 years old and hold HND Secretarial Administration and an MBA in Management. I have also received professional development training from Lagos Business School, Ghana Institute of Journalism, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA and Boston University, USA. I am a certified teacher, an Associate Member of Nigeria Institute of Management and registered with Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria.

I am the Acting Managing Director of XL Management Services Ghana Limited and have had over a decade work experience spanning executive office management, human resources and HR outsourcing in banking, SMEs, consulting and services industries. I have been involved in enterprises at emerging or turnaround stages and played key roles in the areas of innovation, strategy crafting and execution, communication planning, process reengineering, leadership, learning, business coaching for all levels of staff, human resource management and entrepreneurial marketing.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Babatunde_Fajimi

The importance of early years have been emphasized by various researchers. Bloom (1964), pointed out the fast rate of intellectual development in the early years and emphasized the importance of environment. Children were seen as malleable during the preschool years and for the future productivity of children, early educational experiences were seen as crucial (Roopnarine and Johnson, 1987). Hunt (1961), claimed that an enriched environment in early childhood could make significant differences in the level and rate of intellectual development (cited in Goodwin and Driscoll, 1984). Various studies reported by Berrueta-Clement, Schweinhart, Barnett, Epstein and Weikart (1984), Schweinhart, Weikart and Larner (1986), Schweinhart and Weikart (1988) showed that high-quality early childhood programs were effective in overcoming the negative effects of childhood poverty and even produced various short-term and long-term benefits for these children. Various studies pointed out the crucial importance of the component of teacher in early childhood education (Reichenberg-Hackett, 1962; Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968; Good, Biddle and Brophy, 1975; Kounin, 1970; Scott, 1977). After reviewing these studies it can be said that teacher is the most important factor in a nursery school and increasing the quality of teacher behaviors will positively effect the quality of early childhood education services. The initial step for working on the performance of teachers is evaluation. Teacher behaviors need to be evaluated to determine the existing strengths and weaknesses so that interventions can be provided to reinforce the strenghts and build up the weak points. The evaluation process necessitates objective means for assessment. Search by the present researcher showed that there was a need to develop a tool for this purpose in Turkish early childhood education system. The aim of this study was to develop a rating scale that could be used by people trained in the field to evaluate teacher performance in terms of direct observable interaction of teachers with the children in the nursery schools.
The Component of Teacher in Preschool Education

Preschool education consists of the components of physical environment, teacher, children, administrator, aim of the center, curriculum, evaluation and parent involvement. All of these components are very important and all of them have certain requirements. The high quality in early childhood education can only be obtained when these components and the requirements of these components are correctly applied. One most emphasized component; the dimension of ‘teacher’ constitutes the most important element of preschool education. Several studies were carried out to show the vital importance of teacher in early childhood education (Reichenberg-Hackett, 1962; Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968; Good et al., 1975; Kounin, 1970; Fagot, 1973; Hyman, 1973; Garbarino, Guttman and Seeley, 1986). In the light of research that has been carried out it can be concluded that without a creative teacher who is sensitive to the needs of children and knowledgeable about the developmental characteristics of preschool age children, other components of preschool education cannot function effectively. The studies carried out showed that among the factors that influence teacher behavior, SES of the center and the children, aim of the center, age of the teacher, sex of children, characteristics of the program followed, work related stress, conception of the work setting, getting rewards from the system, higher expectations about teacher performance, opportunities for personal development, working in a centralized versus democratic decision making systems can be cited (Tizard, Philps and Plewis, 1976; Fagot, 1973; Quay and Jarrett, 1986; Good et al., 1975).

Statement of the Problem

The aim of this study is to develop a rating scale which can be used by people trained in the field to evaluate the observable behaviors of teachers as they interact with children in the day-care centers. The purpose is to construct items and to determine the most appropriate items for teacher behavior evaluation by means of content validity procedure.

METHOD

Construction of the Instrument

The items of the rating scale developed were based on five main sources. These sources were available theories of child development and approaches in early childhood education, available instruments in the related fields, behavior categories in Bekman’s doctoral dissertation, psychological maltreatment categories and finally observations of teachers in day-care settings in Istanbul. In terms of theories of child development; Heider’s naive psychology (Baldwin, 1980), Lewin’s field theory (Baldwin, 1980), Piaget’s developmental theory (Birren et al.,1981; Fantino and Reynolds, 1975), Werner’s organismic developmental theory (Baldwin, 1980; Birren et al., 1981), Frued’s psychoanalytic theory of development (Bee, 1975; Fantino and Reynolds, 1975), Erikson’s theory of development (Bee, 1975), Social learning theory of child development (Baldwin, 1980; Bee, 1975), Sociological view of child development (Baldwin, 1980), Gesell’s maturational theory (Bee, 1975; Gesell, 1923) were utilized in developing the items of the scale. In terms of the approaches in early childhood education; Ausubelian approach (Ausubel and Robinson, 1969; Roopnarine and Johnson, 1987), Montessori program (Roopnarine and Johnson, 1987), the Bank Street approach (Isaacs, 1933; Roopnarine and Johnson, 1987), Tucson early education model (Roopnarine and Johnson, 1987), the Distancing model (Roopnarine and Johnson, 1987), High/Scope program (Hohmann, Bernard and Weikart, 1979) as being the most influential one for this study were used in the construction of the items of this scale. The instruments that were used in the development of the items of this scale were as follows; Classroom environment scale (CES) (Tüter, 1989), Parental attitude research instrument (PARI) (Kucuk, 1987), Perceived emotional abuse inventory for adolescents (PEAIFA) (Alantar, 1989), Family environment questionnaire (FEQ) (Usluer, 1989), The instructional environment scale (TIES) (Ysseldyke and Christenson, 1986), operational definitions of child emotional maltreatment (Baily and Baily, 1986), Program implementation profile (PIP), Parental acceptance rejection questionnaire (PARQ) (Erdem, 1990). In the present study, some of the categories in Bekman’s doctoral dissertation (1982) were also used. Specifically, attending to and talking to staff, positive control, negative control, promoting social interaction, questioning child for information and giving child extensive information or explanation, suggesting, instructing, housework and dealing with play equipment, physical contact, affection and comfort, demonstrating to the child, no contact at all, helping the child, administrative, minimum supervision, general supervision, sharing the activity, organised group activity, organised talk and teaching session, rigidity, block treatment and social distance. All of these components gave the researcher inspiration while constructing both the items and the categories of this rating scale. Psychological maltreatment areas of rejecting, degrading, terrorizing, isolating, corrupting, exploiting, denying emotional responsiveness and adultifying (Finkelhor and Korbin, 1988) were reviewed in developing the items of the rating scale. Observation process was carried out for the purpose of validating the categories of behavior attained through literature review and to see if teacher behaviors other than those mentioned are present. The interview and the observation form used in the observation process were developed by Kagitcibasi, Sunar and Bekman in 1988. In developing the items of the rating scale, the “domain-referenced approach” suggested by Gable (1986) was utilized. This approach helped the researcher to consider the verbs and the adjectives that could be relevant to a preschool teacher behavior in the nursery school settings in writing the items.

