New College of California Teacher Education Program

There are nine distinguishing features of the New College Teacher Education Program:

1. Teaching from a social justice perspective. Candidates need to reflect on their own schooling and cultural experiences in order to acknowledge and understand the perspective that they bring to the profession.

2. Building democratic learning communities. Candidates learn to humanize the teaching environment and develop their classrooms as “communities of learners”. (McCaleb, 1994)

3. Working with families through Family Literacy: learning to develop curriculum that affirms family and community aspirations and cultural values.

4. Gaining skills as teacher researchers. The concept of Teacher as Researcher is developed through Participatory/Action Research to enable future teachers to know and respect the communities in which they teach.

5. Arts and Music are integrated across curriculum areas so that future teachers may appeal to the diverse learning modes of children and teach to the whole child.

6. Infusing current critical environmental and global issues into teaching and incorporating important themes into their teaching.

7. Becoming “media literate”. Candidates engage in a process of learning to de-construct media messages.

8. Understanding the social and political context of the institution of schooling and develop an understanding of how the history and structures of schooling have impacted ethnically and linguistically diverse students.

9. Development of personal teaching philosophy. Each candidate formulates her/his own philosophy and vision of a critical pedagogy and assesses the ways in which she/he may contribute to positive change in the schools, the community, the society, the world and the planet.