Transforming Teacher Education Program

I really loved reading this article and I think this article should have been sent to the administrator of Neag School of Education who designed the school’s curriculum. I feel like I would have benefited much more by taking a multicultural class before doing by student teaching. I definitely agree with Ms. Moore theory that students need to have class to discover their biased opinion in order to increase multiculturalism and diversity in the classroom. The book club is a great example of student discussing their misconception and opinions on multiculturalism. This is especially an important issue for science teacher because it’s very difficult in integrate culture in the classroom on regular basis. When I was doing my student teaching I tried numerous ways to integrate culture into my curriculum such as reading NY times articles, emphasizing minority scientist and incorporating student daily life into class activities. However, I still find extremely difficult to incorporate culture into a subject which is mainly facts. I love biology because of its structure, complexity, and uncharted discoveries and I want all of students to have the same feeling about science. Overall I thought that the article was very good but I was disappointed that it didn’t have any concrete example of implementing a class activity dealing with diverse students.

This article also raises a major concern about the typical courses curriculum in order to become a teacher. As educator, we know that America is diversifying at very rapid pace. We are going to face many challenges ahead if we don’t change our education system. Teacher education program need to drastically change in order to balance the cultural change and attitude. Teacher need to be adequately prepared to understand and relate their content to meet diverse student backgrounds. At this institution we only had the opportunity to take multicultural classroom in our master year. Most of the students will graduate and teach students with only one or two classes in diversity and this is definitely not enough. We also need to take classes which deals with special need students and differentiating class material. Overall I agree with the author that we need to transform our teacher education programs.