Item and Category Construction

In developing the items of this rating scale, as a first step, the prominent theories and approaches in the field of preschool education were reviewed. By going through these theories and approaches the researcher pinpointed the important categories of teacher behavior. After that, the instruments mentioned were carefully examined and it was found that some of the items in these instruments were applicable to the aim of the present study. The main theme of these items were taken and adopted by making some modifications in their wordings. The behavior categories in Bekman’s doctoral dissertation (1982) gave the researcher inspirations about the possible teacher behaviors in preschool education settings and the items representing those behaviors. Since psychologically abusive behaviors restrict or stop the development of children and such acts should not ever be done by the teachers, the psychological maltreatment literature was also used in constructing the items of the rating scale. The observations made helped to see whether the information that was gathered from the categories and the items in those categories could actually be observed in the nursery schools and whether teacher behaviors other than those already specified could be observed. It was found that most of the behaviors represented by the items were actually observed in the nursery schools. For the teacher behaviors that were not found in the literature reviewed new items were constructed. After the literature review and the observation procedure, 400 items were developed. Through consequative brainstorming sessions with colleagues, the items were started to be reduced in number mainly for the purpose of practicality. Finally, the items were reduced to 96 items. By all of these 96 items the most important teacher behaviors were tried to be emphasized and it was believed that this number would be appropriate for the practicality of this instrument.While constructing the categories of this scale, by means of the literature review, observation process, psychological maltreatment literature and the categories in Bekman’s doctoral dissertation (1982) the researcher could gather an idea about the possible teacher behaviors in the preschool settings. About twenty categories that were started with were collapsed together according to their similarity and the teacher behaviors that could be representative of several categories at the same time. After clearly defining each teacher behavior and thus the categories in general, each group of definitions were given a name. Hence at the end of this procedure, ten different categories were developed each with a different name. The names were as follows; control, supervision oriented promoting social interaction, cognitive oriented promoting social interaction, education directed behavior, emotional abuse component of teacher and child interaction, affective component of teacher and child interaction, general teacher and child interaction, disciplinary attempts, organizational attempts and competition. The congruence between the items and the operational definition of each category was continously checked so that a high rate of content validity could be obtained at the end of the study.

Content Validity

In order to determine which items will constitute the final form of the rating scale, the scale was sent to 31 experts who could be identified to have practical and/or theoretical information about early childhood education field. The experts were from Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and one from Paris. The scale was given to the experts in Istanbul personally and was mailed to the others. A return rate of 22 out of 31 experts was realized. The return rate was 70.9%. All of the experts participated in this study were females between the ages of 26 and 54, majority of them (40.9%) being psychologist with 40.9% holding a Ph.D degree, 36.4% of them was nursery school headmaster, 31.8% was academicians, 45.5% was working in the university, 63.6% had some teaching experience and majority of the experts had direct contact with preschool age children and preschool teachers. The final form of the rating scale given to the experts for the content validity study consisted of 10 categories and 96 items representing these categories. The operational definitions of each category was written down. A two-page demographic information questionnaire was added to the scale and also a recommendations page was attached to the end of the scale to get ideas of the experts about the items. The data about the items and the categories that the items hypothetically belong to was analyzed by using two types of methods. In the first method; initially, the distribution of each particular item to either one of the 10 categories or the eleventh no-fit category was assessed by taking the frequency counts for each specific item. After that, the degree of appropriateness of each specific item to the categories assigned was estimated by multiplying the number of people with each of the value of degree of appropriateness (3, 2 and 1). Then all of the estimated values were added and the final value was divided into the total number of subjects who assigned that item to that particular category. In the second analysis, a weighted index of assignment (WIAS) (A. Baykal, personal communication, June 1990) was found by multiplying the number of experts rating the item to be in the selected category by the degree of appropriateness values of 3 (very appropriate), 2 and 1 (appropriate) respectively. By adding up all the scores a WIAS value was attained for each item. After obtaining a WIAS value, a weighted index of appropriateness (WIAP) was calculated for each specific item by dividing the WIAS score into 66. The value of 66 was found by following the rationale that if all of the 22 experts had given a degree of appropriateness of 3 for that item, 22 times 3 would be 66. The WIAPs for each particular item was rank ordered. The items with a WIAP of .333 and above were considered to be material for the final form of the rating scale. The value of .333 was set as a limit following the rationale that if 22 experts had given a degree of appropriateness of 3 for a particular item, 22 times 3 would be 66. When 66 was divided into 2 which would constitute 50% of the experts, 33 would be obtained, by dividing 33 into 100, .333 would be received.

