My Feelings About My Education Program

I started my education program last week. I’m now finishing my second week and thought it would be a good time to discuss my thoughts so far.

I have to say that I’m really excited with how things are going. I was a bit worried that my classes would basically be somebody lecturing us on how to teach properly, but that is not what’s happening at all. To start with, I have learned that my province (and eventually all of Canada) is trying to phase out standardized testing. That makes me very happy. I don’t think tests are necessarily a bad thing, but I also don’t think they show a child’s true understanding. I look forward to being able to see my students grow without feeling like I have to grade them unfairly. I’m also happy that my classes are very theory based. No, this doesn’t mean they lack any “practical” aspect. As one of my professors stated, all knowledge is theoretical. What it means is I’m gaining ideas. A ton of them. I’m able to see how I can use things that I never would have considered in an educational manner. I’m actually able to picture myself as a teacher, and I’m growing with my classmates.

So far we’ve been doing a lot of group discussions and projects. I have already facilitated a discussion with one of my groups. I am very happy with how well that went, because it got as thinking deeply about how to teach students with different cultural and language backgrounds from our own. I have also started to work with a group on deconstructing a math concept. We aren’t learning the math we’ll be teaching, but we are learning how to teach the math in a way that the students can understand it. And we are doing this by figuring out how to actually deconstruct a problem to teach our classmates. Later in the same class we will be doing something similar with programming. We are learning how to learn so that we can understand how to teach. We’re also learning various theories of education, basically how teaching has changed over time and various ideas about how to bring education into the 21st century (my teachers are all quite critical of the current education system and are very interested in helping us be the teachers that make the system evolve). My last class has us thinking about student-centered learning and creating an engaged classroom. Again, we’re doing this through group discussions, all of which have been very lively so far.

Soon I will enter my first practicum. This semester I will simply be observing a teacher, but I will eventually be given control of a classroom. I’m nervous about that, but I’m far more excited. Given how impressed I am so far, I see no reason to not think the rest of my program won’t go as well. I’m now looking forward to teaching even more than I was before, and I’m able to see what’s happening in the public school system today with a new light. Things aren’t perfect, and I still want to homeschool, but maybe I’ll change my mind when I enter the system and am able to help lead the change that I and many others feel is necessary.