Siegel: Preparing elementary school teachers for real classrooms

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Murray Siegel

By Murray Siegel

What does the word “elementary” mean when considering elementary school?

Many would say elementary means simple or basic. Actually, what students learn in elementary school is the foundation of their future learning, both formal and informal.

Are our state universities giving future elementary teachers what is needed to prepare them for the elementary classroom?

To answer these questions, two MUSD teachers were queried. One, a fourth-grade teacher and graduate of Northern Arizona University, is in her second year of teaching. The other, a sixth-grade teacher who had a business degree and obtained her academic preparation for teaching via an online program at a community college, is experiencing her first year in the classroom. Both believe their preparation was adequate, but each pointed to enhancements that would have been a great benefit for a new teacher.

Specifically, each would have liked more practical experience in the classroom before completing the program, and both agreed they should have been provided with more resources. Entering a school without a toolkit of resources leaves the teacher scrambling to find activities and teaching methods once that teacher is assigned to a specific grade level. The university might believe the school district will provide this, while the district assumes that a library of resources is something the new teacher obtained at the teacher-training institute.

Despite different backgrounds, both professionals feel their respective programs fell short in two important areas – sufficient knowledge of constructing lesson plans, with emphasis on meeting district/state standards, and dealing with students with a variety of behavior problems.

Lesson plans are required and a specific structure is defined. With little experience creating lesson plans in diverse subjects while using specific guidelines, the new teacher can plan on spending an inordinate amount of time meeting the school’s lesson-plan requirement.

Anyone who has spent more than a few days in a public school classroom knows misbehaving students are a fact of life. The behavior can vary from simply speaking out of turn to a significant demonstration of disrespect and even violence against other students. A new teacher, without another adult in the classroom, needs to have the preparation to confidently deal with the problem student when confronted with serious misbehavior.

Murray Siegel has a PhD in MathEd and 42 years of teaching experience. He and his wife Sharon are volunteer teachers of advanced math classes at Butterfield Elementary School.


This column appears in the December issue of InMaricopa.