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TEP Conceptual Framework [Index]
The Conceptual Framework of the Teacher Education Program at Warren Wilson College
The Warren Wilson College Teacher Candidate is a reflective innovator serving in communities with head, heart, and hands
The Teacher Education Program at Warren Wilson College is designed to develop young adults into teachers who will do great things in classrooms and schools. Warren Wilson College teacher candidates are prepared to think carefully about their students and classrooms: they are prepared to be creative and flexible professionals who find solutions and invent ways to meet a learner’s needs. Teachers graduated from Warren Wilson College are prepared to serve: they understand that a school community needs good ideas and strong commitments and a willingness to work.
Part I: Warren Wilson College History and Mission: The Institution as a Foundation for Teacher Preparation
Warren Wilson College was founded by Presbyterians in 1894 and maintains a covenant relationship with the Presbyterian Church (USA). The roots of this historic relationship continue to nurture the College's commitment to community, social responsibility, the value of work, and openness in the pursuit of truth. The Mission of Warren Wilson College is to provide an education combining liberal arts study, work, and service with a strong commitment to environmental responsibility and experiential opportunities for international and cross-cultural understanding in a setting that promotes wisdom, spiritual growth, and contribution to the common good.
In recent months William Sanborn “Sandy” Pfeiffer, Ph.D., has been named sixth president of Warren Wilson College. Pfeiffer succeeded Douglas M. Orr Jr., who retired after 15 years as president. Under Doug Orr, Warren Wilson College experienced significant growth in the number of students, faculty and academic programs, and has built 20 new facilities on campus.
The 2007 Fiske Guide to Colleges describes the College as “the best of schools where students combine academics, community service and on-campus work. …Success at Warren Wilson is measured not only by grades, but by community service and a sense of stewardship. …Students who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty will see this small liberal arts college as a valuable place that combines the notion of thinking globally and acting locally.”
Academic Requirements at Warren Wilson College Support The Teacher Education Program
At Warren Wilson College, all undergraduates complete a minimum of 128 credit hours, with 32 hours specified in a range of disciplines to ensure a strong grounding in the liberal arts. It is the College mission to ensure that every course requires students to think critically, obtain and evaluate information effectively and communicate clearly.
Teacher preparation within the academic liberal arts at Warren Wilson College ensures that teacher candidates experience the many ways that humans acquire and organize knowledge. Floden and Menketti (2005) argue that there is not enough research extant to demonstrate how arts and sciences courses from outside a teacher’s academic field impact practice. At the same time, they see evidence that growth in a teacher’s general knowledge is important, especially as it is linked to writing skills, scientific inquiry, historical analysis, and a general “humanities orientation” (p. 279). These areas are well represented in the Warren Wilson College liberal arts requirements and are an important reason why our teacher candidates are successful.
Thornton (2001) describes the delicate balance between the interests of academicians and the content that teachers will be expected to teach; he sees an important interdependence between subject matter education and professional courses, and argues for the partnership between liberal arts and teacher education. The size and the collaborative nature of Warren Wilson College make this kind of partnership natural. The Education Department is fully integrated into the College, and the Teacher Education Program is recognized as an important option for students.
The Work Program That Distinguishes Warren Wilson College Enhances The Teacher Education Program
In addition to strong academic preparation, the College’s required work program aims to develop student initiative and responsibility from the beginning of enrollment at Warren Wilson College. During each academic term, all resident students (approximately 90%) are required to work 15 hours per week on campus as a part of an organized and supervised crew: they are compensated for this work as part of their tuition. As both individuals and as members of a crew, our undergraduates are preparing for the world of work. Students and supervisors (paid staff and often faculty) work together to operate and maintain the College. Students are important members of the College community with intimate knowledge of its workings, from the plumbing to the fiber optics, from office support roles to work on the organic garden and extensive farm.
College work crews are an excellent preparation for Warren Wilson teacher candidates. Future teachers learn the importance of time management, which is critical for success in a work college. Teacher candidates learn sound work and safety practices and, as they become experienced, they contribute to problem solving. In the course of the four years they are able to meet important community responsibilities and develop as leaders. They learn about the interdependence of our community, and teacher candidates often reflect on the way that, unlike in the “real world,” there is an appreciation for all kinds of work at the College.
