Instructional Units Overview
Instructional Units Overview
The Teacher Academy Program has a college-level instructional component to it. Students meet in the instructor's classroom 2-3 days a week throughout the 18-week course. Each unit provides opportunities for pedagogical and professional learning, deep conversations about the teaching practice and profession, and opportunities for students to share their learning from their mentor teacher's classroom.
During this instructional period, students have the opportunity to engage in the following units of study:
Unit 1: You and School. Students reflect on and examine their "anthology" teachers, their own educational experiences that have shaped their interests in education, and how their own experiences and beliefs will shape their teacher identity. Students also consider the reasons to teach and the shift from student to teacher.
Unit 2: You and School's History. Students learn the foundational events and people that have shaped American education and the role school plays in the country, as well as investigate modern day controversies and topics that affect teachers, students, and schools. Students analyze how their own educational beliefs have been shaped by historical and contemporaneous events in America.
Unit 3: You and Your Learners. Students investigate foundational learning and educational theorists and philosophies, how people learn and make meaning, and how educators use philosophy to drive their decisions about teaching and learning.
Unit 4: You and Your Class Culture. Students evaluate how teachers develop positive culture in their classrooms, how physical space, routine, and habits affect that culture, and how students can build community through team-building across all ages.
Unit 5: You and Your Planning. Students identify and apply the core tenets of effective lesson planning, from intentions and warm-ups to instructional practices and assessments. Students also create and develop their own lesson plans.
Unit 6: You and Your Teaching. Students learn about the highly effective teaching practices that CB teachers use in their own classrooms to teach students, focusing especially on opportunities for response, activating prior knowledge, and active engagement.
Unit 7: You and Your Assessments. Students learn about the power of feedback on learning, as well as the power of designing authentic assessments to gauge student learning.
Unit 8: You and Your Profession. Students learn how schools are governed and financed, what other roles make up a school outside of a teacher, and how teachers can be certified in PA. Students also have the chance to develop resumes, cover letters, and a teaching portfolio.
Students also have the opportunity to develop meaningful and practical materials, which serve as authentic assessments in the class, that will help them in their future teacher and education training courses:
The Observation Journal. This journal is a log of the observations and work completed alongside the teacher mentor. Students track the application of their instructional learning throughout their internship.
The Educational Philosophy. Students draft their own educational philosophy once they have studied examples. This document serves as a foundation of their beliefs as a teacher.
The Teaching Portfolio. This portfolio is a "greatest hits" of the student's teaching, focusing on how they applied their learning and providing artifacts of the teaching, tutoring, and connecting they achieved in their mentor teacher's classroom.