INTRODUCTION TO TEACHING

A Course Syllabus/Reading Guide Using The Teachers Toolkit

CONTENTS

A. Series Description
B. Course Description: Intro to Teaching
C. Course Themes, Readings, and Related Activities
Theme 1: What Is Teaching, Really?
Teaching Toward Democracy, Chapter 1: Opening the Classroom Door
Teaching for Success, Chapter 1: The Complexities of Teaching
Theme 2: How Do Teachers Learn to Teach?
Teaching for Success, Chapter 2: Knowledge, Learning, and Identity for
Teachers
Teaching for Success, Chapter 3: Combining the Personal and the Professional in
Teaching
Teaching for Success, Chapter 4: Leveraging Your Teacher Identity into a
Successful Professional Self
Teaching for Success, Chapter 5: The Human Dimensions of Teaching and
Identity
Theme 3: Principles and Practices of High-Quality Teaching
Teaching Toward Democracy, Chapter 2: Slow, Active, and Surprising:
Remaking Teaching Through the Arts.
Teaching Toward Democracy, Chapter 3: Our Communities Deserve J ustice!
Teaching Without Bells, Chapter 2: Relationships with Students
Teaching English Learners, Chapter 6: The ELD Teacher: A Special Psychology
Teaching English Learners, Chapter 7: Teaching ELLs and the Democratic Ideal
Teaching for Success, Chapter 6: The Political Dimensions of Teaching and
Identity
Theme 4: School Contexts, Professional Relationships, and Teaching Careers
Teaching Without Bells, Chapter 3: Relationships with Other Teachers
Teaching Without Bells, Chapter 4: Teachers Voices and Roles in Small Schools
Leading from the Inside Out, Chapter 5: Teacher Participation in Multiple Forms
of School Reform
Making a Difference, Chapter 2: Exercising Professional Autonomy
Making a Difference, Chapter 5: The Dream J ob

A. SERIES DESCRIPTION

The Teachers Toolkit is a boxed set of six books, presenting the most successful teacher
practices based on years of research, experience, and wisdom from many of todays most
prominent education scholars. All six books make current research and theory accessible to
prospective, new, and experienced educators in a conversational, practice-oriented style. The
Teachers Toolkit is designed for education students, new teachers, and other educators who are
eager to think more deeply and more broadly about the practice of teaching. The books inspire
readers toward the joys of powerful teachingencouraging the view that teaching is not only a
technical act but a philosophical, personal one as well. These books can be read all the way
through one at a time, or they can be divided up and their chapters resequenced for the particular
needs of any university education program or working group of teachers and mentors.
The following syllabus/reading guide is designed for use in university courses such as the
common core education course called Intro to Teaching.

B. COURSE DESCRIPTION: INTRO TO TEACHING

This commonly taught university course introduces prospective teachers as well as other
education students to the teaching profession. Presenting both historical and current views of
teaching and education, this course encourages students to think more deeply, more broadly, and
more systematically about what teaching is, what teachers do, and whether teaching is an
appropriate career choice for them. In the course students will develop research and theory-based
views of educational history, teaching practices, various contexts of teaching and teachers, and
contemporary issues related to teacher education.

C. COURSE THEMES, READINGS, AND RELATED ACTIVITIES

Theme 1: What Is Teaching, Really?
We learn what teaching is from many sources and over many years. We pick up clues while we
are students watching our own teachers. We pick up signals about what teachers look like, how
they act, and what separates bad teachers from good ones from TV, newspapers, and books
we read. Some of us grew up around teachers, and we learned both directly and indirectly from
them what teaching is. But all of those are informal knowledge sources, and are only partial
slices of information. Furthermore, they are all highly subjective, open to the particular
experiences of the people behind the sources. Educators must be healthily skeptical of those
informal, untested sources of information of what teaching is. This unit exposes you to another
way of defining teaching.

Pre-reading Activity
What are the primary reasons you wish to enter the teaching profession? List them in order of
importance to you. In small groups discuss which reasons are common among all of you and
which are unique. Discuss how particular reasons for entering teaching that emerged in your
group might predispose a person toward particular orientations of teaching. How, exactly, do a
persons reasons for entry exert their influence on how the person may approach teaching?

Reading Assignments
Teaching Toward Democracy, Chapter 1: Opening the Classroom Door
Teaching for Success, Chapter 1: The Complexities of Teaching

Discussion Questions
1. What qualities or dispositions do you hope your future students will take from your classroom
into the rest of their lives?

2. Describe the leading characteristics of your personality. How do you predict they will translate
into parts of your teacher self? What personality characteristics will you need to submerge or
adjust so that they dont become problematic parts of your teacher identity?

Suggested Activities
1. Complete Part One of the Teacher Identity Worksheet (Teaching for Success, Appendix) and
bring it to class with you. In small groups share and discuss the aspects of your teacher identity
that you wrote about.

