Case Studies from the Classroom: Dilemmas, Dynamics, and the Making of the Teacher

EDU T236 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

How should a good teacher stand? How do they move through a room? What does the good teacher sound like? And when faced with a genuinely hard situation in the classroom, what do you actually do? The answers are necessarily different depending on our contexts, our students, and, of course, ourselves. The course is less interested in the platonic ideal of the good teacher than in how each candidate — as themselves, with their particular histories, voices, and bodies — learns to navigate the challenging and often unpredictable dynamics of a real classroom. This foundational course asks teacher candidates to sit with those questions seriously through cases, simulations, critical reflection, and the embodied work of practice. Rather than arriving at easy answers, students develop the contemplative and ethical frameworks they need to navigate teaching’s genuinely complex moral landscape: one that demands both self-knowledge and deep attention to student dignity, cultural responsiveness, and the lived reality of classrooms. Case analysis, debrief, and reflection are central to the work. Students leave with more awareness, confidence, and the capacity to read the power dynamics of their classroom and their own place within it.