Proposing teaching excellence projects

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Alex C. Pan

I am proposing an idea to encourage our teacher candidates to engage in the teaching excellence projects. This semester, we are piloting this idea with a few junior practicum students. We’d encourage teacher candidates to come up with good ideas for teaching and learning. They can then develop a good plan to implement the project with the real students in the school settings. The completed projects will be documented with short showcase videos. Hopefully these showcases can inspire more teachers/ teacher candidates to do amazing teaching in their career. The following is the outline of the project proposal:

 

Teaching Excellence – A Teaching Showcase Project

Rationale

  • TCNJ teacher candidates will be able to demonstrate the highest caliber in their teaching performances.
  • TCNJ teacher candidates will be able to produce the most amazing teaching ideas to teach and impact their students.
  • TCNJ teacher candidates will be able to address some of the current issues in teaching.
  • Collected showcases can serve as evidences of teaching excellence for individual career pursuit. These may also be available for public review and assessment for discussions and improvement.

Realistic Considerations

  • Practical, interesting, intriguing, engaging
  • Working with real people
  • Addressing issues
  • The finished products may serve as a good model for other educators to review, discuss, replicate, or enhance.
  • The results will show good ideas and great effort from the authors.
  • The selected showcases will be placed on a centralized Web site.

Format Requirements

  • A video clip about five minutes in length will be edited to highlight the best teaching moments and good ideas in the teaching.
  • A written rationale is provided to explain the notion of good teaching to meet the demand.
  • A reflection is documented to show the preparations, students’ reactions, and students’ learning outcome so that it may be replicated in similar situations.
  • Resources, references, and appendix

Categories of possible projects

  1. Effective ways for teaching thinking/ problem solving/ games for motivation
  2. Literacy instruction/ Children’s stories
  3. Content lessons (Math/ SCI/ SS/ English ….)
  4. Action Research projects
  5. New initiatives to make the school better
  6. Technology-enhanced activities
  7. Issues: parents, policies, anti-bullying
  8. Others

Process

  • Brainstorming (topic/ tasks/ rationale/ big ideas/ Literature review/ logistical issues/ help)
  • Individual work or team work
  • Proposal and discussion with coaching
  • Planning, developing and preparing
  • Implementing and video recording
  • Editing and modifying the project
  • Finalizing the project

Task Schedules

  • Brainstorm ideas: By Feb 15
  • Prepare for project proposal: (organize a plan and gather needed resources, materials and instruments) By March 15
  • Coaching and polishing and implementing: By April 15
  • Wrapping up videos and documentations: by May 1

Some Video Clips

About Alex C. Pan

Dr. Alex C. Pan was born in Taiwan and received his master and doctoral degrees from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He is currently an associate professor at The College of New Jersey, where he teaches a broad spectrum of courses in subjects ranging from future teacher development to the impact of globalization. For over twenty years he has collaborated with public school programs and advised elementary and early childhood student teachers. He has published dozens of articles and given numerous talks and workshops on the topics of globalization, education, and technology-enhanced instruction. Most recently he has focused on teacher’s action research as well as the economic and cultural impact of globalization.
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