RESULTS

In this section the results of the two kinds of statistical analysis carried out will be summarized. At the end of the first statistical method it was found that out of 96 items 36 of them were selected by at least 68.18% of the experts with a degree of appropriateness of at least 2. These items were as follows; item1, the teacher rather than being together with the children in the group spends his/her time outside the class; item 2, the teacher tells children what not to do without explaining the reason when s/he wants to prevent or stop children’s behaviors; item 5, the teacher does not allow the children to start a new activity like playing a game or going to toilet without waiting for the other children; item 7, the teacher talks with others or deals with something else in the group rather than mixing with the children; item 9, the teacher gathers children into a group to teach something; item 11, the teacher does not follow the daily routine; item 12, the teacher generally smiles; item 13, the teacher does not allow children to speak out of order; item 14, the teacher explains the child consequences of his/her actions upon others or the feelings of his/her friend when a problem arises between two children; item 15, although the teacher is in the same area with the children s/he is not involved with them when they are playing or doing activities unless there is an important reason; item 21, the teacher gives explanations with the aim of teaching the children; item 23, the teacher helps children whenever they seek help while they are doing an activity; item 26, the teacher tells the children what to do to control them without providing behavioral alternatives; item 28, the teacher praises the children when needed; item 31, the teacher provides the children with the alternative behaviors and explanations when problems arise among the children so that they can find solutions; item 34, the teacher creates competition among children by suggesting various rewards while they are dealing with the activities; item 36, the teacher hits the children so that they get more involved in the activities; item 38, the teacher throws the materials in the class at the children when s/he gets angry; item 40, the teacher tells the children that they are getting on his/her nerves; item 42, the teacher verbally and/or physically punishes the children; item 43, the teacher asks children questions to help them understand the characteristics of the objects; item 44, the teacher teaches children by giving instructions whenever s/he wants to teach something; item 56, the teacher in general makes suggestions to increase and reinforce sharing, mutual help and cooperation among the children; item 58, the teacher continously picks up a specific child to criticize or to punish; item 59, the teacher directs the children with strict rules; item 60, the teacher degrades the children, makes fun of them; item 62, the teacher shows the children the way the materials are used; item 63, the teacher threatens the children so that s/he can have order in the group; item 69, the teacher shows physical affection to children; item 74, the teacher eats with the children; item 76, the teacher asks children questions so that they can see the cause-effect relations and tells children about antecedents and consequences; item 79, the teacher frequently criticizes the children; item 83, the teacher tells the children that s/he does not love them whenever they make something that s/he does not like; item 89, the teacher participates in the activities of the children actively; item 91, the teacher helps the children when they are putting their clothes on and off and item 92, the teacher helps the children at the toilet. Twenty one items were selected by 63.64% to 50% of the experts with a degree of appropriateness of 2 and above. These items were; item 4, the teacher shares the problems of the children when they have difficulty; item 20, the teacher makes suggestions to further help develop the activities the children are doing; item 22, the teacher shows the solution to children when a problem arises among the children; item 24, the teacher gives children food and beverage; item 30, the teacher allows the children to enter or exit all the activity areas in the class whenever they want to; item 35, the teacher walks among the children to help them or to supervise the things they do while they are doing activities; item 37, the teacher while teaching an activity to the children shows them how to do it himself/herself ; item 45, majority of the children spend a lot of idle time; item 47, the teacher wants the children to explain the activities that they will start and by asking questions s/he helps them; item 48, the teacher allows the children to use the materials in the class freely whenever they want to; item 49, the teacher shows the same reaction to each child who does the same thing; item 51, the teacher explains to the children the consequences of breaking a rule; item 53, the teacher makes suggestions to help the children participate in the activities or to provide them with alternative play choices; item 57, the teacher complains about the children to others when they do not listen to him/her; item 64, the teacher allows the children to make fun of each other; item 70, the teacher wants the children to follow certain cliches while they are doing the activities; item 72, the teacher gathers all the children as a group, the children individually or as a group sing songs, tell stories, play group games with rules; item 73, the teacher in the group activities provides the children with the opportunity of learning by doing; item 88, the teacher cannot find anything that s/he looks for in the group; item 93, the teacher while teaching something to children during the group activities directly gives information to the children and item 94, the teacher asks the ideas of the children about the rules of behaving in the group and discusses the rules with them and explains them to the children. Altogether 57 items could be considered for inclusion in the final rating scale.

Some of the items were put into a certain category by a majority of experts with acceptable degree of appropriateness according to the present criteria yet this was not the category of choice set by the researcher. These items were; 16, the teacher laughs at the jokes of the children; 17, the teacher is interested in the activities of the children; 19, the teacher makes the children think in the group activities by asking questions; 50, the teacher allows the children to express and tell their feelings when they are hurted or sad; 67, the teacher gives his/her time and interest to children whenever they want his/her time and interest; 68, the teacher locks the children into a room or toilet to punish them; 78, while the teacher is showing an activity to the children s/he explains it to the children clearly thus children know what to do and 87, the teacher does not want children to show affection toward him/her. Item 6, the teacher compares children with each other; 8, the teacher does a part of the child’s activity for him/her; 25, the teacher in the group that s/he gathered to teach: a-gives examples understandable by the children, b-expects the participation of all children, c-takes into consideration the interests and the desires of the children and d-does not provide opportunities for the children to answer; 54, the teacher makes the necessary intervention when the children are injured were rated in the previously selected category by at least 50% of the experts but the degree of appropriateness was lower than 2. A second method of analysis was decided to be carried out for several reasons. The initial analysis left the researcher with a desire for more refined mathematical procedure. Also, the criteria set for the former procedure left out several items seen valuable by the researcher. The second analysis provided more mathematical precision and provided a second valuable checking process for the inclusion of the items in the final rating scale. In the second method of analysis 64 items out of 96 items were selected by looking at the WIAP scores. While 32 items were decided to be excluded since they had WIAPs lower than .333.

Mostly the same items were excluded in the two methods of analysis used. In the first method, items 6, 25, 46: the teacher wants a child to do the activities that his/her friends did but s/he has not done yet; 54, 55: the teacher prepares the activities and the required and used materials beforehand; 61: the teacher makes suggestions to children so that they can share the activities they have done and their observations with each other and 90, the teacher in group activities sets different aims for different children, uses different methods or materials were also excluded. These items were not excluded in the second method of analysis.

DISCUSSION

This rating scale was developed with the aim of evaluating the performance of nursery school teachers in terms of their directly observable interaction with the children. It originally consisted of 10 categories and 96 items. To carry out the content validity study the scale was distributed to 31 experts of which 22 returned the scale back. Two types of statistical analysis were carried out; in the first one 57 items could be included to the final form of the scale. Items that were put into different categories by at least 50% of the experts with a degree of appropriateness of at least 2 and the items that were put into the previously selected category by at least 50% of the experts but with a degree of appropriateness lower than 2 were also retained in the final form of the scale. Also the items with WIAP values higher than .333 were decided to be included in the final form of the rating scale according to the criteria of second statistical method of analysis. Altogether 74 items constituted the final form of the rating scale. It can be concluded that after great scrutiny this scale is ready for interrater reliability study in its present form. It was initially argued that based on available literature and the researcher’s personal experiences in the field, teacher is the one most important factor in preschool settings. Also, there was a need for an observation tool for assessment of preschool teachers in the field. This study is a first step towards the provision of such a tool. A second way this scale can be utilized in the field is in preschool teacher training and education. The categories and the behaviors specified under each category can help form the framework for the training programs. For the future studies, a shorter form of TEBOS could be developed to aid in quick general evaluations.

REFERENCES

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RESUME OF ASST. PROF. LEYLA FET0H0(PHD)
MARMARA UNIVERSITY
STAFF MEMBER

EDUCATION

Bogazici University, Guidance and Psychological Counseling (1988)
Bogazici University Early Childhood Education Department (1991)
Endorsed High/Scope Trainer Training Program in Ypsilanti, Michigan (1991, 1995, 1999)
Marmara University Organizational Behavior Deparment Ph.D Degree (1998)

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leyla_Fetihi

The notion that only state-approved, licensed teachers can guarantee children a good education is proven wrong by history and common sense. In ancient Athens, the birthplace of logic, science, philosophy, and Western civilization, city authorities did not require teachers to be licensed. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle did not have to get a teaching license from Athenian bureaucrats to open up their Academies. A teacher’s success came only from his competence, reputation, and popularity. Students and their parents paid a teacher only if they thought he was worth the money. Competition and an education free market produced great teachers in ancient Greece.

