In Response to Ball Article: The Subject Matter Preparation of Teachers

Questions:

1. How are multiple subject credential students to hone their content knowledge when they have up to nine potential grades to teach? And once a credential holder, how do we prepare/become experts when we do not know what grade level we are teaching from year to year?
2. What content is more relevant for those who are entering teaching later in life (20 – 30 years after high school), elementary, high school, college, and/or cultural?

 Comment:

     I agree with the authors regarding there being a personal bias to instruction based on one’s post-secondary education; however, I believe this is what gives each teacher their individual flair. That said it is imperative this does not imply the teacher deliver thin, irrelevant, and inaccurate information to their students. For instance, my background is in landscape architecture, a math and science heavy degree. Yet cultural anthropology, geography, psychology, and some literature were included in my coursework. Most landscape architecture students also enjoy a deep seated motivation to be environmental stewards for future generations as well as aestheticians of public/private open spaces. Therefore, to my classroom I bring a love for nature and a desire to connect my students to the earth; give them an appreciation for open spaces urban or otherwise. I will be more excited by those elements in the curriculum, no doubt.

     Despite my most recent educational experiences being in landscape architecture I have a desperate feeling about meeting my students’ academic needs. I am deathly afraid of not delivering the curriculum in an engaging and meaningful way. I am afraid of not knowing my content. See, I’m a planner and I need to know what I’m going to teach. However, if I do not know what grade level or in which community I am going to teach more than a month prior to the first day of school, I’m afraid I will fail my students. And after reading the Ball article I can’t help but feel this is a systemic problem and not one that teacher education programs necessarily need to address. School districts up to the Boards of Education need to get their act together. Budgets need to be ample so that at the very least teachers know well in advance of the first day of school what grade level and in which community they are teaching.