I am not seeing a whole lot of science education in my current placement. In fact, in talking with my classmates, really none of them are either. I think the main problem with education today is that elementary teachers are expected to teach every subject area, even when they have little to no pre-service education in that subject area. If I were in charge, I would improve elementary education in the US by making it mandatory for students to “switch classrooms for subject (such as science) area teaching” in the grades as early as the first grade. Along with this practice, I would also change the way pre-service teachers are educated. What I mean is that pre-service teachers would get more education in their subject area they have chosen, (three years instead of two), and that all of the subject area classes would be based on learning the material and THEN ALSO making lesson plans for teaching the material in a classroom. Take my ‘Language Arts’ classes I am currently taking to fulfill a LA subject area credit, as an example of how I am NOT mastering HOW to teach language arts, but just learning about it. I am currently in English 140- Scottish literature. This class is a great class and I am learning a lot about the Scottish culture and I took it because it both sounded interesting and fit my schedule, BUT in my future real career world, this information is practically useless. I will never use anything I have learned from this class in teaching special education or regular education to K through 5th grade. So why is this class fulfilling a LA credit for me then????? This is where the problem starts. So if we changed all of the subject area courses that pre-service teachers had to take, to make them useful for K-5 teaching, and also made sure that teachers were only hired in as “science teachers” if they were certified to teach that subject area, and if first through fifth grade students were switched to a real science teacher’s classroom during science instruction, THEN I feel elementary science (and really all subject area) teaching and learning, would improve in US elementary schools.
I definitely agree with some of what you said about teacher education. I have been taking courses from our "teacher prep program" for 6 semesters now, and I am just now starting to create my own lesson plans and really learn about instructional strategies. While I understand that we need background knowledge on our specializations, I would appreciate if our classes had more emphasis on the implications in our future classrooms!
ReplyDeleteMandy, I completely agree with what you said! I think that is part of the reason why elementary teachers can get burned out. They are constantly having to stretch their expertise into areas where they don't have much experience. Doing what you proposed would take a lot of stress off of the teachers and allow them to make excellent lesson plans in the areas they know the best.
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