Parents in America gave their children a superior education at home or in small grammar or religious schools for over two hundred years before we had public schools or licensed teachers in this country. School authorities’ claim that teachers have to be licensed for our children to get a quality education, is therefore false.

Today, in millions of companies across America, bosses or their managers teach new employees job skills, from the simplest to the most complex. Private schools and trade schools teach millions of students valuable, practical skills. Thousands of college professors with masters or doctorate degrees in the subject they teach, instruct hundreds of thousands of college students in subjects ranging from philosophy to electrical engineering. Over a million home-schooling parents teach their children reading, writing, and math with learn-to-read or learn-math books, computer-learning software, and other teaching materials. All these teachers are not licensed yet they often give children a far better education than licensed public-school teachers.

Licensing laws imply that only public-school education “experts” can judge a teacher’s competence. These alleged “experts” are usually graduates of teacher colleges and university education departments. Unfortunately, so-called teacher education is often an academic joke or waste of time, especially to student-teachers who have to endure years of this “teacher-training” torture.

Steve Wulf, writing in Time magazine, revealed the opinion that many student-teachers had about their so-called teacher training:

“Six hundred experienced teachers surveyed in 1995 were brutal about the education they had received, describing it as “mind-numbing,” the “shabbiest psycho-babble,” and “an abject waste of time.” They complained that fragmented, superficial course work had little relevance to classroom realities. And judging by the weak skills of student teachers entering their schools, they observed, the preparation was still woefully inadequate.”

Many teacher colleges don’t teach crucial reading phonics or math instruction skills, nor do they teach science or history. Many “licensed” reading, math, history, or science teachers have not taken courses in or majored in these subjects in college. One survey by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education found that more than three-quarters of teacher-college graduates preparing to be elementary-school teachers had no academic major except education.

In many teacher colleges, student-teachers don’t learn specific knowledge in their subject field or competent teaching techniques to teach our kids reading, math, and science. Instead they learn the history and philosophy of education and other mostly useless nonsense. Also, many university education departments waste student-teachers’ time on socialist, politically-correct courses about gender and minority oppression, multiculturalism studies, and other courses that would fit right in to a Marxist curriculum in Cuba.

Licensing also implies that parents can’t and shouldn’t judge a teacher’s competence. Yet millions of parents in all fifty states send their children to private kindergartens, grammar schools, and colleges. These allegedly ignorant parents have no problem judging the competence of teachers in private schools, and withdrawing their children if the schools don’t live up to the parents’ expectations.

We judge the competence of our car mechanic, accountant, and our child’s private kindergarten teacher all the time, and we do so reasonably well. Is there some mysterious reason we can’t judge whether our children are learning to read, write, or do math? Public-school officials who claim that parents are too ignorant to judge their children’s education are self-serving. If we allegedly can’t trust parents with this job, obviously we have to trust the so-called education “experts,” thereby guaranteeing these so-called education experts’ cushy jobs.

School authorities also claim that we need licensing to guarantee competence, so no charlatans become teachers. Yet some licensed public-schools teachers are barely literate themselves or are ill-trained or have little knowledge of the subject they teach. Fred Bayles, in a “USA Today” column titled, “Those Who Can’t Spell or Write, Teach,” gave an example:

“On April 1, 1998, the Massachusetts Board of Education gave applicants who wanted to teach, a basic reading and writing test. The results of the test were that 59 percent of the applicants failed. If you think these test results made the Board of Education do something constructive, think again. It promptly lowered the test’s passing grade from 77 to 66 percent. Under the “new” standard, only 44 percent failed. Note that all the applicants were college graduates.”

Also, these same education students often score lowest in academic achievement among other high-school graduates. Thomas Sowell, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote about this issue in his book, “Inside American Education.”

“Despite some attempts to depict such attitudes as mere snobbery, hard data on education student qualifications have consistently shown their mental test scores to be at or near the bottom among all categories of students. This was as true of studies done in the 1920s and 1930s as of studies in the 1980s. Whether measured by Scholastic Aptitude Tests, ACT tests, vocabulary tests, reading comprehension tests or Graduate Record Examinations, students majoring in education have consistently scored below the national average.”

“At the graduate level, it is very much the same story, with students in numerous other fields outscoring education students on the Graduate Record Examination—by from 91 points composite to 259 points, depending on the field. The pool of graduate students in education supplies not only teachers, counselors, and other administrators, but also professors of education and other leaders and spokesmen for the education establishment.”

Because of poor teacher training, public schools often hire ill-trained or mediocre teachers, which can cause untold damage to millions of children. Parents have no recourse to oust these teachers because most teachers get tenure after a few years on the job.

In contrast, in a private school, a truly incompetent teacher will not last long. Parents will complain, and the school owner will have to fire this teacher to keep parents happy. Also, for the same reasons, a private-school owner will make every effort to find out if a teacher is competent before he hires that teacher. The school owner’s livelihood and the success of his school depend on having competent teachers and happy customers. Compulsory public schools can ignore parents, so they have no such constraints.

Most parents naively assume that if a teacher is licensed, he or she is now a trained professional they should trust their children with. Parents therefore lower their guard with “licensed” teachers because they assume that a licensed teacher must be competent. As we have seen, this is often not the case.

One solution offered for this problem is “merit” pay for teachers. Merit-pay programs would judge all school employees on competence. Better teachers would get paid more, and bad teachers, principals, or administrators could be fired or demoted. How one judges merit, of course, is a whole separate issue, but just as private-school owners devise methods to judge the merit of their teachers, so too could public schools.

Yet, if teacher licensing produced competent teachers, why do school authorities and teachers unions fight so hard against merit pay? The answer seems obvious—the system produces many teachers, principals, and administrators who may not “merit” their pay, and might lose their jobs under merit-pay rules.

In effect, public-school employees say to parents: “You have to pay our salary and benefits, but how dare you demand proof that we know how to teach your children? How dare you judge our merit? How dare you demand that you get your money’s worth?” Only employees who think the world owes them a living are afraid to be judged by the people who pay them. So licensing does not keep charlatans out of our public schools. Instead, it practically guarantees that we employ charlatans or ill-trained teachers.

If licensing doesn’t work, what is the alternative? The answer is, no licensing. If anyone could teach without a license, like home-schooling parents or private-school teachers, then millions of new, competent, creative teachers would flood the market. These new, unlicensed teachers would compete with one another and drive the price of education down, much as competition drives down the price of computers. They would, hopefully, also put public schools out of business, since millions of parents and free-market schools would now hire these new competent, low-cost teachers.

Without licensing laws, anyone with a special skill or knowledge could simply put an ad in the Yellow Pages or their local newspaper and advertise themselves as a tutor in English, math, biology, history, or computer skills. Retired cooks, engineers, authors, plumbers, musicians, biologists, or businessmen who love teaching could easily open a small school in their homes. If there were no license laws, these talented new teachers would not have to worry about school authorities shutting down their schools because they didn’t have a license.

