Another Year of Teacher Education Program
An old school room at R. J. Haney Heritage Village and Museum in Salmon Arm, BC
A few days ago my husband and I happen to visit a very interesting place – an old school room at a museum in a small town of Salmon Arm in British Columbia – R. J. Haney Heritage Village and Museum in Salmon Arm, BC (http://www.salmonarmmuseum.org/). When walking around this classroom I tried to imagine how the children learned in those days and what the teacher’s life would have been. Many things I found we often consider innovative today – such as lots of blackboard space for group work, individual slates for doing activities by the desk and then showing the work to the teacher by raising the slate (think of clickers), books and resources for the students, many opportunities to share the work with other students, etc. I also found things that are slowly disappearing from our lives – writing in cursive, writing (with a fountain pan), using books and spellcheckers. This was an interesting experience. And it brought me back to how we educate future teachers.
This year I had an opportunity to teach 4 courses in our Mathematics and Science Teacher Education Program. As a result, I have spent a lot of time with our mathematics and science teacher-candidates and got to know many of them pretty well. So as we are coming to the end of my Inquiry III course, it is my final opportunity to interact with them as teacher-candidates, before they become my colleagues. It is very exciting! Here are some of my teacher-candidates blogs. They allowed me to share the blogs with them:
It is a special opportunity for me to wish all the best to my students (mathematics and science teacher-candidates) who worked so hard to complete our teacher education program. I hope that they will become the teachers who will inspire their students and who will make a difference in students’ lives.