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Many teaching certification/degree programs today can be found in an online context. Some can be completed entirely online, while others require a hybrid of classroom and online hours. I believe that certification/degree programs that offer observed teaching practices, such as many hybrid courses, are best for emerging educators. In these courses, students can observe best classroom practices, learn how classroom management works in practice versus theory, and even try a few of their own lessons with the aid of an experienced mentor. In education courses, students are expected to study about many different educational theories, practices, and techniques. Often, it is hard for new teachers to understand how they should go about applying what they’ve learned to their new classes. This is where observing other teachers can be helpful to students. Watching an experienced educator at work is a great way for budding educators to see how theory can be applied to practice in the classroom. In addition to observing good practices, there’s always the opportunity to observe bad practices, or teaching practices that don’t quite achieve the objective. While ideally we will all be perfect teachers, mistakes happen. Observing these mistakes and seeing how seasoned educators handle them is a great way for a budding educator to gain confidence in their own ability to navigate these kind of mistakes when they happen in their own classroom. Classroom management is the hardest topic for an educator. Theories and practices vary from teacher to teacher, culture to culture, and it is one of the most difficult parts of an education program to put into actual practice. I went through an education degree program prior to ITTT, and they stressed that the hardest thing about being a new teacher is learning how to manage your classroom. This is why having observations with a mentor teacher can be so helpful. While we learn many different techniques in our courses, it’s often difficult to translate it into actual classroom practice. Working with a mentor then, can help the emerging educator gain confidence in their classroom management technique. When I was in my education program, our mentors were instructed to slowly have us take over certain parts of classroom management, leading up to having full control of the classroom by the end of the term. This is probably the most invaluable part of my education degree, and one that I couldn’t have gotten from a purely online course. My mentor was able to give me advice and steer me away from bad practices, all while imparting wisdom about why they used certain techniques and not others for certain learners. This in turn made my first year as a teacher less stressful. The final valuable takeaway of working with a mentor teacher is having the opportunity to try out your lessons in an actual classroom. In my education course, we were required to produce multiple lesson plans based on our course books and lectures, but a lot of the time it was just applying theory. We never knew how well a lesson would or wouldn’t work until we tried it in our mentor’s classroom. Our program was designed for us to try small activities, then whole lessons, all under the guidance of our mentors. We could see what worked and didn’t work, and our mentor would help us correct our lessons based on our areas of weakness. It’s a valuable experience that cannot be obtained from an online-only classroom. Online teaching courses are valuable, and useful for many who want to get further qualifications. However, for brand new educators, there is nothing more valuable than being able to observe the practices of another, more experienced teacher. I had the privilege of being able to work with various mentors over the course of my education degree, but observing video recorded lessons can also be a valuable way to observe classroom practices and classroom management. Working with a mentor in person or over a Skype connection to try out lesson plans is also a great way for a new educator to gain confidence and experience before stepping into their own classroom. I highly recommend observing other educators in whatever way one can before stepping into one’s own classroom.
