YouPrep: An Online Course for New Educators
Learning Environment Design Project
Instructional Needs Assessment
Identifying the Need for Instruction
Teachers are an integral part of the structure of our country. Without teachers, we would have no one to educate, inspire, and guide the youth of our nation into their chosen careers. Teachers train for years, learning best practices to incorporate into their classrooms and strategies to effectively teach children of different ages and abilities. During their undergraduate education, future teachers must pass many courses such as Educational Psychology, Language and Literature Development, and Classroom Management, as well as complete a student teaching internship. These courses are meant to prepare future educators for all the tasks and challenges they will experience when in the classroom. Yet, as classrooms in the United States, and specifically Florida, continue to be overcrowded, and teacher shortages continue to grow, more people are obtaining their teaching certifications without having an education background.
Ease of Stress and Burnout
Without having an education background, teachers are forced to “learn on the fly” as they go through the year causing them a great deal of stress, as well as loss of instructional time for the students, who may then fall behind in comparison to students in other classes. This course will assist teachers in gaining important knowledge needed required to be successful in the classroom.
Online and Self-Paced
While schools usually try to aid the new teachers by giving them a crash course of everything they need to know and do, this usually makes the teacher feel overwhelmed and is done with no structure in place. An online, self-paced course with multiple learning modules would alleviate this issue and allow new teachers to learn the much needed skills required to be successful in the classroom at their own pace. It would also allow the teachers to return to the modules as often as they need to and show the school’s administration when new teachers have passed the module’s assessment. By designing a course for newly certified teachers who do not have an education background, learners will be able to (1) unpack an educational standard, (2) plan an explicit direct instruction lesson, (3) create a classroom management plan, and (4) feel confident in their abilities in the classroom.
Innovation Model
According to Smith and Ragan (2005), “The innovation model examines changes or innovations in the educational system or organization” (p. 45). This would be an innovation model as no program such as this has been previously used in the school and will add goals to the organization. In this case there has been a significant change in the education of the organization, but the new teachers need a way to acquire this knowledge as quickly as possible.