December 1 Education Week Reflection

The New Vigor Propelling Training was the first article I read from this issue, and the very first paragraph jumped out at me: "preservice preparation could be the next stop on the teacher-quality continuum to receive a similarly high level of scrutiny."  My very first thought was hey that sounds an awful lot like what we are doing!  Because it pretty much is.  It got me to thinking about Willamette's program as opposed to other Masters Programs.  Our student teaching session is in our fourth semester, but they mentioned in the article that year long residencie's may become the new big thing.  It seemed like an awful lot to me, but then again, as someone who is feeling a little burned out on schooling after three and a half years of undergrad and jumping right into part time graduate school, it makes sense that I may grimace at the idea of a year long residency.  It also goes into the fact that teachers aren't prepared well, or prepared well enough.  First and second year teachers are going to struggle.  That is obvious.  I can't help but think to myself that that is just what happens.  Does that necessarily mean they aren't well prepared.  Perhaps.  I honestly think that it has more to do with the fact that you don't get good at something if you don't practice it with real world application.  Would a year long residency help?  Yeah it probably would a little bit no matter what.  Would it help the people who were going to stay at that same school district or same school when they are done with their residency?  Definitely!  The people who move away from the area are going to struggle regardless because they are having to get used to a new school, a new peergroup, new curricula, everything new.  Lesson plans are going to change according to different textbooks they have to use.  New schedules are going to dictate how much time they have to teach students different subjects.  I noticed in the article that Oregon was listed as one of the 8 states holding meetings over these reform recommendations.  Is WU's program technically ahead of the curve, even though ours is only a semester long?  if they adopted reforms, would we switch to a year long residency described in the article?  Until more states do this, do we are WU student's look more appealing to school districts because we have had this training?  let's hope so!