The Service Learning Tradition at Warren Wilson College Complements the Teacher Education Program
While the Work Program primarily serves the needs of the College campus, the Service Learning Program (a graduation requirement for more than 40 years) reaches beyond Warren Wilson boundaries to address needs in other communities. Students must complete 100 hours of documented service, 60 hours of which must be completed before senior year registration, and at least 25 hours of service credit must be earned in an extended project.
The service requirement at Warren Wilson College exposes students to, and immerses them in, the needs and the capabilities of communities. Whether Warren Wilson College students serve in Asheville-Buncombe County or faraway places, through the Service Learning Program students expand their education while seeking to address issues of social and environmental justice.
The very roots of the College intertwine service and preparation for teaching. One of our founding institutions was The Normal and Collegiate Institute begun 1892. The school motto was Service, and this meant educating the people of Western North Carolina and the Appalachian region.
The Teacher Education Program particularly values how candidates come to appreciate partnerships as a result of their service-learning opportunities. We see future teachers grow in their sensitivity to diverse community needs and complex solutions. Pearson (2000) found that service-learning components such as opportunities to apply knowledge and skills to real-life situations and develop curriculum to address specific local community needs were highly compatible with important education reform models at work throughout the country.
The Service-Learning model for Teacher Preparation at Warren Wilson College emphasizes opportunities for candidates to learn about individuals and specific communities, especially to break away from stereotypical responses to poverty. Below we discuss how this learning is reinforced in professional coursework. The Teacher Education Program also values every opportunity candidates can have to learn about children and young adults, and service learning is a powerful venue. LaMaster (2001) found that service-learning is an important enhancement of fieldwork, allowing candidates to focus on school environments and learner needs, rather than the more narrow development of teaching techniques.
Anuradhaa (2003) identified the importance of integrating service learning experiences into professional course work, emphasizing reflection and connecting school issues to wider community challenges. At Warren Wilson College there is a reciprocal relationship: teacher education candidates provide leadership and talents to projects, like break trips to work in Hurricane-damaged communities, and long-term initiatives such as tutoring and mentoring over the course of an entire year. Service learning opportunities are built into many professional courses, and candidates articulate what they have learned through papers, projects, and presentations in their advanced professional classes and as part of their final student teaching assessments.
New Priorities: The Warren Wilson College Mission Values Global Awareness and Environmental Stewardship, Energizing The Teacher Education Program
As part of preparation for Warren Wilson College’s 2005 re-affirmation of its accreditation by SACS, all members of the community revisited the College mission statement. Long deliberations resulted in a statement that the fundamental triad of academics, work and service was joined with a strong commitment to environmental responsibility and experiential opportunities for international and cross-cultural understanding. The Teacher Education Program welcomed this articulation of what was already a clear direction for the College, and an important dimension of teacher preparation.
The Education Department participates in the Warren Wilson Worldwide program, and has enacted specific policies to encourage students to travel with College groups or study abroad for a semester. WorldWide courses are credit-bearing academic courses with regular meeting times, assignments and grades. Each WorldWide course concludes with several weeks of international or cross-cultural travel, furthering exploring the themes of the course, usually over summer or winter break, followed by a final post-travel assignment.
The environmental stewardship of the College shapes our decisions for materials and facilities and even how we think about field placements and how we should facilitate student travel to school sites. We also collaborate with the Environmental Leadership Center in its outreach to schools. Launched in January 1996, the mission of the Warren Wilson College Environmental Leadership Center (ELC) is to raise awareness of local, national and global environmental realities and to inspire caring citizens - especially our youth - to reflect, to communicate, and to act as responsible caretakers of the earth. The ELC is integral to and supports the central mission of Warren Wilson College. The Education Department continues to help with the development of its Eco-Team initiative. The Eco-Team is a student work crew supplemented by College service volunteers that provides environmental education to local schools. In 2005 Eco-team members and volunteers taught 445 hour-long lessons, reaching 1,600 third-graders. The lesson topics include: Ecosystems, Air, Habitat, Water, Pollution, Ethics, and the Rainforest and Endangered Species.
Part II: Warren Wilson College Teacher Preparation Through Partnership with the Professional Community
Warren Wilson College Teacher Preparation Enables Candidates To Become Valuable Members of the K-12 Professional Community
As students progress at Warren Wilson College and make the choice to pursue a teaching credential, the Teacher Education Program enables them to gradually increase their focus on professional skills without losing their connections to what makes the College distinctive. Candidates make the important transition from student to teacher, but they do not lose their identities as learners.
