What should we do differently with MTC Summer School? [Assigned]

The absolute biggest problem with summer school, as far as student learning is concerned, is that it is too short. Three weeks is an impossibly short time in which to teach an entire year's worth of material. I understand, from posts on other blogs, that this summer there will be one long session rather than two short ones, and this seems to be the best way to address the issue of time.

The second problem with summer school, as far as student learning is concerned, is a lack of rigor. It is impossible for first years to know what is expected of these students in their year-long classes and equally impossible to teach all of that in such a short time. Evaluations should be created by second year teachers, and should be modeled on the evaluations given in the regular classroom setting. The pre and post-test for the course should be a comprehensive final exam of everything that should be covered in a year-long course. Significant time and planning needs to go into the creation of these tests, and they should be reviewed by others who teach the same subject well before summer school starts. I am certainly guilty of not doing this during the past session, and it showed in our classroom. Moreover, more students need to fail summer school. They need that specter of fear as both a motivating factor and a sign that the summer school is as serious, or more so, than the regular classroom.

As far as teacher preparation, the second goal of summer school, is concerned, there are several things that could be done better. The first is that every first-year should be required to keep an observation log. They should be required to observe one lesson outside of their own classroom every day, and some of these observations should be in classrooms outside their own subject area. They should also be required to draft year-long master plans for what they plan to accomplish in their classroom placements. These plans should include topics to be covered, broken down at least by week, and should include all major assessments. Having teachers make these plans during the summer, reviewing them with second years, and then revising them with mentors during the second summer session would be an enormously helpful process.

Bigger classes, of course, are better for prepping teachers for the real world. While I have been luck with class sizes, having had a class of 12 last semester and one on just ten students during my first year, nothing has been as small as the 3-student pre-algebra class I co-taught this summer. Obviously, there is not a lot that MTC can do about the numbers enrolling, and as word gets out that summer school is getting more rigorous, enrollment may even drop. First years need to get a chance teaching in front of a bigger group, though, and if it can't be during summer school, it would have to be during TEAM or some other situation designed to get them doing the job in front of a group.

Another skill that many teachers lack coming in, and by many teachers, I mean me, is organization. The amount of organization required to be a teacher can often be overwhelming, and one way that summer school could help this is to have mock irate parents come in, demanding to see grades, work, lesson plans. Maybe tell the first years, or maybe just send someone in to each classroom after school, pretending to be an angry parent, and have them confront the teacher, wanting to see grades and work and demanding to know what has been done to help the child. Also, it would be good to videotape these mock confrontations and play some clips at the banquet.