government - pm mentoring

Detailed Description:

University teacher education programs do a good job arming potential teachers with learning theories, best instructional practices, and classroom management skills; however, they often neglect the fundamental skill of conflict resolution.� In particular, they ignore the importance of handling the inevitable teacher-parent conflict.� The problem is how do we prepare preservice teachers to handle conflict with parents?� How do we teach them to handle a confrontational email or phone call from a parent?� How do they learn what to do if an angry parent storms into their classroom?� How do you prepare a preservice teacher to handle personal attacks in a professional manner? Veteran teachers will tell you that they learned their conflict resolution skills while actually teaching in the classroom.� The challenge then is to provide preservice teachers the opportunity to experience conflict resolution in an authentic context representative of the classroom environment they will soon be immersed in.

This project is designed for students who are pursuing a degree in teaching.� The audience will be motivated to participate in the project because it engages them in authentic learning experiences that are relevant to their future role as a teacher.� In fact, the audience knows that the ability to handle conflict in a professional manner is essential to their success. Due to the typical life experiences that all humans have, the audience has prior knowledge about conflict.� No doubt they have encountered different types of conflict throughout their lives and have experienced handling that conflict in a variety of ways with various outcomes.� However, the target audience has not experienced teacher-parent conflict in a school setting as they have yet to enter this environment.

Learning Outcomes:

The learners will be able to:

Increase communication skills
Indentify different types of conflict and conflict resolution strategies
Evaluate different approaches to handling conflict
Respond to conflict in a professional and confident manner
Develop a repertoire of responses to conflict with parents
Implement appropriate conflict resolution strategies when engaged in a conflict with a parent
Reflect on strategy outcomes and refine their solutions for future practice