I spent the good part of my week preparing pre-service teachers for the new teacher tests. These new tests (PAPAs and PECTs) are killer! My college students have taken them over and over again, some with little success. And yet, as teachers they engage their students with purposeful, meaningful, and relevant lessons. In fact, they used many of the ideas from Learning That Never Ends, and created an environment that modeled lifelong learning for their students. I got rave reviews from both their cooperating teachers and their supervisors. I literally would put my grandson in their classes and be thrilled!

I cannot count how many tears were shed this summer over still another failed module (and by <4 points). I have written to the Department of Education in my state and have spent days trying to break the code of these tests as well. I question the motives of the creators of these new tests, as the only preparation that is suggested to us college instructors is to buy more textbooks from their company. I won’t do that!  

I would love to know what anyone else is doing to help their education students pass.