Assistant teacher course/Pedagogy and parent education

Work with individual pupils
Work with a single pupil could be seen as a luxury but there can be situations where an assistant teacher has sufficient time for a single pupil. Being able to teach a single pupil for a while should be seen as a desirable situation and justify preparatory work to allow this. In the direct dialog with a single pupil experience with parent education concepts may turn out to be useful for an assistant teacher.

The participants should learn pedagogical patterns from the Wikibooks Parent Education Course Writer's Guide or related literature. The Wikibooks Parent Education Course Writer's Guide can be added to a binder with background information given to every pupil or it can be distributed as a handout.

The following patterns may be especially important for assistant teachers:
 * Active listening
 * I-messages
 * IRIS strategy

Knowledge of the following anti-patterns is very likely to help assistant teachers to avoid problems:
 * You-message
 * Positive feedback
 * Functional social behavior

Group work
The pedagogical supervision of the class is mostly the responsibility of the teacher and the teacher should educate the assistant teachers about specific goals during preparatory meetings. Assistant teachers need to understand how to interact with the class and what to avoid. Besides being a role model an assistant teacher may have to show behaviors that differ from that of a disciplined pupil and should be able to understand the pedagogical requirements of the class.

An assistant teacher can join a pupil, engage in a muted discussion with the pupil and escort the pupil to the back of the room, if necessary. In difficult cases an assistant teacher can also escort a pupil outside class in order to stop repeating disturbances in class. The assistant teacher should get up and gesture to the pupil to follow but avoid any loud dispute in class. If necessary the teacher will have to notice the incident and order the pupil to follow the assistant teacher. A second assistant teacher may be send along to help with a rebellious pupil.

Outside class an assistant teacher can Work_with_individual_pupils@work with an individual pupil, calm down the pupil, if necessary, and try to determine what the problem is. (See also: The assistant teacher role model)

Pedagogical supervision can also mean to notice and to remember behavior patterns.

Behavior that has to be documented is disruptive or extremly inattentive behavior or behavior that goes against school policy. The academic aptitude of a pupil deserves attention if a pupil appears to be overchallenged or unchallenged by the given exercises. A pupil may also make remarks about the difficulty of homework or similar remarks. An assistant teacher can document such remarks if they appear significant enough and the state of the homework or other exercises confirms the view. If grades for social behavior are determined an assistant teacher may have to document more but this is outside the scope of this course unit.

Literature

 * Parent Education Course Writer's Guide (Wikibooks)