Fajet et al. (2005) describe how teacher education programs must help candidates develop their thinking about the nature of thinking, moving from a focus on interpersonal relationships into the work required of a skillful and knowledgeable practitioner. Warren Wilson College students are generally inclined to love children, but as teacher candidates they of course need to learn how to teach them, too. This requires field experiences as well as course work, professional skill development as well as opportunities to serve.
One important field experience for all teacher candidates is the Mountain Area Child and Family Center. Located on the College campus as a partner institution, The MACFC is a model non-profit, a lighthouse for child education, health care, teacher training, and parent involvement. This modern child development center opened in 2001 and is located one mile from the main campus on Riceville Road. The Center is committed to the goal of providing high quality childcare and early childhood development to children of diverse backgrounds including those with special needs and those from low-income families. Two additional satellite sites have been opened as the MACFC has expanded as an Early Head Start Center.
Through the Teacher Education Program all teacher candidates experience field placements in a range of local K-12 schools: the largely rural Buncombe County Public Schools, especially the nearest Owen and Reynolds districts; the urban Asheville City Schools system, which includes six magnet elementary schools; and three public charter schools, ArtSpace (K-8), Evergreen Community Charter School (K-8), and the Francine Delany New School for Children. In addition to enjoying formal partnerships for student teaching placements, the Teacher Education Program faculty and other members of the Warren Wilson College community have sat on the boards for the charters and made other extensive commitments to serve in local schools. In turn, local teachers and administrators serve on our Advisory Board, and locally teaching alumni are also an important part of the network that supports and develops our teacher preparation program.
Walkington’s research (2005) demonstrates why K-12 and College roles are complementary in quality teacher preparation: it is in the partnership between the College and the field site professionals that a new teacher develops a successful teaching identity. A successful teaching identity in the Warren Wilson College Teacher Education Program encompasses reflection and innovation, so that a future teacher is able to provide professional, compassionate, and skilled service to a community.
Warren Wilson College Teacher Preparation Values Reflection as a Critical Tool for Teaching and Learning
Warren Wilson College students can be fiercely critical of the status quo; education students often tell of difficult and frustrating days as K-12 students. Many Warren Wilson College students in the introductory education course find their experiences resonate with Dewey’s (1938) critique of traditional education:
What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and history, to win ability to read and write, if in the process the individual loses his [sic] own soul: loses his appreciation of things worth while, of the values to which these things are relative; if he loses desire to apply what he has learned and, above all, loses the ability to extract meaning from his future experiences as they occur? (p 21).
Many future educators arrive in the Education Department with a passion for children and the wonder of learning, or for reinventing schooling toward social justice, or for learning to teach ideas that have become exciting and important to them. By the time these students become teacher candidates, these passions are more deeply expressed in commitments to understanding human development and the different ways we learn, and to teaching so that all children can learn. Making this complex transition is absolutely dependent on candidates’ reflective practices, promoted and required in every education class they encounter.
Warren Wilson College Education courses and their complementary school-site experiences require teacher candidates to read, write, think, speak, and listen as they make sense of teaching and learning. Every new teacher must learn to recognize patterns, understand complexities, and make choices to serve and support learners (Korinek et al., 1999). Reflection is the thoughtful exploration of experiences, internally and collaboratively with one’s students, classmates, instructors, and mentors (Norlander-Case, et al., 1999; Drever & Cope, 1999). Through cycles of reflection and action, teacher candidates become increasingly able to make good decisions and learn from experiences (England & Spence, 1999; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1995).
At Warren Wilson College Teacher candidates provide extensive documentation of their reflections: on material choices, on strategies, on classroom configurations, and other important areas of decision-making. They receive feedback on their ideas and insights from education faculty, fieldwork host teachers, and their peers. The ability to reflect is central to effective teaching, and necessary to transform a person from a novice to an expert in any field (Butler, 1996; Mills & Satterthwait, 2000). Ralph Pecheone writes, “Teacher reflection should not happen in isolation but should be embedded in a process that promotes collaboration and cooperation among teachers” (1999, p.31). In a wide range of venues (written, on-line, spoken, public, amongst peers, and private) Warren Wilson College teacher candidates make sense of their experiences and choose new directions through the practice of reflection.
Warren Wilson College Teacher Preparation Values Innovation as Strategic Thinking For Meeting the Needs of Learners
If teachers investigate the effects of their teaching on students’ learning, and if they study what others have learned, they come to understand teaching to be an inherently non-routine endeavor. They become sensitive to variation and more aware of what works for what purposes in what situations.
