The Difficulty of Walking the Talk in Teacher Education

With a deep commitment to a transformative approach to constructing knowledge, I enter my classroom of would-be teachers full of hope and optimism. With my own insistence on the necessity of creating a viable alternative to the traditional classroom, we establish community, we enter into large group dialogue, we collaborate in smaller groups, we read and reflect, question and examine. Students write that they are stimulated and excited about what they are doing in the course. Then about halfway through a student asks, When will we learn what to do in the classroom? And what about discipline? another worries. And the clincher, How are my students going to pass the Washington Assessment of Student Learning if I haven’t addressed all the Essential Academic Learning Requirements? Even though the students are engaged in an alter-native classroom experience which is positive and meaningful, students-who-will-soon-be-teachers want to know what to do in a real classroom. I understand the dilemma. As new teachers, they will be entering a classroom in a school which is very much like the one they knew as they grew up. Even in a school that seems innovative, the state standards and assessments are the driving force to which everyone ultimately must answer. (The Or else! is another problem....)The new teacher is not alone in not wanting to break from tradition. Teachers everywhere, even those who really want to approach their classrooms differently, are afraid that if they do, their studentswill perform poorly on the state and national tests. They feel that they cannot afford to take a risk. Disempowered, overworked, and highly stressed there is certainly no time for reflection. They fall back on tradition to get them through while the progressive view drifts farther and farther from reach.