Teacher training offers lots of great knowledge, but it doesn’t always clearly explain the why’s for the curricula we follow. Of course studying educational psychology, theory, and philosophy will give to a massive foundation, but what the heck am I supposed to build on it?
When you start teaching in a classroom, with or without a mentor to apprentice with, you will often hear your colleagues say some version of “forget what you think you know, you won’t be using all that in practice”. That absolutely isn’t the complete truth, but there is some truth in it. Curricula is often designed to accommodate the perceived needs to the specific student body you will be teaching. Therefore you will need to understand how to build your ideas into the existing structures. Come to think of it, this might be why my teacher training program refused to start us with learning a standard of curriculum design and promoted creativity instead. As frustrating as that has been, I can now adapt myself to any system with confidence.
So why take more courses on this? Well, it helps stave off that old friend, imposter syndrome or phenomenon. More importantly, it gives me a skeleton to build most curricula upon. The LinkedIn course is designed more at the corporate training profession, but the use of presentation technology has become ubiquitous in the classroom as well. So, I plan to gather all the skills possible to continually improve my teaching skillset… after all, I feel the need to support the assertion that I am a life-long-learner.
LinkedIn course: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/teaching-techniques-developing-curriculum
The New Renaissance Mindset 