Linda Darling-Hammond (2000, p. 4)
In the context of the Teacher Education Program at Warren Wilson College, innovation is best defined as finding solutions, finding new ways to meet the needs of diverse learners. Innovation is not for the sake of novelty but is rather about searching for more successful ways to respond to a particular situation or individual. Teacher candidates learn the skills – and gain the confidence – to investigate how to make positive changes happen.
Because Warren Wilson College students have the undergraduate experience of wide-ranging liberal arts study, they learn to see how different academic subjects are organized, integrated, and applied. The curriculum activities and related pedagogy courses offered by the Teacher Education Program are then focused on innovation: the utilization of their knowledge in teaching well.
Advanced professional courses focus on the important connections between subject matter knowledge and pedagogy. As Mary Kennedy writes, “Thus pedagogy is no longer defined as a set of techniques that enable teachers to maintain order or to entice students to pay attention, but instead as integral to the substantive goals of teaching” (1997, p. 3). Clift and Brady (2005) recommend successful teaching methods courses as having a “focus on engaging and modifying cognition” rather than discrete teaching behaviors (p.313). Such content-knowledge-based pedagogy develops for Warren Wilson College teacher candidates as they build on their liberal arts foundation and gain a repertoire for teaching responsively and imaginatively. Their instructional repertoire allows them to create options and multiple opportunities for children and young adults to learn. Teacher candidates can teach different ideas with agility, moving among activities with confidence; and they can teach creatively, combining their ideas with those of their students to shape understanding of texts, experiences, media, and more.
Fieldwork, supported and guided by K-12 professional mentors, is essential for teacher candidates to grow as innovators. The Teacher Education Program at Warren Wilson College asks undergraduates to scrutinize the work of a wide range of teachers in diverse classrooms. Through reflections on and data gathering in fieldwork observations and other interactions with schools, this understanding is increasingly applied to teacher candidates’ own work, enabling them to gain expertise. This development is not a fast process. For the college student who is new to observing in schools and interacting in classrooms, teachers who act with intention, who have an acquired expertise, may just appear lucky, or their skills may seem to be the result of an innate ability (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1995). The teacher candidate needs to learn how a teacher’s thoughtful and reflective choices are intertwined with a deep knowledge of the students, the classroom context, and strategic and innovative choices for success.
The ever-expanding opportunities arising from technology are some of the most fertile grounds for teacher candidate innovation. The Teacher Education Program promotes technology-based practices integrated throughout its courses. Vannatta and Fordham (2004) argue that new teachers are most likely to use technology when their preparation has included multiple and extended opportunities to use technology for their own learning, as well as developing technology skills for their work as teachers.
Through grant writing and participation in the wider College committees on technology and professional development work, the faculty of the Education Department has worked to integrate technology in service of our primary goals of reflection and innovation. Through the Advisory Board and other work in the local schools we monitor the technological directions our K-12 colleagues are taking and prepare new professionals to join them.
Warren Wilson College Teacher Preparation Focuses on the Diversity of Communities That Teachers Join and Serve
The Teacher Education program guides students as they read challenging texts about racial, ethnic, and socio-economic diversity. Throughout our courses and in their fieldwork, our future teachers encounter a wide range of learners with physical, cognitive, linguistic, and socio-cultural differences. We regularly ask them to reflect on how a teacher’s expectations shape a learner’s experiences; thus our candidates recognize how their own backgrounds and experiences must influence how they understand the children and young adults they will teach. They discover how an individual’s home life, sexual preference, learning abilities, religious practices, and other important differences can impact his or her experiences in a classroom, and especially the critical need to belong and feel accepted. These important discoveries are codified in the professional dispositions we teach our candidates to exhibit (see below).
The Teacher Education Committee is keenly aware of the challenges for recruiting and supporting new teachers for the public schools. We know that in many places (like Asheville), the population of teachers is far more homogeneous than that of the students. We believe that Warren Wilson is a great place to learn to be a teacher, and as a result we want to try to diversify our future educators. In order to move in this direction, we believe that more needs to be done to expand our campus community in terms of race, ethnicity, social-economic status, and more.
