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Before becoming licensed educators, student teachers often demonstrate a license to transform the lives of others. A recent cohort of teacher candidates created this student teaching alphabet highlighting their personal, philosophical, and ethical license to transform. Original artifacts (i.e., poems, letters, artwork) serve as entry-points through which to consider how life events, aspirations, challenges, and beliefs contribute to one’s emerging and evolving personal and professional identities. Readers are invited to contemplate their experiences, interactions, and lives in original and provocative ways.
In educational psychology and teacher education/preparation courses, this book is meaningful for pre-service, early, mid-career, and veteran teachers as well as those considering a career in education. More than a curriculum of student teaching, it challenges us to imagine a curriculum of transformation that reflects the gestalt of all dimensions of life. More broadly, it can be useful for coursework in areas of the humanities, liberal arts, sociology, and curriculum studies. Individuals from a variety of backgrounds can reflect on their work and their lives through phenomenological lenses that validate the richness and complexities of their lived experiences.
In educational psychology and teacher education/preparation courses, this book is meaningful for pre-service, early, mid-career, and veteran teachers as well as those considering a career in education. More than a curriculum of student teaching, it challenges us to imagine a curriculum of transformation that reflects the gestalt of all dimensions of life. More broadly, it can be useful for coursework in areas of the humanities, liberal arts, sociology, and curriculum studies. Individuals from a variety of backgrounds can reflect on their work and their lives through phenomenological lenses that validate the richness and complexities of their lived experiences.
As a teacher’s curriculum–as a curriculum of life–readers can ponder the ways they are being and becoming the educators–and the human beings–they’ve aspired to be. These teacher candidates are teaching for more than a license; they are teaching for better, more equitable futures. With the strength of their commitment and the audacity of their passion for change, these student teachers have much to teach us.
Edward Podsiadlik is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education. He is the author of Anecdotes and Afterthoughts: Literature as a Teacher’s Curriculum and Grieving as a Teacher’s Curriculum: Relevant Prose and Postscripts and is a 2018 Silver Circle Teaching Award recipient.