How would parents be sure they were not hiring a charlatan if there were no licensing laws? The same way they judge their car mechanic, accountant, and child’s kindergarten teacher — by results, reputation, and by being careful consumers. Naturally, parents would make occasional mistakes in judgment because they are human. However, they would quickly become careful consumers because they would now be spending their hard-earned money for teachers. It is amazing how fast we learn to judge the work of others when we have to pay for their services out of our own pockets. Also, if a parent does make mistakes in judging an unlicensed teacher, by watching her child’s progress she will soon catch her error. At that point, she can quickly fire the teacher and find a better one. Can a parent do that with her children’s public-school teachers?

The worst nightmare for public-school authorities is a true free market of teachers who don’t need a license to teach. Fierce competition by millions of new, unlicensed, competent, highly-skilled people might destroy public schools, the teacher unions, and teachers’ lifetime security in tenured jobs. It might destroy the licensing racket that protects their jobs. That is one unspoken reason why school authorities fiercely defend licensing laws—real competition terrifies them. That is also one of the best reasons to eliminate licensing.

The only way to insure good teachers is to let parents decide who will teach their children, not bureaucrats. Millions of parents making individual decisions about who should teach their children will bring forth the best teachers. Fierce competition and an education free market would raise all boats in the teaching profession. Teachers who want to succeed in their profession would have to prove to parent-customers or private- school owners that they have what it takes. They would have to prove by results that they know how to teach and motivate children to read, write, and learn.

Once this licensing protection racket was broken, parents would have complete control over who teaches their children. Our kids could then learn from the best teachers out there and get the great education they deserve.

Joel Turtel is an education policy analyst, and author of “Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children.”

Contact Information:
Website: http://www.mykidsdeservebetter.com,
Email: lbooksusa@aol.com

Article Copyrighted © 2006 by Joel Turtel. NOTE: You may post this Article on another website only if you set up a hyperlink to Joel Turtel’s email address and website URL, http://www.mykidsdeservebetter.com

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What is a Teacher Mentor? A teacher mentor, or teacher coach, helps mentor new teachers by giving ongoing guidance on areas of lesson planning, classroom management and classroom organization. Usually, teacher mentors are teachers themselves and have undergone similar challenges that first year teachers know well.

At teacher education programs at colleges and universities, there are mentoring programs for new teachers such as a student teacher mentor program. There are also teachers at school who mentor student teachers, and new teachers as well. Mentoring first year teachers is not an easy job, and it takes a special kind of teacher mentor to fill in the shoes.

Mentorship Training Before they begin their jobs, teacher mentors receive extensive training from teacher education programs. They need to be familiar with pertinent issues that face a new teacher and what to do if a pre-service teacher-student is experiencing a difficult year particularly with classroom management issues. They also need to work closely with the new teacher, using special strategies such as coaching sessions and reflective journal techniques for easing the new teacher into the classroom. They can then discuss these during their one-on-one sessions. In addition, teacher mentors need to be prepared to enter a classroom as a last resort if needed.

Teacher mentors need training in the interpersonal dynamics of this challenging job. Helping a new teacher feel confident with his/her authority as a classroom manager is a difficult job. Helping a new teacher who isn’t yet sure of how to prepare lessons for difficult lessons is another difficult job.

New Teacher Mentor Responsibilities

Mentoring a new teacher is a tricky job and many mentors, sadly, are overworked! In many scenarios, they are expected to be available to new teachers as often as possible, even during difficult times such as assessments and teaching their own classes. New teacher mentor responsibilities vary, but usually include:

* Discussing lesson plans and classroom management.
* Hold a meeting at the beginning of the year to discuss objectives and goals.
* Helping to orient new teachers to the school.-
* Organizing activities with other teachers.-
* Acting as an intermediary in conflicts between other teachers or with administrators.
* Helping new teachers with difficulties adjusting to a hectic school life.-

Contributions of Being a Teacher Mentor Many seasoned teachers are motivated to become teacher mentors because they enjoy helping new teachers adjust to a new system. Many of them know well the sink or survive syndrome. It feels great to know that they’ve helped a new teacher not quit after his or her first new year of teaching by giving her the important lessons of persistence and reflection.

As a teacher mentor acquires valuable mentoring experience, s/he learns important skills in counseling, time and conflict management, and leadership. There is a lot of respect involved, and even if the respect is not always there, teachers know and appreciate the value of mentors in assisting a new teacher.

A teacher mentor is a teacher first, but now one who is coaching preservice teachers. This can be the ticket for a new teacher’s survival in ways the mentor never thought possible.

To receive your free ebook, Taking Charge in the Classroom and other information for new teachers, visit the New Teacher Resource Center at http://www.newteacherresourcecenter.com

Dorit Sasson is a freelance writer, educator and founder and director of the New Teacher Resource Center.

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While it is unlikely that teacher college and university training programs will change dramatically any time soon, there is no harm in speculating about what the curriculum should look like now. Subjects that are currently covered only in teacher inservice workshops, professional development seminars and education conferences, should be routinely included as a major focus of professional training for educators. When this type of practical training is left to be an optional add-on that must be sought out, located, and often paid for with a teacher’s own personal funds, it becomes far less likely that most teachers will ever update their skills. I know this is true because many participants of my popular Problem Student Problem-Solver Workshops tell me that they have to pay for their own training, beg for days off so they can attend, and sometimes even use vacation time or forfeit their pay when their school can’t or won’t fund the costs.

Putting aside those concerns for the moment, in an ideal world, what might teacher training programs cover beyond content and testing? Here are the top 5 critical things that teachers are never taught but may really need right now:

1. Give Teachers Basic Juvenile Mental Health Training

More and more students have serious mental health concerns yet most teachers don’t know a conduct disorder from an attachment disorder. That’s like not knowing the difference between arithmetic and spelling. When teachers don’t know basic mental health information, it creates the perfect conditions for safety concerns to simmer and boil throughout the school and in the classroom.

2. Offer Teachers Real-World Violence and Safety Training

Schools are more out of control than ever before. School shootings, gangs and bullies can pose enormous potential safety concerns yet few teacher training programs devote extensive course work to practical, preventative methods. Using character education– the current violence prevention method of choice today– to stem this type of violence is naive and ineffective. While character ed can work well with many students, it will always fail with some youngsters. With some populations, such as conduct disorders (who are an estimated 11-14% of students), empathy-based approaches like character ed will actually make the situation far worse. It is an approach better suited for Archie and Jughead, not the South Park kids.