As Warren Wilson College begins a new era with a new College President, the Teacher Education Committee advocates that the College should prioritize increasing diversity on our campus. We have urged the Trustees to give the new President the tools – scholarships, support staff, faculty, and programs – that are required. In terms of scholarships, there is a substantial gap between those who want to come to Warren Wilson College, and those who ultimately do. At the same time we recognize that money for scholarships are necessary but not sufficient to increase the diversity of our campus and thus our program. Other colleges are finding that money must be invested in coordinated efforts: funding for scholarships and grants rather than loans; funding for support services and outreach programs that benefit the entire community; and even funding for faculty, because of the enormous competition for the most highly qualified individuals who are members of under-represented groups.
Our sister institution, The Mountain Area Child and Family Center, has made a commitment to fundraising and community involvement in order to match the federal dollars of Early Head Start. This allows the Center to serve children where at least 50% of their families meet poverty guidelines. All teacher candidates meet requirements that depend on opportunities to learn from this high quality center.
Over the past ten years, our progress on preparing new teachers to serve in diverse communities through our curriculum, both in the Education Department and across the College, has been substantial. Cho and DeCastro-Ambrosertti (2005) argue for the importance of infusing issues related to diversity throughout the teacher education program, well in advance of the student teaching experience. All teacher candidates, and many others who are considering education as a career, encounter Vivian Paley’s (1990) White Teacher at the beginning of the program, gaining an early exposure to issues of identity and community. The fieldwork placements of our future teachers reflect the diversity of this area and require our students to understand a wide range of learners. The former “Foundations” course, renamed Education Policy and Classroom Practice, explicitly focuses on how, as Villegas and Lucas (2002) write “ …students should understand themselves in relation to the influences of race, class, language, and ethnicity” because this allows them to affirm diverse others. Professional pedagogy courses in the Teacher Education Program ensure that students encounter, examine, and learn to create curriculum materials, instructional strategies, communication techniques, and activities to use with diverse populations. The Teacher Education Program makes an annual commitment to purchase multicultural resources for the Learning Resource Center.
Warren Wilson College Teacher Preparation Identifies and Promotes Teacher Dispositions for Professional Success
By emphasizing the teaching profession, the Warren Wilson College Education Department means that teaching is learner-centered and knowledge-based (Darling-Hammond 1988). We are interested promoting professional dispositions in our future teachers. Maylone (2002) reminds us that dispositions are not useful when they are merely a checklist describing a uniform mindset for teachers; rather, a teacher education program needs to promote dispositions as a way of thinking about professional identity.
During the 2005-06 academic year, the Teacher Education Program worked on articulating dispositions that we believe are characteristic of excellent new teachers. We endeavored to fit the mission and character of our small private institution with some of the challenges offered by public education in an age of accountability. Our ideas represent an evolution from the “K-12 protocol” behaviors we have long-demanded from our students for visiting field sites. The dispositions we promote are organized in an outline form that follows:
I. Attitudes toward Learning
a. Valuing reflective practice and innovation to meet the needs of each learner
b. Having an ability to reflect on and respond to constructive criticism from peers, college instructors, and host/cooperating teachers and other school colleagues and administrators
c. Demonstrating a willingness for continued learning, and openness to new experiences and new perspectives
II. Attitudes toward Learners
a. Respectful consideration of individuals
i. Protecting confidentiality
ii. Maintaining professional discretion in the College community and classrooms and in their field placement schools and classrooms
b. Sensitivity and respect for differences
i. Physical
ii. Cognitive
iii. Linguistic
iv. Socio-cultural
c. Recognition of personal experiences and biases and the impact these may have on expectations and beliefs about teaching and learning
d. Understanding, especially from the perspective of a classroom teacher, of how an individual’s home life, sexual preferences, religious practices, and other important differences will impact his or her experiences in a classroom – and the critical need for each human being to feel he or she belongs and is accepted.
III. Professional Behavior: Future teachers need to make good decisions
a. Making good use of free time
b. Recognizing that teachers are role models
c. Making healthy life choices
d. Upholding standards of professional appearance in a given school setting
e. Practicing professional behaviors in College classes as well as field placements / school settings
i. Punctuality
ii. Dependability
iii. Preparation
iv. Demonstrating professional commitment through participation in on-campus, local school, and community events.
Winch (2004) describes one important moral dimension to teaching as “teaching’s essential concern with human flourishing” (p 183). The activist character of much of the Warren Wilson College student body, and the many commitments to social justice that arise from its mission, under gird the teacher candidates’ perspective. We think these professional dispositions, articulated and discussed throughout the Teacher Education Program, will make it most likely that our candidates will flourish as teachers.