2. On the board, in your notebook, or on poster paper identify all the stereotypes of teachers, both
good and bad. From where do these stereotypes (or representations) come? Its very likely that
the sources of these representations of teaching (from movies, people you know, newspapers, and
other written texts) have little formally to do with education practice, but rather exist to entertain,
advance a political agenda, or make some point only tangentially related to education. Why does
that matter? How should you make use of these cultural stereotypes of teaching?
Now do the same for students as a cultural category.

3. In small groups, identify what you believe to be the three primary purposes of education (that
is, Whats education for?) Dont stop until everyone is in agreement on the three purposes (in no
particular order).
Was this an easy task? If not, why was it difficult? Was your own schooling in line with
these purposes you identified? How would the various stakeholders in education (students,
teachers, parents, policymakers, tax-paying citizens, business owners) agree or disagree with your
three purposes?

Culminating Activity
Write a five-page personal reflection in which you describe how your life has brought you to a
potential career as a teacher. What family, cultural, educational, and professional experiences
have guided you into considering a teaching career? What kind of teacher do you want to be?
Why?


Theme 2: How Do Teachers Learn to Teach?
There are multiple theories about how teachers learn and myriad sources of teacher knowledge.
Partly teachers learn by reflecting on their own learning experiences in relation to their future
teaching. Partly teachers learn by learning research, theories, and strategies for effective
teaching. Partly teachers learn by watching others do it and by trying things out for themselves.
And partly teachers learn by spending significant time by themselves and with others reading,
thinking, and talking about teaching. All of those facets compose learning to teach. And, yet,
ones capacity for learning to teach hinges on how consciously well positioned any single new
teacher is for his or her professional education. This unit prepares you for success in orienting
yourself toward robust professional preparation as a teacher.

Pre-reading Activity
Discuss in groups: What are some of the ways in which your own personal history has helped you
as a student? What are some of the ways in which your personal history may have hindered your
academic development?

Reading Assignments
Teaching for Success, Chapter 2: Knowledge, Learning, and Identity for Teachers
Teaching for Success, Chapter 3: Combining the Personal and the Professional in
Teaching: An Example
Teaching for Success, Chapter 4: Leveraging Your Teacher Identity into a Successful
Professional Self
Teaching for Success, Chapter 5: The Human Dimensions of Teaching and Identity

Discussion Questions
1. What do you know about learning theory? How do you think people learn? Which of the three
dominant learning theories do you think is most accurate: behaviorism, cognitive theory, or
sociocultural theory? What are pros and cons of each of these three theories?

2. What are some of the strategies you will employ in order to persevere when your own teacher
development gets difficult?

3. Can you think of examples in your own schooling when a teachers care, concern, trust, and
compassion were powerful parts of the experience for you? What was this like? Conversely, can
you think of examples when a teachers lack of concern, or downright antipathy, had a powerful
effect on you? What was that like?

Suggested Activities
1. Instructor: Give each small group of students twenty index cards each with an educational and
learning-theory term or actual teaching example on it and ask students to group the cards in
whatever ways appear logical to them. (There are no right answers: this is simply a way to engage
students in talking about learning theory and attaching the theories to concrete teaching
examples.) Afterward, each group should share what it talked about and what it learned from this
activity.

2. Instructor: Show videotapes of teachers teaching and ask students to identify what learning
theories are being employed (consciously or not) by the teachers. How do these teaching
examples reveal the underlying beliefs held by the teachers about how students learn best?

3. Instructor: Invite a few teacher educators into the class to talk about how they believe teachers
learn and what kinds of professional teacher preparation they utilize.

Culminating Activity
Students spend a week researching two local teacher education programs (traditional university
programs or alternative certification/intern programs) and write up their findings in a report. What
are the characteristics of these programs? What philosophies and pedagogies of teacher learning
do they stress? What particular challenges do these programs believe they currently face?


Theme 3: Principles and Practices of High-Quality Teaching
There are numerous approaches to successful classroom teaching, and a teachers approach in
the classroom itself derives from multiple sources. It has to do with her own educational
philosophy; her professional training; her beliefs, biases, and assumptions about different groups
of students; theories about how students learn; policies and colleagues at her workplace; and the
actual students with whom she works. The more thoughtful, research-minded, and reflective a
teacher is the more successfully she will be able to adapt her teacher identity to the
circumstances where she works. This unit offers several different ways to think about high-quality
teaching and learning, with a particular focus on equity and societal improvement.

Pre-reading Activity
Look through newspapers or online news sites and find a current controversy in education. Do an
hour of research on this controversy: What is the debate about, what are the competing positions,
what kind of educational disagreements or values are represented? Bring your research notes to
class and present your findings to the whole group.

Reading Assignments
Teaching Toward Democracy, Chapter 2: Slow, Active, and Surprising: Remaking
Teaching Through the Arts.
Teaching Toward Democracy, Chapter 3: Our Communities Deserve J ustice!
Teaching Without Bells, Chapter 2: Relationships with Students
Teaching English Learners, Chapter 6: The ELD Teacher: A Special Psychology
Teaching English Learners, Chapter 7: Teaching ELLs and the Democratic Ideal
Teaching for Success, Chapter 6: The Political Dimensions of Teaching and Identity

Discussion Questions
1. Teaching Toward Democracy, Chapter 2 proposes taking it slow, keeping it active, and
enjoying surprise in teaching. Can you think of ways these three qualities could be teaching
goals? What would you add to this list?

