Message from Allyn and Bacon

So, I’d say what I’m attempting is too complicated. Also, the writing I sent seemed to succeed as a writing sample but did not succeed as a Chapter One. I kind of knew that. I’m curious what Steve meant by ‘short book.” Somewhere I must have indicated that. So more decisions.

I’m going to work on an spn for perhaps two weeks, then maybe get back to this.

Today was kind of a writing bust. Students continue to intrude, a bit. Interview with Jill mid-day on the place of Standards for teacher education in my work. That was interesting. Caused me to think more clearly about what I do and the future of the enterprise in the way I do it. Here’s what I think.

Teacher Education Programs (TEPS), as currently constituted, those positioned largely at IHEs, should cease to exist. The realities that drive current necessities are demographics. From a racialized / ses perspective, ihes have to jump in the fray, dedicate themselves to research based inquiry on actual issues in public school settings, or die. And if I were king of the production lines, I’m make sure it happened. There’s no need for first year teachers to get hammered. And yet they do. More and more, I consider our practice of sending them off without support to be unethical. The way we prepare them mimics a world that doesn’t exist. They go into something quite different. Granted, we’d hope their cognitive systems could make the adjustment. But context free, I don’t think it will happen. Professional learning needs to be situated in places like where first employment will occur. Sure there are degrees of situating. But bottom line is the necessity of contact; enough contact so that the encounter with “difference” is also a process at once familiar and doable for the individual.

What we are doing now, in the way we do it, is quite indefensible. Period.

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Charles Rathbone

Retired. Emeritus. UDL consultant, FIrst UU Racial Justice Committee, photographer, married, four children, five grandchildren. Embracing life, all of it. "Today is tomorrow's past."

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