Learning to Teach
Project Description:
The project brings together university faculty, undergraduate preservice teachers, and adult community members in an effort to provide literacy education to young children attending two
after-school programs called Literacy and Learning for Life and BAM (Books as Mentors) in two elementary schools. This work represents instances of how we might construct frameworks for
literacy instruction among culturally diverse groups that would serve as the basis for community action and involvement for adults while also helping children to acquire broader
socially-valued literate competencies. In addition, it offers a context in which young preservice teachers might also begin to conceptualize teaching itself as a form of community action and involvement.
As part of their participation in these after-school programs, preservice teachers from the School of Education collaborate weekly with specific community members (i.e., community mentors) to plan and implement
literacy or related instructional activities for the children. The audience for the project is the predominately Latino children and adult residents of Longmont and Boulder, Colorado, as well as University of
Colorado preservice teachers in the School of Education. The project involves children ranging in ages from seven to ten as well as adults, including parents and grandparents who serve as mentors to the preservice teachers.
The programs provide after school educational experiences for approximately 150 young children. There are also ten community members and approximately 20 preservice teachers in the programs in Longmont and Boulder.
Project Goals and Objectives:
Our work in both contexts draws upon the knowledge of adult community members in the education of children and creates a context for intergenerational learning wherein children from diverse
cultural and ethnic backgrounds receive literacy instruction directly from adults in their immediate community. An important assumption underlying this project is that individuals from culturally
diverse communities and varied educational backgrounds bring experientially-based understanding of children and cultural factors related to language, society, and education among other forms
of local knowledge, essential to improving the educational experiences of children. The specific approach to teacher education and literacy education that we advocate is a reminder to
those of us interested in teaching or the preparation of young teachers that theories about education or everyday social and political life are not the exclusive practice of an epistemological
elite. Rather, they are also the practice of ordinary citizens working and theorizing in settings where survival is most contested in the workplace, in churches, in schools, and in community organizations and in homes.
Faculty: Dr. William McGinley |