2. The authors of Teaching Toward Democracy are proponents of slow-teaching (pp. 4648) in
a fast-paced educational world. What can you envision are the pro and cons of this approach to
teaching? How can you reconcile the idea of slow teaching with the standards-based/testing-
heavy practices likely in place at your school? What are a few slow-teaching practices you can try
in your classroom?

3. How might a teacher negotiate the blurry boundary between knowing too little and knowing
too much about a student? What might it look like and involve to know a student well enough
to make ones teaching authentic, caring, and responsive to that students needs?

4. Imagine how you would explain to a parent the benefits of music, graphic organizers, images,
video, and poetry in language learning? Can you justify their use using educational principles?

5. What are some social justice-related practices, conversations, and activities that you would like
to do with students in the classroom, but are reluctant to do? Why are you reluctant? What,
specifically, do you think you need to learn about social-justice teaching in order to become better
prepared and more comfortable doing such things with your own future students?

Suggested Activities
1. As suggested in Teaching for Success (pp. 152154), write your own race, culture, and power
autobiography and then share with others. What themes emerged that are common to many of the
students race, culture, and power autobiographies? What might that mean?

2. Drawing on the chapters you have read, design a few wildly creative, interesting lessons for a
hypothetical group of students of your choosing.

3. Go into a school and observe a classroom. Using the chapters from this unit, analyze what you
saw and what lessons you might apply to your own teaching in the future.

Culminating Activity
Return to the educational controversy you identified and examined as the pre-reading activity.
With the knowledge you learned from the Toolkit readings and accompanying discussion, rewrite
your summary of the initial controversy into a fuller, more formal report. Use the Toolkit chapters
to deepen and adjust your view of the topic and conclude with a set of related recommendations
for practicing teachers today.


Theme 4: School Contexts, Professional Relationships, and Teaching Careers
Many newcomers to teaching are familiar with the visible work of classroom teaching
(preparing, enacting, and reflecting on lessons; diagnosing and evaluating students; staying on
top of the paperwork and other kinds of classroom bureaucracy), but they neglect to appreciate
the extent to which a teachers work exists outside the classroom. Developing professional
relationships with school leadership and fellow teachers, becoming a school leader, being active
in the community, and planning for career advancement are all also important facets of a
teachers work. This unit introduces students to the many professional aspects of, and roles in,
education that extend outside the classroom. The unit emphasizes that developing a successful
and satisfying career in education requires broad thinking and advance planning on the part of
the teacher.

Pre-reading Activity
Interview a teacher (preferably one you dont know well). Ask this teacher about the aspects of
his or her work that exist outside the classroom. How does he feel about building relationships
with parents, working with the school administration, being active in the community? Does she
have good relationships with fellow teachers? If not, why not? Does he believe that a teacher
must have a good professional network in order to teach well and enjoy teaching? Does she plan
to remain as a teacher until the end of her working life or shift into other kinds of work? Why?

Reading Assignments
Teaching Without Bells, Chapter 3: Relationships with Other Teachers
Teaching Without Bells, Chapter 4: Teachers Voices and Roles in Small Schools
Leading from the Inside Out, Chapter 5: Teacher Participation in Multiple Forms of
School Reform
Making a Difference, Chapter 2: Exercising Professional Autonomy
Making a Difference, Chapter 5: The Dream J ob

Discussion Questions
1. How might teachers joint work build teachers capacities and affect teacher retention, and
foster more collaborative experiences among students in classrooms?

2. What kind of whole career in education are you predicting for yourself? Do you plan to remain
as a classroom teacher for many years, or do you plan to move away from classroom teaching
after awhile into some other role in education? If you plan to leave the classroom, why? What
would you need in order to remain as a classroom teacher for your whole professional career? Is
the phenomenon of good teachers leaving the classroom for other roles in education mostly good
for K12 students or harmful to them?

3. Once you become a teacher, what kind of school will you seek out in order to have a
successful, gratifying career in education? What sacrifices might you need to make in order to be
successful and happy as a teacher?

Suggested Activities
1. Complete Tool 5-B, Roland Barths Conception of Change (Leading from the Inside Out,
p. 173).

2. Complete Tool 5-C, The Five Whys: Getting to the Underlying Issue (Leading from the Inside
Out, p. 174).

3. Invite various local educatorsnot just teachers but people in other education roles toointo
the class to describe their workdays, how their lives brought them into the jobs they currently
have, and why they would (or would not) recommend their jobs to others.

Culminating Activity
In small groups, design the perfect school. Whats the schools mission statement? What will the
physical layout look like? What will be your teacher hiring and performance evaluation practices?
What learning and teaching features will your school emphasize? How will student achievement
be defined and measured? How will your school be different from those schools with which you
are already familiar?
Use poster paper to describe your school and present your results to the whole class. Allow
them to ask you questions. Additionally, submit to the instructor a group-written report in which
you formally propose your school and articulate its rationale using ideas from the Toolkit
chapters.