Educator Preparation & Development
On my campus the two areas that need the most work are Teaching & Learning, and Educator Preparation & Development. I think that if we were to focus on preparing and training our teachers, we would see a vast improvement in teaching and learning. Educator Preparation & Developing deals with the training that new teachers receive and the continued development of educators to improve their teaching by incorporating technology into their classroom. Providing decent training can be difficult. Providing time and resources for the type of professional development needed for 21st century educators is a problem nationwide. As teachers are coming into the Texas school system these days, new recruits are required to have mastered the SBEC technology standards, but what about the veteran teachers? In the past, I have taught with teachers who did not have a mobile phone or a personal computer for the first forty or fifty years of their life. Yet, they teach children that do not remember a time when they did not have access to such devices. Anyone who teaches high school students these days knows that they think that they have a right to a mobile phone and without one they behave as if they are missing an appendage. This puts the teacher and the student on complete opposite ends of the technology spectrum. Most of the professional development that we receive seems to just explain to us how the latest technology works. I have never received any training in which I was taught how to teach a learner centered lesson to students. I have discovered during my readings for this course that the trend in professional development is to provide training that allows students to create a learner-centered classroom and create students that are self-efficient and responsible for their own behavior. This is welcome news, and I know many teachers that will benefit from it.
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