Teachers’ Lounge
One-Room School
This story was told to Dr. Sturgeon in 2003. The information was gathered as part of an undertaking to document the teaching experiences of 1930s and 1940s one-room school teachers in Mason County, West Virginia.
OK, I’ll tell you about fun things in the one-room school. The children liked it when we played “button, button, who has the button” because they always seemed so excited. They also looked forward to playing “I Spy.” When we played “I Spy” you would hide these scissors so that maybe only the tip end would stick out. Then they would have to hide their eyes; all but the one that was hiding the scissors was up and around. He would walk around and around inside the school and then after he had hidden the scissors somewhere he would pretend he was putting them in other places so that they wouldn’t know just where you were. So, OK they are hidden and the kids get up out of their seats and then the teacher would say “Wayne, you’re getting hot, you’re getting hot.” The closer you got to it, the hotter you’d get. Or, “Oh, Thelma, you’re cold, you’re just so cold it’s a wonder you wouldn’t be freezing,” you know, stuff like that. Anyway, then whoever found it got to hide it then from the rest of them. Then, “Button, Button, Who Has the Button?” you’d seat them all; you had these front seats, you know, where the kids came up to recite, and so there would be a long row of just people sitting and they would have to hold their hand. Then you had a button, and it would slide through their hands. Only one person got the button up there. So you had to make, pretend like you were dropping it when you weren’t so that when you got through then finally you’d open your hand and show it to someone else. Then the teacher would say, “OK, button, button, who has the button?” Then she’d say, “Carla May has it.” Then she’d say, “No I don’t.” “Fred. Fred has it.” “Nope.” So finally they’d get it and whoever had it last, they got to be the button hider. They were fun, because we didn’t have any toys or playground equipment or computer games, you know. We were all together in the school, in one room. We had a baseball bat and softball. And that’s about all we had. A lot different from today. But I loved every day. That school was the center of those little communities.
Dr. Douglas Sturgeon Shawnee State University Portsmouth, Ohio
Challenging Assumptions
Are college students preparing to be teachers as academically strong as college students preparing for other jobs?
The Assumption
Some teacher candidates are not as academically talented as other college students, contributing to the lower than expected academic performance of PreK–12 students.
Study Design and Method
A researcher at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) examined college students’ performance on the SAT, Praxis II licensure tests of content knowledge, and undergraduate GPAs to determine whether this assertion was true.
Study Findings
Teacher candidates today have stronger undergraduate GPAs than their predecessors with over 80% of them reporting a 3.00 or higher GPA. A smaller proportion of candidates taking Praxis II are passing it, primarily because states have raised their licensure requirements. Both candidates who have completed teacher education programs and those in alternate route programs have stronger academic profiles than in the past across ethnic, racial, and gender groups.
The research data indicated that candidates in secondary programs had verbal SAT scores at least as strong as other college students and sometimes stronger. Teacher candidates in math and science had math SAT scores well above other college graduates. Although scores on the verbal and math portions of the SAT are improving, candidates in elementary, special, and physical education score lower than other college students. The academic profiles of middle level teacher candidates are more like elementary teachers than secondary teachers.
Implications
To ensure that more candidates pass the content test for licensure, colleges and universities may consider raising requirements such as GPAs for admission into teacher education. An analysis of candidate performance on licensure tests, their performance on authentic assessments such as performance in student teaching, and the achievement of their students during the first years of practice could provide valuable information about the predictability of current assessments for determining successful practice in classrooms.
Source: Gitomer, D. H. (2007). Teacher quality in a changing policy landscape: Improvements in the te