“We Were the Teachers, not the Observers”: Transforming Teacher Preparation through Placements in a Creative, After-School Program

Abstract

We’ve reached an unprecedented time in American education, one fraught with demands of accountability, standardized testing, and national curricula. Students, teachers, administrators, school districts, and those of us working in teacher preparation all come under pressure for better performance. As educators, we concern ourselves with what works in the classroom, what motivates students and helps them learn, and what research demonstrates successful or promising practice. Yet we struggle against outside pressures while attempting to put our plans in action. At a recent professional development session that Nikki and Iris attended, teachers listened closely to a presentation on arts integration and spoke highly of its potential. 1 But when asked how they might integrate the arts into their own classrooms, these teachers expressed concern that there just wasn’t enough time, given the outside pressures. While anecdotal, the conversations that we overheard during this professional development session demonstrated that as teachers, we need experiences that enable us to apply new ideas, not just simply to listen and observe. Once the leaders broke the teachers into groups and asked them to reenact historical moments of history though tableaux, the impossible became possible. Ideas for classroom implementation bounced around the tables. Housed in both departments of English and education, we who work in teacher preparation are concerned that outside pressures which tell new teachers to raise test scores and meet standards will take precedence over our efforts to coach them to teach well. In this article, we consider how to create a culture of artistic teaching and learning by changing the way pre-service teachers are trained. Specifically, we explain the evolu tion of an alternative field experience program called Razorback Writers. The program is based on the guiding concepts of arts integration and project-based learning for prospective teachers applying to the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program. We frame our discussion within the context of authentic, intellectual achievement. Further, we discuss why we were drawn to these methods, their merits, and goals. We describe a way to supplant observation with action in teacher preparation. Our work initiated in an effort to address shared concerns between education and English faculty about teacher preparation, though admittedly we were concerned only about future English teachers at first. What prompted us to re-evaluate our pre-service teachers’ practicum experience and the associated course was our awareness that a traditional pre-service field experience, one where candidates observe in a classroom situ ation and perhaps teach a lesson or two, could actually be counterproductive to their development as future teachers. Those up to their elbows in education over the past ten years have seen many strong teachers leave the classroom, if not leave education alto1 Editors’ Note: “Laying a Foundation: Defining Arts Integration,” a seminar developed by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., has been presented to teach