Teacher miseducation

A novice teacher with a new blog and who lives in California described concerns about the quality of instruction she received in a class about special education provided by California’s Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) Program. Although much of what the person, who identifies herself as LingLing Zilla and bogs at “Blog of an Uncertain Teacher,” wrote regarding the BTSA covers other issues, a couple of paragraphs are about maleducation at the teacher preparation level.She described a person who presented a 1-day seminar on special education for the beginning teachers.

It turned out, she really didn’t have much substance to teach us, novice teachers. Her focus was gifted students plus a bit on differentiated instructions, with focus on, again, gifted students. Man, I don’t remember seeing a lot of gifted students in my classroom when I was still teaching. I think I got, maybe, two? She did not mention much (if at all) teaching strategies for kids with learning disabilities or other problems. Nor did she mention the procedures that a teacher SHOULD know if you suspect a student might be having LD or ADD or dyslexia. 504 plan? IEP? She didn’t mention any of those BASIC stuff in her SpEd seminar.

There is more to Ms. Zilla’s observations, of course. She goes on to compare the BTSA course to what she had learned in an earlier course she took, apparently during her undergraduate teacher education program. It is instructive.

Link to Ms. Zilla’s post. Link to a description of California’s BTSA program.