Learning from the First Years of Classroom Teaching: The Journey In, the Journey Out

Abstract

on Teacher Learning. She is at present particularly interested in the teaching and learning of mathematics and the role conversation can play in learning. Late one afternoon in January, the four members of my Beginning Teacher Study Group and I are perched on small chairs around the library table in a public elementary school that has kindly offered us space for our meetings every other week. Suzanna Tierney, 1 who has now been teaching kindergarten in two city schools (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) for four months, begins to reflect on her preparation for teaching. In a part of the country where applicants outnumber teaching positions by a very substantial margin, she feels lucky to have gotten a job. She attributes her good fortune to her previous experience in day care. The personnel officer, she suspects, assumed that her year and a half working with four-year-olds would have prepared her well for kindergarten teaching. But Tierney has not by Helen Featherstone found this to be true: "Day care is a whole different story than school, " she asserts. "Oh, sure, " someone agrees. "Because you can just let them do what they want." Tierney nods, "Whatever. Anything that's creative. Anything that's fun. And I never interrupt to say `hurry up. ' It's all developmental." As a kindergarten teacher, she explains, she feels and acts totally differently. She talks about Sophie, who works slowly and carefully. Tierney sees herself constantly rushing the little girl, urging her to finish up. Absorbed in her task, Sophie doesn't always hear her teacher when she asks for "eyes up here. " "And, of course, " Tierney concludes, in a voice heavy with self-mockery, "That's when I get mad. Because I want them to jump when I blink."

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