Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Andrews on March 5, 2009 at 9:03pm

It seems to me that we (in the universities) should make every attempt (and vice versa) to link the BTSA requirements and activities to some of those things that we are trying to implement as part of our Noyce Scholars Programs. For example, we know that Noyce Teachers continue to need support over their first three years as teachers....and we know that they are involved with BTSA. as beginning teachers. Involved is an understatement. How can we (the IHE and the District) work together to provide the best support (subject specific) possible for our Scholars as Teachers? At Fresno State, we are most fortunate to have Ms. Gayle Spencer ( a BTSA Provider) on our leadership team. I am sure Gayle can suggest some ideas here as we have talked about this at length up here in Fresno. Others, please chime in!

David Andrews

Permalink Reply by Gayle Spencer on March 12, 2009 at 5:55pm

There are a number of ways we who are involved with Noyce can support and better prepare our scholars to clear their credentials. One way we are doing that is to look deeply at lesson planning which is a big part of their future requirements for BTSA. We are engaging in long-term, ongoing discussions on what information is necessary for a lesson plan to be useful to us.
We have only begun to open discussion on analyzing student data, which is another integral part of BTSA. We hope to incorporate more of that in the fall.
What we have done for years, and continue to do, is to encourage personal reflection on teaching. Again, an integral part of BTSA.

Permalink Reply by Catherine Schwartz on June 15, 2010 at 3:31pm

I agree that lesson planning is a big part of being prepared for BTSA. However, I feel that as a pre-service teacher I underestimated how important personal reflection on teaching was. For your first year of BTSA a teacher needs to write dozens of pages of reflection on their lessons and teaching methods. While we were encouraged to relect in Noyce and keep a journal of our experiences we didn't do anything which held us accountable to keep that up. This might be something worth doing. Taking even 15 or 20 minutes during a meeting to get into a group of maybe 2 to 4 individuals and reflect on what is going on in the classrooms they are observing/teaching in would be great practice in my opinion.