the most valuable lesson of teacher's college was not how they trained me to become a great teacher. the most important thing i learned was the pros and cons of teaching in a public high school. as my year of teacher's college approached an end, i began to change my mind about the teaching profession.
the queens teacher's college program operates as follows: there is a consecutive (meaning subsequently after) program where people that have already completed a degree can do an additional year of schooling to learn about education to supplement their degree. then there is the concurrent (meaning existing simultaneously or side by side) program where undergrads will need to first acquire their four year undergraduate degree in whatever and also take education courses on the side. these are what are actually called colloquially as "con ed students". after graduating from their undergrad, they will take a fifth year, which is the teacher year where they focus on education. this year is shared with consecutive students.
teacher candidates alternate between schooling and practicum experience. practicum schools are assigned to you based on a list of your top 4 school boards. school started in september. in october i had 3 weeks of practicum experience at one high school in my first teachable (math). i was required to teach just one course and shadow the rest of the time. i returned to kingston for more school, and my second practicum slot was in december, and it lasted for 3 weeks at the same school. i was required to teach the same course as before and add one more course to my teaching load. in january i returned to kingston. in february i have a 4 week practicum with another school in my second teachable (physics). i have march break (same time as the kids!) and then i start my 3 week alternative practicum (more on that later). i return in kingston in april for one last month of school and the program is complete.
i've gained an inexplicable connection with mississauga. two co-op terms and many friends either lived there or moved there. peel region was my third choice among school boards and that's where i was placed. over toronto and york region, which would both be geographically closer. in my practicum class, where they gather all the students doing practicum in a geographic region, i was the only person that lives in toronto (though not living farthest away like my buddies from acton or grimsby hahaha).
my engineering education has not only crafted my character but my approach to learning. i wanted to exert the least amount of effort for the most completion and best results. turns out that going through engineering, arguably one of the most rigorous post secondary educations intellectually and emotionally, really can make everything else easy. the most challenging parts of teacher's college were:
-mandatory attendance, especially at 8:30am
-listening to all that blathering about absolutely nothing in pretty much every single lecture and not blowing my brains out. it was like listening to a lawnmower for a year
-countless reflection papers, sometimes requiring academic references (a completely new process for me)
-coordinating group meetings with other people. yes this was a challenge because there were too many group meetings
-doing a project with randoms, where leaders only discretely emerge and never publicly declared, and slackers just as discretely can slack
-the emotions that came with the dread and despair of the amount of competition is in the teaching field and how many hoops need to be jumped through, delivered to us through pseudo-mandatory speaker sessions, obviously and profusely sugar coated
-that girl-guy, white-asian ratio. not particularly challenging but required a little navigating
-being older than everyone, having experienced some living and then become surrounded by a bunch of kids. you don't realize you've grown up until you are surrounded by younger folks and realize that they look up to you
as you can see, teacher's college had some tough times, but overall it wasn't hard at all. deadlines were spread out, and there was so much leeway given by profs that i could take advantage of them really easily. my life experience from engineering as well as in working helped me to exploit every loophole, weigh importance of everything, so that i could do as little work as possible without actually looking like i am not working. so in the end, i got a 3.93 GPA in my first term and a perfect 4.0 GPA in the second term. suck on that, queens.
all of you could have guessed that i can handle teacher's college just fine. more thoughts to come.
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