3. Show Teachers How to Teach School Skills

Years ago, families reliably taught their offspring to show respect, arrive on time, dress appropriately, and to have an appreciation for the importance of school. Now, many families cannot or will not instill those beliefs and teach those skills. If families do not teach kids how to be students, then schools must perform this function. Until then, teachers are working with untrained, unmotivated students. Teachers need to be taught how to systematically train youngsters on all aspects of school functioning from punctuality to homework management, from how to raise their hands to how often to talk in class, and so on. Motivation should be given special attention, but typical contemporary teacher training includes almost no practical focus on that today.

4. Show Teachers How to Teach Coping Skills

Because families are more likely today than years ago to be fractured, abusive, troubled and otherwise impaired, teachers need to know how to manage the problems that result when family problems come to school with students. A special focus should be given to what methods work with school refusers, withdrawn kids, work refusers, depressed students, traumatized children, and students in crisis.

5. Show Teachers How to Teach Social Skills

If a student can’t sit in a chair, talk one at a time, or keep his hands to himself, it makes it almost impossible to teach that child academic content. Yet today’s teachers see dozens of socially maladjusted students each day. If parents cannot or will not train their offspring to have basic social skills, teachers must pick up the slack. A child who can sit in his chair, talk one at a time, and keep his hands to himself, is far more likely to be a teachable student. There are no shortcuts around the serious social skill deficiencies that educators cope with today. Until Susie can acquire at least minimal social skills, educating her may be impossible.

It is way past time to drag teacher training into the new millennium. If you are a teacher struggling to make sense out of your troubled, challenging students, the problem isn’t you. The problem is that your professional training fits students who walked your corridors a whopping half century ago. If you want to learn the practical, updated, more effective methods that they didn’t teach you in college, your only option now is to find an inservice course, workshop or professional development seminar that can upgrade your skills to fit contemporary youth.

About The Author
Ruth Herman Wells MS is the director of Youth Change, (www.youthchg.com) See hundreds more of her innovative, problem-stiopping interventions at the Youth Change web site http://www.youthchg.com. Ruth is the author of dozens of books and conducts workshops, inservice, professional development seminars, and trainings throughout N. America.

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She has been gracious enough to provide in-depth answers to my questions on teaching ELLs. She has even been more gracious to answer any more questions, which you can either email to me or leave in the comment box. So with a round of applause, let’s welcome Diane M. Barone.

Professor Barone, thank you so much for participating in this interview. Here’s my first question:

Dorit: For those who haven’t read any of your content rich books and articles on teaching ELLs, could you please give a little overview to our readers on your teaching and research background especially with regard to your work with ELLs?

Professor Barone: So here goes. My experience with ELLs began when I taught a first, second, and third grade classroom of 30 children. Several of these children came to my classroom speaking a language other than English. At that time, my response was to group for some reading instruction, organize small activity centers in the room so that students could collaborate, and organize my instruction thematically so that the important topics recurred in instruction over time. These students were the participants in my doctoral work where I analyzed the written responses they wrote to books they read independently, although the focus was not on ELLs. One result was at the end of third grade all of these children met grade level expectations.

My first big research studies after this time were centered in classrooms where many students were ELLs. One study was in a bilingual first grade classroom. I co-taught with the teacher and we studied which language gained preference in the classroom. In that study, while English was clearly the dominant language, children whose home language was Spanish achieved at higher levels in reading and writing than did children whose home language was English. I was intrigued with this result.

At the same time as the previous study I began my study of children who were prenatally exposed to crack/cocaine. A few of these children also had a home language of Spanish.

Finally, I engaged in a seven-year study where I identified children in K and followed them until sixth grade. Many of these children had a home language of Spanish or Tagalog. I watched as they were taught in English-only classrooms.

Lately, I have worked with Reading First and other high poverty schools in Nevada that have low achievement data. The majority of these children come from homes where English is not the primary language. I work in these schools daily, sitting side-by-side with teachers as we determine how best to support students.

Dorit: Based on your own observations and research, what do you feel are some of the challenges teaching ELLs in mixed ability classes at the primary school level? Junior high and high school?

Professor Barone: I have never been in a classroom that did not have children with variety of academic levels. So rather than viewing the mixed abilities as challenges we just perceive them as an expectation. Here are some of the practices that seem to work.

· We engage children in small groups where they can chat throughout the day. There is always an academic task but we allow children to converse so they can practice English.

· We expect that teachers keep students engaged. So children are never called on one-at-a-time to respond. We may use whole class response when the answer is simple. We partner children where each child has a letter or number (1 & 2 or A & B). They we ask partner A to share with B or the reverse. With the simple letter or number we are assured that both partners participate. This partnering allows children numerous opportunities to practice.

· We have children writing and reading from the first days of school. We look at their writing to learn when they understand letters, letters and sounds, and how to represent words in English. We have simple books for children and we keep adding to these books so every table group has a variety to choose from.

· We explicitly teach phonemic awareness to our K and first graders. This is done in small groups with the teacher or aide. We use Road to the Code.

· We involve parents. In one school parents come to kindergarten and learn how to read with this child.

· We use a large number of photos or realia to support meaning.

· We group children in multiple ways throughout the day depending on need.

· We provide intervention or enrichment blocks each day depending on student need.

· We make sure that there is at least 90 minutes for reading instruction, a half hour for writing, and a half hour for intervention every day.

Dorit: What are some of the more critical areas new teachers need to know when planning differentiation lessons for their ELLs? Based on what you perceive as these critical areas, what advice can you give to new teachers?

Professor Barone: This is a very important question. We are asking teachers to extend the main objective from whole group to small, differentiated groups during reading instruction. So if the teacher is focused on author’s purpose during whole group, then we ask for this objective during small group. So whole group is for modeling and small group is for guided practice. Then we have children practice reading with a partner independently with this same objective before we ask them to perform independently. We are careful with the consistency in this sequence – same objective – model, guided practice, collaborative practice, independent practice.

Dorit: What should primary school general education teachers particularly take into account when differentiating instruction?

Professor Barone: Always the needs of children. So if there is a small group of students who struggle with an alphabet letter or sound, small group for short, focused instruction works. We also work with children reading at about the same level for part of the day so they can read similar titles for book group discussion. These groups stay together longer than the first. We also group children based on book choice that support a themes. So if the theme is survival, for instance, each group of children would read a different book that shares this theme.

We also group in writing. Some children might work together for revising and others for editing.

Dorit: At the beginning stages of teaching reading, what areas of instruction/differentiation are becoming increasingly challenging for new teachers to implement? Why is this? What are some of the ways that teachers can overcome this?

Professor Barone: When children are just beginning, they need to know the words and concepts first. So we work with ELLs and preteach this content. That way when the teacher shares a story or informational piece, ELLs have the background and vocabulary. We use photos, videos, realia, and whatever we can to make sure they understand. Often an aide or ESL expert is in charge of this instruction.

