Teaching Preparation

As an education minor, I have taken the following courses: Perspectives on Special Education, Critical Issues in Education, Educational Psychology, Emergent Multilingual Learners in U.S. Schools, and Curriculum and Pedagogy. Each of these classes exposed me to different realms of education and revealed the diversity of educational forms, pedagogies, and strategies. While I do not think that these classes have given me an exhaustive representation of the education system, I think that they have revealed some of the most important parts of culturally-aware teacher preparation and allowed me to form interests in specific realms of education.

My first ever education class, Perspectives on Special Education, introduced me to concepts of progressive education and differentiation, including Understanding by Design (UbD), that have stuck with me throughout my time in the Education department. In my next course, Critical Issues in Education, I gained background on educational policies in the United States and controversial aspects such as the Common Core mandates and federal expectations for curriculum and student progression. While I do not intend to go into policymaking, I think it was incredibly vital that I was given the context of what it means to be an educator and student in the United States. In this class, I was also given the opportunity to plan and teach my first lesson using UbD. Along with a group of three of my classmates, I researched Arts Education in the U.S. and planned a lesson to teach our class of the benefits and vulnerability of this realm of education. Attached below is our final lesson. This project was my first hands-on experience with the process of teaching. This project taught me how to identify learning goals, meet learning standards, and execute a lesson. Educational Psychology expanded my knowledge of how learning occurs, the best conditions for learning, and strategies for classroom management. Along with this class, I concurrently took Emergent Multilingual Learners in U.S. schools. This course covered the methods of educating students for whom English is not their first language and the harmful effects of mistreatment and miseducation of such students throughout U.S. history and today. Like Perspectives on Special Education, this course opened my eyes to more specific pedagogies and instructional models, such as the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP), and the ways in which every student enters a classroom with different needs and skills that must be acknowledged and valued. For instance, we learned to treat multilingualism as a valuable skill rather than something to “fix.” These courses further supported my goal to value every individual in the classroom and work my hardest to make learning enjoyable and accessible to them.

My final course before my full time student teaching position was Curriculum and Pedagogy. Being that this is the only methods course of the education program, I was completely immersed in the methods and practices of education. In this class, we focused on lesson planning, instructional design, curricular models, and effective learning. In conjunction with our school placements, this course was our first step into the world of practicing teachers. As a class we worked through our anxieties over curriculum and pedagogy and gained more practice in our teaching skills. We also had opportunities to meet with Subject Area Specialists (SAS) -- educators from the Philadelphia area who worked with us in groups based on our subject area focus. These meetings immersed us more deeply in the world of practicing educators and offered us a space to voice our concerns and hopes and to ask questions about the career and daily life of an educator. Ultimately, this final course strengthened my confidence in my pedagogical development and reminded me exactly why I want to be a teacher.