I would like to start a topic regarding whether the practicum approach is better than a year long internship.
The practicum approach gives us a two week observation period, five weeks in the classroom and than eight weeks to wrap up the program. These three stints in classrooms are supposed to give us enough teaching experience to allow us to feel that we will be able to teach a class of our own. In some ways this is advantageous, because we are making the time we have in the classrooms well worth it. This shortened time enables us to use our time wisely and try to get as much as we can out of the experiences. However, there are disadvantages to this approach. The most important being the fact that we are thrown into a class were we have no rapport with the students and we do not get to form those teacher/student bonds that would come with an internship. This year long internship allows the teacher to become comfortable with the students which may facilitate a better learning environment. The internship may also provide us with an opportunity to run our own classes from start to finish, giving us valuable experience for when we are beginner teachers. I am half wondering why they made these changes to the program because there seems to be more benefits to being in a classroom for a full term or year. I just wanted to get some more opinions on this topic and see if anyone can bring forth other sides of the story. Is it better to break up our practicum experiences? Are we losing an important aspect of the program by having these three separate experiences? Would you choose a practicum over an internship?
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2 comments:
i'll take the internship anyday. the more time in a classroom the better. any momentum i made during the observation has been effectively thwarted by coming back to uvic. i will have to start building relationships with teachers almost from scratch and with students entirely all over again. that said, my practicum is in the interior, maybe it would be different if my sponsor teacher (come on, honestly, they're not mentors) were in victoria, but we're so *%#@# busy, i'm not sure it would make a difference.
and here's a question. has anyone figured out when we'll have time to prepare lessons for the 5 week practicum in april? i'm trying to co-ordinate my units in class here with what i will be doing in my school, but i know a lot of you don't even know exactly where you'll be or what you're teaching.
I think an internship, or at least a practicum that starts at the beginning of the school's semester would be much more beneficial. I keep thinking about our program and it scares me that after 2 seemingly short stints in a classroom the College of Teachers is going to hand us a piece of paper that says we can teach.
James I think this is pretty much it for prepping lessons, and during whatever spare time we have next semester. In the old system they had a month of observations, some people chose to teach within a week or so instead but at least that time was there to prep lessons. Personally I think the new format is a bit crazy.
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