Then it depends, if children are in small group and are expected to read a text, we work on understanding, and then decoding. We will have children read this book, multiple times, for different purposes so they become automatic with reading it. Then it is added to books they read during independent time for practice.

So for beginners there are dual purposes – decoding and comprehending. Later when students are automatic with decoding most words, emphasis shifts to comprehension only.

We also focus constantly on vocabulary. We ask teachers to use fancy words all day so children become aware of them (wilted for dried out). We build charts with words daily. We have children sort words by pattern and meaning. We have word walls and other word support in rooms so children can refer to it as necessary.

Dorit: How would you define a struggling ELL in mixed ability classes?

Professor Barone: For me, it is a student who reads but does not comprehend. This child has learned to decode but there hasn’t been much emphasis on comprehension. We find this child to be difficult to work with and support because he or she sees reading as just getting the words right. We put the child into simpler text to support comprehension.

Dorit: How can teachers cater to struggling learners in mixed ability classes?

Professor Barone: Well I believe all children need instruction to support their growth, so in the schools where I collaborate we work on providing the best instruction for each student. So during the reading block, all students participate in small, guided reading groups. We have preteaching groups so that students who are new to English understand the content and vocabulary. We have intervention and enrichment groups each day. Children who are struggling get targeted instruction during this time and other students who are performing at grade level or above get enrichment. We are able to do this by using all grade level and special teachers for blocks throughout the day. For instance, all first graders in a school would have intervention time at 10 to 10:30. Some teachers work with the most struggling students while others work in enrichment activities.

We also have time before school and after for support or homework help provided by teachers, with extra pay, or others.

Dorit: Please explain the difference between pull-in and push out learning envrionments in terms of what teachers need to do to cater to both ESL and ELL effectively. Any advice would also be appreciated.

Professor Barone: We are really moving away from pull-out. We found that it was difficult for teachers to collaborate and the instruction did not necessarily cohesively support students.

So we are working on push in where other teachers or aides work directly with teachers. Each week we build in time for all of the teachers and aides to plan together. (This takes very creative scheduling.) At this time teachers plan instruction for all students in a single grade level. The following week, learning is explored, and new plans are created. With this planning, interventions and preteaching are coordinated so children do not experience random instructional events.

Dorit: What teaching techniques do you recommend for effectively bridging the gaps bewteen word and text-based levels especially at the junior high school level and beyond?

Professor Barone: Junior high and high school are much more difficult especially when students are new to English and the content is so much more abstract. In the schools where I am seeing success, teachers are organizing their language arts block around a theme. Within the theme students read books at their instructional level. Teachers can work with students on common vocabulary. They can also pull small groups for word level instruction as other students read their books silently.

In other classes, we are working with teachers to support students in the discipline specific vocabulary. They create charts or notebooks with these words. They utilize photos as well. We also have taught them to engage students in constructed response where students are expected to write answers or solve problems and explain. We have also worked with them to use graphic organizers that are completed collaboratively with students as new content is shared.

Dorit: Do you have any recommendations for using oral instruction effectively in both primary/junior high school settings?

Professor Barone: The big question. We ask teachers to monitor their talking. We have asked some to tape record instruction as we find that teachers are talking way too much and students are no getting the practice they need. We really work on student engagement so that students are expected to participate throughout all instruction. We work with teachers to use:

· Think, pair, share

· Numbered heads where every student in group has a number. After discussion, the teacher calls a number and those students share out.

· Partners with numbers or letters so each partner shares.

· Whole group response – thumbs up or down

· Quick written responses on sticky notes before any response

We are really working with teachers not to call on individual students as all other students lose focus.

We also read aloud to students where we repeat the reading of the book for several days. On the first day, students talk about plot. On the second day they might discuss characters. On the third day maybe setting. By the end of the week they are comfortable talking about all aspects of the book.

Make Your Teaching Sparkle. Teach for Success. Make a difference in the classroom.

Subscribe to receive your FREE e-zine and e-book, “Taking Charge in the Classroom” when you visit the New Teacher Resource Center at http://www.newteachersignup.com.

Purchase your ebook of classroom tested tips – “Tips and Tricks for Surviving and Thriving in the Classroom,” at: http://www.MakeYourTeachingSparkle.com and you’ll receive a FREE ebooklet, “Yes! You Can Teach K-12 English language learners Successfully!”

Dorit Sasson is a freelance writer, speaker, educator and founder of the New Teacher Resource Center.

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Teachers can learn from other teachers who work with ELLs in either a general education class or small ESL learning group. They can create supportive learning and working environments when they know the various ranges of activities that have worked successfully for ELLs. They get excited about adapting activities when it can help their ELLs become more proficient readers and decoders. They learn collaborative strategies by collaboration. The key is to put the teacher as the learner.

My first and second grade ELLs enjoy oral work that focuses on sound and meaning when it is combines in a variety of playful contexts such as rhymes, songs, jazz chants and poetry, but I have found that they sometimes they don’t get the deeper meaning and this frustrates me. What’s this word? What does it mean? Back to thinking different strategies on my own…not again.

During my first year of teaching struggling elementary ELLs, I worked closely with a mentor and ten other teachers. The focus of our workshop was learning what worked from other teachers, so we could bridge some of literacy gaps. The facilitator had us engage in learning journals using guided subjects for reflection. We began by writing our concerns and questions, and then we reflected on the lessons using guiding questions. Our facilitator then responded to our journals and extracted various entries, which were then categorized under various subjects. Some of the other reflections revealed a totally different approach to teaching ELLs. Some of the teachers had plenty of practical activities and thoughts while others raised more thoughtful questions and concerns. Reading their responses helped me get into the mind of a first grade ELL – what a great experience!

After this, I realized that there were plenty of issues I needed to be aware of before expecting ELLs to read. The challenge with using the teachers’ responses as a guide for planning lessons was being prepared in knowing that some activities wouldn’t work for my particular struggling ELLs. They couldn’t acquire meaning without doing lots of decoding exercises and so there was not much they were able to do without a lot of oral help and support. In addition, they needed a lot of support in other areas as well. The most important thing a teacher of ELLs can do is to is to take a pre-assessment of their abilities and interests and create a student profile. Then, a teacher can customize instruction by providing successful activities based on what is available to the teacher and what the ELL can do. If teachers want ELLs to succeed just like their native English speaking peers, they need to be prepared a wide variety of learning options.

With other general education and ESL teachers, I tried to recreate a productive collaboration mode whereby teachers were able to learn from each other. I encouraged general education teachers to reflect on how successful they were able to teach a balanced mode of reading using components of oral and reading instruction. Then I asked teachers to reflect on the challenges using a series of lead-in questions and subjects for reflection we could investigate. Then we categorized the responses and as a collaborative group, we came up with a wide range of possibilities for teaching struggling ELLs in both educational and ESL learning contexts. The ELLs from both groups were then challenged using the wide range of activities we were able to pool together.

