Elizabeth Barker Keefe, Ph.D.

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COURSE SYLLABUS: FALL 2000

Program: Dual License Program
Course Number: SPC ED 304, SPCED 462, CIMTE 400
Title: Student Teaching in Elementary and Special Education (Taught with Dual License Seminar Block)
Credit Hours: This course is 18 credit hours (SPCED 304 - 2 hours, SPCED 462 - 7 hours, CIMTE 400 - 9 hours
Course Prerequisites/Restrictions: Participation in Dual License Residency Year
Instructors:
Dr. Julia Scherba de Valenzuela
  EOB 203
  Ph. 277-1406/277-5018
  email: devalenz@unm.edu

  Dr. Danielle Allen
  EOB 211
  Ph. 277-4462
  email: cdallen@unm.edu

Office Hours: On site weekly meeting and by appt. Mondays 4-6:00pm
Class Meets: During Residency Year Seminar, Mondays, Tuesdays 8:30-4:00pm, EDUC 212

Course Description:
This course is specifically designed for undergraduate students in the Dual License Residency Year Block. This course covers student teaching in general and special education settings, including inclusive classrooms. Seminar will be a forum to explore the relationship between pedagogical theory and research, and their relationship to practice in the public schools. Connections will be drawn in the areas of: (a) professionalism, (b) preparing, implementing, and evaluating instruction, and (c) student engagement and classroom environment.

The Residency Year  includes student teaching and coursework. Students spend one day a week on campus for an interdisciplinary seminar team taught by special education and elementary education faculty. Four days are spent at school sites completing student teaching in general and special education settings. Student teaching may take place in elementary, middle, or high schools.

Rationale:
The mission of the College of Education is to advance the quality of the educational experience for all learners and to educate professionals who can facilitate human growth in schools, homes, communities, and workplaces. In carrying out this mission, the College explicitly values diversity in people and perspectives. The rationale for the Mental Retardation and Severe Disabilities Program and the Dual Licesne Program is supported by a shift in the major paradigm in special education and bilingual special education from a solely trait-based conceptualization toward thinking about disabilities as an interaction between individuals with disabilities or those from cultural and linguistic diverse backgrounds, their environments, and needed supports. This new way of thinking forces reanalysis of structures designed to assist individual in creating for themselves satisfying lives and challenges traditional notions of disabilities and handicaps.

The Dual License is committed to the preparation of competent and caring professionals who will contribute positively to the education of students with and without disabilities. The Dual License faculty believe that learning is a lifelong process. The Dual License strives to be part of that process by facilitating the development of responsive, skilled, reflective, and inquiring educators who graduate from the program knowing they still have much to learn and eager to continue their growth in the teaching profession.

The vision of the College of Education:

Excellence and diversity through people, ideas, and innovation.
Our mission is the study and practice of education through teaching, research, and service. We address critical education issues; test new ideas and approaches to teaching and learning; educate professionals who can facilitate human growth and development in schools, homes, communities, and workplaces, and prepare students for participation in a complex and challenging society.

In carrying out our mission we value excellence in all that we do; diversity of people and perspectives; relationships of service, accountability, collaboration, and advocacy; the discovery, discussion, and dissemination of ideas, and innovation in teaching, technology, and leadership

College of Education's Conceptual Framework: Professional Understandings, Practices, and Identities
The College of Education at the University of New Mexico believes that professional education should seek to help individuals develop professional understandings, practices, and identities. These understandings, practices and identities frame the life-long learning of professional educators and reflect the values articulated in our Mission Statement and in state and national standards and competencies.

Understandings frame the identity and practice of educational professional. We seek to help you better understand:
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Human Growth and Development Patterns in how individuals develop physically, emotionally, and intellectually. How to provide conditions that promote the growth and learning of individuals from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, including those with special learning needs.

• Culture and Language: The nature of home, school, community, workplace, state, national, and global contexts for learning. How social groups develop and function and the dynamics of power within and among them. How language and other forms of expression reflect cultural assumptions yet can be used to evoke social change. How one's own background and development shape understanding and interaction.
• Content of the Disciplines: The substance of the disciplines you teach -- the central organizing concepts and factual information -- and the ways in which new information is created, including the forms of creative investigation that characterize the work of scholars and artists.
• Pedagogy: Theory and research on effective educational practice. How to create contexts for learning in and across the disciplines. How to assess student learning and design, plan, and implement instruction to meet the needs of learners. How to evaluate educational practice.
• Technology: Effects of media and technology on knowledge, communication, and society. How to critically analyze and raise awareness of the impact of media and technology. How to use current technology.
• Professional Issues: The social and political influences on education, both historically and currently. Local, state, and national policies, including requirements and standards. How to critically analyze and participate in the formation of educational policy. Strategies for leadership, collaboration, and research.
• Nature of Knowledge: How knowledge is constructed within social contexts, including the academic disciplines. The differences and connections among the knowledge constructed in different social contexts. How to conduct inquiry into the nature of knowledge within and across the disciplines.

