How to best educate future educators

Amy Hetzner and Becky Vevea

Ivelisse Cruz can barely watch the video footage from her first time teaching a math lesson.

The video shows Cruz, a first-semester sophomore at Alverno College at the time, hesitantly starting her lesson seated with a group of seventh-grade students around a small table at Fairview Charter School in Milwaukee. She doesn't quite explain what the focus of their math lesson will be, looks slightly uncertain and speaks in what she would later criticize as a monotone voice.

"It was terrible, I don't even know how these kids were even paying attention," Cruz, now in her senior year at Alverno, said as she watched the video.

Fast forward through three more semesters, learning the art of teaching and spending time working with students.

Now the video shows a more confident woman standing at the front of her class, reviewing her work with the students from the week before, forecasting what the next lesson will be, calling a student to stand beside her at an overhead projector to walk through a practice problem.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 6, 2010 1:02 AM
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