Warren Wilson College Teacher Preparation Moves from Principles to Practice: The “Four Envelopes Process” is an Expression of Our Conceptual Framework
It is clear that the Warren Wilson College Mission is at the foundation of the Teacher Education Program. The Conceptual Framework, stating that the Warren Wilson College Teacher Candidate is a reflective innovator serving in communities with head, heart, and hands, is the way we describe our work, our specific mission, within the College to the wider education community. The “Four Envelopes Process” is the mechanism by which we measure the quality of our program and our graduates against our conceptual framework. The “Four Envelopes Process” is an assessment process that provides the backbone to:
Ø The curriculum: syllabi and texts, College classroom practices, technology decisions
Ø Program policies: what we do to know that students are gaining the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need
Ø Assessments that provide the specific indicators of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions
Ø Fieldwork placements and requirements
There are four program qualities or goals (outlined below) that are based on the conceptual framework and must be demonstrated by candidates for successful completion of the program. We intend for the demonstration to be the beginning of a professional habit, a powerful strategy that candidates should take with them into professional life.
Why, in a time of accountability and standardized testing, do we cling to our portfolio model, perhaps inelegantly called “The Four Envelopes Process”? Grossman (2005) finds that this kind of collection and reflection allows new teachers to remember the specifics of teaching more accurately. In addition, new teachers value the act of creating the portfolio as most important to their development.
“Four Envelopes” is of course a metaphor – a teacher candidate may replace envelopes with file folders, baskets, or even electronic memory. But “The Four Envelopes Process” is a powerful reminder to the future educator to save up evidence of learning in a systematic and thoughtful way. As a requirement for completing their student teaching semester, candidates must gather and reflect on evidence that they meet each of the four identified program qualities in an evaluation notebook or portfolio. They address each program quality in a personal essay, and provide evidence of this quality from their practice as student teachers. Some specific sources of evidence are required, and others are chosen. Two copies of the evaluation notebook/ portfolio are required: one for the candidate, and one for the permanent collection of the Teacher Education Program.
In order to provide evidence that a student teacher has accomplished and/or demonstrated the four program qualities (the Four Envelopes), he or she will collect student work, classroom videotapes or photographs, classroom hand-outs, curricular materials, or other documentation of teaching work. We advise student teachers that evidence is most powerful when it shows what students are able to do under their guidance and instruction. If student work samples are not available, lesson plans or materials used for teaching are also appropriate. All artifacts must be carefully labeled, answering these questions:
What is this? (Describing the teaching context and giving other necessary information for understanding what this item represents.)
Why is it here? (Analyzing how and why this piece of evidence demonstrates the chosen program quality.)
What does this artifact demonstrate about your learning and/or your students’ learning?
How did these insights into learning lead to decisions for, or innovations in, your teaching?
The personal essay that is required for each of the four program qualities must include a specific relevant example of the particular program quality as exemplified and demonstrated in a candidates’ student teaching. The essay must describe the specific situation or event, analyze what was happening and why (in terms of the program quality), and the candidate must reflect on what the event has taught him or her and how this learning will impact future teaching decisions.
“The Four Envelopes Process” was inspired by the assessments of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The program qualities outlined in “The Four Envelopes Process” incorporate the language of INTASC standards, mirroring the practice of local educators and administrators in evaluating new teachers. Students hear about “The 4Es” from the beginning of the Teacher Education Program. They are asked to consider the four program qualities in light of their own experiences. Later candidates read evaluation notebooks from previous candidates and are required to attend the community presentations of the completing student teachers. These are the four envelopes:
Envelope #1: passion for, and commitment to, diverse learners and their learning. It is critical that the future teacher has a disposition towards nurturing learners, because otherwise a teacher is not likely to bring the reflection and innovation necessary to find solutions for learning problems and pathways to increased student understanding. Borrowing from the language of the INTASC standards #1 and #2, this means that the student teacher needs to demonstrate that
The student teacher demonstrated caring and concern for the students in his/her charge.
The student teacher used knowledge of his/her students in order to create appropriate learning activities and experiences for students.
The student teacher worked to understand students, parents, and the community through participation in the school and beyond.
The student teacher successfully built on theoretical understandings of human development through practical teaching experiences.
