What Collegial Support is Needed to Become a CGI Teacher?
Teacher: I went through my teaching program, and it was a very—my math methods classes were very oriented towards children understanding math… But then you go into the classroom, and it is very different, and you see a textbook that is the opposite of what you’ve been trained at a fine institution about what math should be. And you see everyone doing it differently, and you don’t have enough ground. You don’t have enough history or background or comradery to hold on to what you first learned. And you slowly see yourself becoming a different type of teacher than you had intended to be. And I can see the same thing happening for teachers who get small amounts of CGI with no follow-up or support or for teachers who may have a lot of training but then are in a school setting or a district setting where CGI isn’t valued as much. So, you know, one of the things that was so fantastic about when we begin training was that the requirement was we have a colleague at our school to work with, and it didn’t need to be the same grade level, but a colleague. For Rachel and me that was each other, and, you know, even one person, I think, can be enough. Even if you were alone at a school, I think if you had a connection with someone at a university or someone in a different district or a different school, but I think it would be impossible to do alone, in complete isolation.
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