ABSTRACT
Preservice teachers educated from a critically constructivist perspective encounter major struggles during their first years of teaching in traditional settings. Struggles related to collegial relationships and curriculum design are a powerful undercurrent as new teachers confront those seasoned by lockstep, mechanistic education. This chapter discusses the experiences of one special education teacher forced to confront the system as she implemented a constructivist curriculum in two behavioristic settings. Her struggles and successes over a two-year period emerged through personal diary entries and conversations between the teacher and her university professor. This story will strengthen the resolve of teachers determined to engender positive classroom transformation.
I think that it is time I start having a better relationship with my cooperating teacher. I asked her if she wanted to go have a drink after school and we did. I was able to get to know her a little bit more. She was previously an ID (learning disabilities) teacher and this is her second year of teaching emotionally handicapped students. I asked how she felt about what I was doing and she was giving me the old, “Yeah, it's going okay” routine. I asked her to be honest and said that I wanted and needed her input. Then she said, “I don't understand what you're doing.”
I began by telling her about Zaragoza's program, not so much the academics, but how students need to be successful to learn and how we need to set up a safe environment so learning and success could happen. I told her that these students are faced with failures every day of their lives and that school should be the one place where they can succeed. She said “I am fighting a losing battle”.
