Dr. Karen Poland, assistant professor in Niagara University’s College of Education, and her colleagues, Dr. Paul Vermette and Dr. MaryEllen Bardsley, recently published an article in Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning, the journal of the New York Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. “Invent a Kid Project: Fostering Creative Reflective Practice in Teacher Candidates,” summarized the origins and theoretical foundation of the “Invent a Kid” project, offered models of implementation, and provided several suggestions for teacher educators to consider when implementing the project in their course.
“Invent a Kid” prepares novice teachers to navigate the social and cultural realities and complexities of their future classrooms by tasking them to create a fictional student whom they might encounter. The teachers develop a profile for their “kid” that differs significantly from their own—for example, they must be the opposite gender and come from a different socio-economic and cultural background—and then apply the theories they learn throughout the semester to him or her. The project enables the novice teachers to evolve into developmentally and culturally responsive individuals who can incorporate a variety of teaching strategies to meet the unique needs of each student, and offsets the challenges they often face due to their lack of experience, classroom management challenges, time constraints, the complexity of curriculum planning, and a novice understanding of the impact student differences can have upon learning.
Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning is a peer-reviewed, fully online, open-access journal provided by the professional association NYACTE (New York Association of Colleges for Teacher Education). It is supported by NYACTE and sponsored by the Syracuse University Libraries.