Envelope #2: agility and creativity in teaching, based on knowledge of academic subjects. We know that Warren Wilson College candidates have a powerful background in the liberal arts. We see the Teacher Education Program’s responsibility is to provide experiences and instruction so that future teachers acquire agility and creativity in their instructional planning and delivery. Preservice teachers who are encouraged to be creative in designing curriculum and instruction tend to be successful and effective student teachers (Daugherty, Logan, Turner and Compton 2003). The requirements of INTASC standards #3, #4, and #7 are echoed in this envelope description. Thus in their final evaluation, student teachers must demonstrate that
The student teacher uses an understanding of individual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self motivation.
Ø The student teacher uses knowledge of effective verbal, nonverbal, and media communication techniques to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom.
Ø The student teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner.
This “envelope” clearly describes preparation for instruction and the delivery of curriculum, and evaluates student teacher progress in these areas. The student teacher will demonstrate that he or she plans and executes lessons and designs instructional activities based on knowledge of particular subjects. The student teacher will draw on experiences from the liberal arts, work, and service requirements at Warren Wilson College. The student teacher must be agile in adapting teaching strategies to the needs of students; the student teacher should be creative in preparing materials to fit the understanding of the students in the classroom.
Envelope #3: initiative and responsibility in managing and monitoring student development and learning. This goal describes classroom management and the creation of an environment for learning. The student teacher will demonstrate his or her understanding of how to create and maintain a positive atmosphere for learning. The student teacher will give examples of acting to ensure that students were treated fairly both in the student teacher’s own actions and by others in the classroom. The student teacher will demonstrate assessing and documenting student progress and using that information to shape curriculum and instruction. INTASC standards #5, #6, and #8 are central to this envelope:
The teacher uses an understanding of individual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation.
The teacher uses knowledge of effective verbal, nonverbal, and media communication techniques to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom.
The teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner.
Quality #4: self-reliance and collegiality within the teaching profession. Just as Warren Wilson College teacher candidates would not be extraordinary without the wider context of the College mission, they cannot be successful in reflection and innovation in isolation. They must be members of communities, and they must serve effectively in communities, utilizing their knowledge, their commitment, and their ability to work hard. Following INTASC standards #9 and #10, student teachers are evaluated to ensure that
The teacher is a reflective practitioner who continually evaluates the effects of his or her choices and actions on others and who actively seeks out opportunities to grow professionally.
The teacher fosters relationships with school colleagues, parents, and agencies in the larger community to support students’ learning and well-being.
This goal describes the student teacher’s participation in the professional community. The student teacher demonstrates that he or she has learned to stand on his or her own as a teacher, and yet knows how to get the support, help, or advice that is needed. The student teacher has worked within a school's community, serving on committees or taking part in projects that go beyond the work of the individual classroom (including grade level teams and coordination with specialty area teachers). The student teacher demonstrates how he or she has participated in the wider public or educational community in ways that have contributed to his or her knowledge of the roles and responsibilities of the teaching profession.
The Warren Wilson College Teacher Candidate is a reflective innovator serving in communities with head, heart, and hands
Taken together, the “Four Envelopes” or program qualities are a reminder of the nature of the service that communities need. Rather than focusing on a single set of abilities, such as academic qualifications, or skillful instructional design, or even an emotional sense of the vocation of teaching, the Teacher Education Program requires all three: head, heart, and hands. And thus for each program quality promoted and assessed by the “4Es,” there is a balance of requirements among the knowledge, skills and dispositions that create an excellent new teacher.
The Warren Wilson College Teacher Education Program emphasizes the professional roles of successful educators while promoting the importance of caring (especially as described by Noddings, 1992, or Shacklock, 1998). The College is proud of its tradition in promoting social activism and alternative, experiential education. Warren Wilson College teacher candidates graduate with skills for innovation and effective service in communities and some go on to thrive in traditional public schools. Sometimes teacher candidates choose to spend their first years after graduation in the Peace Corps or other nonprofit agencies, and many return to teach successfully in rural, urban, and suburban communities across the country. Other graduates of the Teacher Education Program find professional homes in more entrepreneurial schools, such as public charter schools and magnet programs. Whatever the paths they choose to follow or forge, teacher candidates from Warren Wilson College are clearly prepared to make a difference through their reflective practices and thoughtful innovations. It is hoped that they will become teacher leaders, building on the networks each has learned to connect between schools and communities.
Conceptual Framework
CF Works Referenced