These understandings enable you, as a professional, to value and engage in practices that embody the following qualities:

• Learner-Centered: Students' past experiences, cultural backgrounds, interests, capabilities, and understandings are accommodated in learning experiences. Routines promote learner risk-taking and allow learners to take increasing control of their own learning and functioning.
• Contextual: Experiences engage learners in ways of thinking, doing, talking, writing, reading, etc., that are indicative of the discipline(s) and/or authentic social contexts. Ideas and practices are presented with the richness of their contextual cues and information. Learners are provided with models and opportunities to reflect on their experiences and to relate their learning to other social contexts.
• Coherent: Learning experiences are organized around the development of concepts and strategies that learners need in order to participate in other similar situations. Learners are assessed on what they had to opportunity to learn.
• Culturally Responsive: Diversity is valued, and learners are helped to become aware of the impact of culture on how they and others perceive the world.
• Technologically Current: Available technology facilitates learning. Learners are helped to understand the effect of media on their perceptions and communication.

Developing a professional identity is central to lifelong growth as a professional educator. The University of New Mexico College of Education will help you to develop the following attributes of a professional:

• Caring: Attentive to learners, willingness to listen and withhold judgment, and ability to empathize while maintaining high expectations for learner success.
• Advocacy: Committed to ensuring equitable treatment and nurturing environments for all learners.
• Inquisitiveness: Habitual inquiry into the many, ever-changing ways in which knowledge is constructed, how people learn, and how educators can support learning.
• Reflection-in-Action: Able to analyze, assess and revise practice in light of student learning, research and theory, and collegial feedback.
• Communication: Skilled in speaking, writing, and using other modes of expression.
• Collaboration: Able to work cooperatively with students, parents, community members, and colleagues.
• Ethical Behavior: Aware of and able to work within the ethical codes of the profession.

Required Readings

Perrone, V. (1991). A letter to teachers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Palmer, P. J. (1998). The courage to teach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wong, H. K., & Wong, R. T. (1998). The first days of school. Mountain View, CA: Harry Wong Publications.

Course Objectives:
In reflection of the above philosophy, the Dual License strives for the preparation of teachers who are:

1. Professional, in that they are...

• respectful of colleagues, parents, students, and self;
• able to collaborate and contribute in the classroom and school
• dedicated to lifelong learning, continual growth and improvement;
• aware of student needs and classroom procedures; and
• reliable at fulfilling obligations on time with a focused aim on quality.

2. Capable of effective preparation, implementation, and evaluation of instruction...

• lesson plans link purpose with method, aligning curriculum, instruction, and assessment;
• instruction and materials are challenging and relevant, provoking curiosity, interest, involvement and engagement;
• purpose, instruction and methods of inquiry are clearly understood by students;
• the physical, intellectual and emotional environments in the classroom are conducive to learning; and
• the voices of all children, in all their intelligences, are enabled.

3. Continuously seek top engage students in a climate of curiosity, cooperation and challenge...

• students’ nonverbal behavior is focused and animated; an eagerness to participate is palpable;
• effective, rigorous intellectual habits are encouraged and evidenced by classroom members;
• qualities of genius are valued in all children;
• verbal space in the classroom is shared by teacher and students together; and
• discipline and rigor are evident in classroom members’ commitment to best efforts.

Specific Course Requirements:
1) Students are required to attend and participate in classes.
2) Students are expected to read assigned material before class.
3) Students will complete the following:

a) Quickwrites
b) Follow procedures outline in the Dual License Handbook
c) Develop Professional Portfolio

Evaluation Procedures:
Attendance and promptness are required, Whenever possible, unavoidable absence, late arrival, and/or early departure must be cleared with the instructor before the day of seminar that is to be affected. These excused absences will be granted only for those “life emergencies” which are unanticipated and unschedulable. Unexcused absences and repeated late arrival/early departure will result in a conference between student and teacher; if a pattern of nonattendance or tardiness develops, the student’s continued enrollment in the Dual License seminar will be discussed among all Program staff and the student involved.

Course Evaluation: Students will be evaluated according to criteria in the Dual License handbook. Each semester a mid-semester and final evaluation will be carried out through a three way conference with the classrooms teacher, Dual License faculty and the student teacher. Students who are believed to be “at risk” will be given an individualized contract and intensive support from UNM faculty and graduate assistants.

Grades for this class will be determined by the mid-semester and final evaluations.

Schedule:
See Integrated Seminar Outline and assignment matrix.

Please note:
If you are a qualified student with a disability who requires an accommodation, please let me know in a timely manner so that any necessary modification can be made.
 

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