Assistant teacher course/Teachers' handbook

—Democracy and Education, John Dewey  A PDF version of this book is available.

Introduction
—The Philosophy Gym, Stephen Law

The teachers' handbook tries to give some recommendations to teachers who have a group of assistant teachers available.

The course invited the assistant teachers in several places to make suboptimal or questionable choices in order to provide motivation for the other pupils to become politically active and to try to influence the situation. Teachers should be aware what suboptimal solutions have been implemented intentionally and what better solutions the assistant teachers would prefer themselves. At some time pupils and assistant teachers may need encouragement to change existing arrangements in order to prevent significant disadvantages for the pupils.

The normal run of events, however, should be that pupils discover the inadequate solutions and alert their grade to the fact that something might have to be changed.

The advantage of having assistant teachers available should be that the teacher can focus on teaching, pedagogy and classroom management. The role of supervisor should mostly be delegated to the assistant teachers. A teacher can also delegate the role of lecturer, which allows to focus on monitoring the class or to attend to individual pupils.

This teacher's handbook is meant as a convenient entry for teachers but should not be interpreted to mean that teachers shouldn't read the whole course.