As of this writing, we have not yet received a final, signed version of the new rules. While we are fairly certain that REPA will allow students to continue as Secondary Education majors taking content coursework "at least equivalent to" the major, we are not 100% assured of this.
If our students remain our majors, it will be necessary to work closely and collaboratively with the good folks in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to adjust our undergraduate advising sheets to include all the courses that majors in that field currently take and any other additional courses we deem necessary to meet the SPA (specialty program association) standards for teacher preparation.
What I am seeking is some way to divide this work equitably among all of us. My sense is that we should work in groups of two, each group taking one academic area (Math, Science, Language Arts, World Languages, Social Studies) and meeting with CLAS folks to hammer out the required courses our students would take. The starting point for these discussions would be the current requirements for a major (bachelor of arts most likely) in the content area. REPA requires that students content preparation be AT LEAST identical to the major. So, the work is to determine, in addition to the required courses for the major, are there other courses to be required for education majors in that content area.
At the same time, each group could be working on creating a 4-year plan of study as we have been asked to do by the Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs.
Bruce, science and social studies are much more complicated than anything else because of the various departments one needs to work with and the various options within each major students have. It's also crucial to have Connie involved in science if she's willing once again. I'd advocate for 2-4 folks on those groups and maybe 1-2 on others. I have consistently worked with Anne Brown on math and I know there are concerns with the every other year courses there, so I'm glad to volunteer for that.
ReplyDeleteI would be happy to work with English, and/or depending on how we decide to orchestrate this, since the two-course reading mandate seems to be gone, I could work with each of the content areas to develop some sort of 2-3 week module for specific reading/literacy methods/strategies applicable to individual content area literacy/discourse foci that would then be embedded in each of the methods courses. It might be a different take on how content-area reading is taught in the program, but it may free up a few hours for another educ course. Obviously, I don't want to take a focus off content-area reading instruction (which the students really do need), but, perhaps building in specific content reading-focused/literacy strategies in an early content methods course may make more sense than as a stand-alone class taken junior year.
ReplyDeleteI would be happy to work on Language Arts or World Languages (or both if you need me).
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