Creating the need to collaborate between general education and ESL teachers is a lot harder than it looks. General education teachers need encouragement, guidance and support to see the benefits of collaborating with ESL teachers and vis-versa. But teachers are actually benefiting when teachers successfully collaborate, not simply for the sake of acquiring additional teaching ideas but how to use those ideas more strategically to support their struggling ELLs. Students continued to struggle, but at least, teachers felt that the dialogue experience gave them more confidence builder strategies and tips to fully cater to the needs of their ELLs and they created lessons with more thought and engagement than before.

Reflective thinking is one process that I have used successfully, but there are strategies for encouraging reflective thinking as well. Reflective practice and professional development encourages educators to incorporate reflecting thinking in their daily practice as a prerequisite for collaboration. In our book proposal on Collaborative Teaching between ESL and General Education Teachers, Grades K-2: What Educators Need to Know, we wrote: “The critical need to successfully teach struggling ELLs in primary grades makes collaboration not only beneficial, but necessary. But before teachers can truly collaborate, they need to understand their ELLs and the areas in which they struggle. They will also want to consider how they have grouped their students. Teachers take this information as input when they meet with other teachers to work on practical solutions. Teachers face constraints of time, curriculum, and district procedures. They can suggest collaborative models to their administrators and colleagues to be part of the solution. The ultimate goal is to create a supportive learning environment for teachers and students.”

I think this sums up the goals of the collaborative teaching experience in a nutshell.

Make Your Teaching Sparkle. Teach for Success. Make a difference in the classroom. Subscribe to receive your FREE e-zine and e-book, “Taking Charge in the Classroom” when you visit the New Teacher Resource Center at http://www.newteachersignup.com. Purchase your ebook of classroom tested tips – “Tips and Tricks for Surviving and Thriving in the Classroom,” at: http://www.MakeYourTeachingSparkle.com and you’ll receive a FREE ebooklet, “Yes! You Can Teach K-12 English language learners Successfully!”

Dorit Sasson is a freelance writer, speaker, educator and founder of the New Teacher Resource Center.

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In a collaborative context, teachers realize the benefits of working together. Collaboration saves time and maximizes curriculum. Further, teachers spend less time working in isolation. Since school districts do not provide teachers with specific guidelines on how to collaborate, teachers

need to develop their own guidelines for collaboration which reflect their experience and goals. As part of our collaborative plan, we started out creating a working definition of our struggling ELLs. We wanted to create a possible model for implementing collaboration techniques. Of course, teachers will also need to monitor themselves on implementing the guidelines. They will also need to document the progress of their students and then plan as a whole to ensure ongoing success.

When teachers successfully develop a plan for their own collaboration, they ensure that their instructional goals and objectives will be met. It makes sense then to learn what works for other teachers so they can meet the needs of their own struggling ELLs.

We started our journey as two teachers, one general education and one ESL, who each knew very little about how the other classroom was structured. We also knew that there was a common “thread” that linked our work as teachers instructing struggling ELLs in our classrooms. In Tracie’s general education class there were several ELLs. Meeting the diverse needs of her ELLs meant constantly finding interesting and successful ways to keep them on task. In Dorit’s ESL class the emphasis was on learning the language. Dorit needed to ensure that her struggling ELLs were also acquiring word-text based skills.

One of the assumed goals of collaboration is that teachers can work together to better meet the needs of their students, particularly struggling ELLs. Dorit comments to Tracie on the issue of meeting student needs.

I’ve noticed that throughout our conversations, you ask me to clarify how the needs of struggling ELLs fit into the general education classroom. Many general education teachers face the reality that there is no obvious relationship or connection between ESL and general education teachers. By asking questions, it is becoming clearer to you how a needs analysis of struggling ELLs has a direct implication on collaborative strategies between general education and ESL teachers. – Dorit

The Benefits of Using Collaboration to Support Struggling ELLs

Collaboration at the critical level of K-2 serves a purpose when teachers are able to support their ELLs’ decoding with deeper understanding. Many general education teachers realize that their struggling ELLs need more than just reading support. A focus only on reading support can cause them to struggle and become at risk. These students may not acquire the decoding, fluency, and other reading skills they will need to succeed in subsequent grades. At the critical stages of K-2 instruction, teachers need to make sure that struggling ELLs can make connections between oral and written forms of words. Before addressing the details, however, teachers will need to consider a collaborative plan.

Creating a Supportive Learning Environment (moved this from a later section)

Collaboration creates a supportive learning environment for teachers and for students. When teachers collaborate frequently and consistently, they are able to optimize the learning environments. They can provide more scaffolding strategies to meet all levels of struggling ELLs in both ESL and general education groups. Collaboration helps relieve stress. Effective collaboration is built on common goals and expectations. Teachers can be more organized and structured in their lesson planning, conducting and evaluating learning activities, and assessing student progress. Such structure is necessary for struggling ELLs because they often get lost in following directions, cues, and prompts. Knowing what to teach and how to use procedures help with the overall flow and classroom organization.

As we conducted our research, we learned that schools use a variety of configurations for ESL and ELL/general education classrooms. Regardless of how ESL and general education classes are set up, collaboration can result in a supportive learning environment for teachers as well as students.

Initially, the relationship between ESL and general education teachers may not lend itself to support and collaboration. For instance, the ESL teacher might come into the general education classroom to help, but may be made to feel like a teacher’s aide. Or, the ELLs students might be

separate in another classroom where they may or may not be learning the same curriculum as their native peers. J. Pierce shared her experience. “When I taught we had an in class model where the ELL aides came in and supported my kids in any way I needed. We gave out monthly vocabulary lists ahead of time to help them know what kinds of lessons were coming up. Each teacher used the aide time as they saw fit.”

One possible model for implementing collaboration within the local school setting is shown in Issues to be decided between ELL General Education teachers and ESL teachers. This chart presents the ideal collaborative efforts on classroom issues that should be decided between ELL general education teachers and ESL teachers for each student including those in question for being at-risk before the onset of reading instruction begins. Teachers will need resources and support from administration and colleagues to successfully use such collaborative models to create supportive environments for struggling ELLs.

Make Your Teaching Sparkle. Teach for Success. Make a difference in the classroom.

Subscribe to receive your FREE e-zine and e-book, “Taking Charge in the Classroom” when you visit the New Teacher Resource Center at http://www.newteachersignup.com.

Purchase your ebook of classroom tested tips – “Tips and Tricks for Surviving and Thriving in the Classroom,” at: http://www.MakeYourTeachingSparkle.com and you’ll receive a FREE ebooklet, “Yes! You Can Teach K-12 English language learners Successfully!”

Dorit Sasson is a freelance writer, speaker, educator and founder of the New Teacher Resource Center.

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