Purpose and Goals

Purpose

The purpose of the Master's in Teacher Education degree is to assist teachers in becoming leaders and mentors who are critical thinkers and reflective decision makers in their schools. Strong content and pedagogical skills will be developed that effect change in teaching and facilitate learning in students. Coursework will be taken in four areas:

Teacher Leaders and Mentors
Research
Technology
Professional Concentration

Goals

Teacher Leaders and Mentors

Model and teach strong character, civic responsibility, respect for individual and group differences, and instill this in their learners.
Design, assess, and implement instructional materials that are developmentally appropriate, integrate activities for the multiple intelligence, address different learning styles.
Work with parents to facilitate the intellectual, social and emotional development of their students; and communicates student needs to parents, teachers, and other relevant adults.
Demonstrate teacher effectiveness and model strong presentation skills.
Demonstrate professionalism and follow appropriate school law and ethics of the profession.
Utilize appropriate strategies for managing the behavior of their students in the classroom.
Think critically, solve problems, and help develop these skills in their learners.
Develop instruction and classroom environments that increase the chances of "at-risk" students success in school; and analyze a group of learners not experiencing success in traditional classroom and school environments, and design alternative, success promoting environments using the results of that analysis.
Mentor less experienced teachers who need assistance in improving their classroom instruction based on sound research results.
Seek evaluation and feedback about professional performance from teacher colleagues, school/district administrators and students; and uses this feedback for self reflection and improvement.

Research

Use multiple assessments, and systematically observe and communicate their students' progress to parents and students.
Evaluate the quality and effectiveness of their teaching practices on the progress of their learners.
Read research articles meaningfully and apply them to the practice of teaching and learning.
Interpret norm-referenced test results to assess how their learners are progressing over time; and analyze test results for a given school and grade, and use the results of that analysis to produce instruction that will improve students' performances.
Design, develop and implement action research strategies at classroom, grade and school levels.
Statistically analyze test results and design instruction to improve student performance as measured by the test.
Perform developmental assessments of students and use results to advise other teachers about instruction that will be developmentally appropriate for the students assessed.
Lead a team of colleagues to design instruction that will result in improved performance by students, using the analysis of test results.

Technology

Teach a broad range of technology skills to their students.
Teach technological skills to other teachers in their schools.
Troubleshoot many technological problems before calling for the school technology specialist.
Use the school network
Deliver instruction using multiple technologies.
Assess student learning using technology projects
Maintain a classroom web page
Use a full range of technologies in teaching to solve instructional problems (e.g. video, audio, computers, graphic calculators)
Produce near commercial quality multimedia products to increase the effectiveness of classroom instruction.
Mentor colleagues to enable their improved effective use of a broad range of technologies for instruction.

Professional Concentration

Engage the minds of their learners, and help build connections between what they are learning in the classroom with the world around them.
Use rich and varied resources in teaching, addressing the multiple intelligence and learning styles of their students.
Think critically and solve problems.
Improve their skills, pedagogy, and depth of content knowledge in their areas of certification, based on sound research results.
Have mentor-level expertise in mathematics, broad field sciences, English or social studies.
Know the research and development literature of effective schools, effective schooling and best professional practices.
Identify specific projects and products from literature in their area of professional specialization.
Given an analysis of an accountability test, teachers identify the portions of the school curriculum in which the content of the test should be taught.