What aspects of the program (courses, practical experiences, workshops, etc.) do you feel were particularly impactful in preparing you for a teaching career?

I'm a big fan of the capstone lesson segments. I think that project was probably the most impactful part of this program because it merged the theory and the practicality in ways that were useful both in terms of university requirements and how lessons actually play out in the classroom. While I probably won’t lesson plan to that degree when it comes to most of my future lessons, it is helpful to think through the connections between standards, Bloom's Taxonomy, etc. and the ways those concepts actually play out when you’re teaching a real lesson to your real 7th graders. And obviously, standards and differentiation will always be practically relevant when it comes to lesson planning, even if they aren't written out as explicitly. 

What subjects or areas do you wish were covered more extensively or in greater detail during your teacher preparation program?

I think the program often does us kind of a disservice in pushing theory so hard (especially in the first year – I found this semester a whole lot more relevant to my daily teaching life) with an absence of practicality. It is frustrating to learn about the “morality” (for lack of a better word) of teaching from people who have not been in classrooms in quite some time or who really have not had experience in the post-COVID and lockdown education era. I’ve been teaching since 2020 and Post COVID education is really difficult: most kids are way behind grade level in reading, attendance is an issue, learned helplessness is rampant, social skills are still severely lacking for a lot of kids, which affects how they treat one another and their teachers. The money is not there and test scores are paramount. Natural consequences work, extrinsic motivation works, phone calls home (and not always the positive kind) work, grades and attendance policies work, and taking cell phones works, etc. Of course these things work in conjunction with real connection and bonding, intrinsic motivation, positive notes and phone calls, choice, etc. but, in my experience, we still very much need both in our current education system. There is a place for everything but the theory without examples of how it would work in the real classrooms that many of us really work in really grinded my gears sometimes. 

How did your capstone project contribute to your growth as an aspiring educator, and what lessons did you learn from it that you plan to apply in your teaching career?

I planned and executed my capstone project around the time I was discovering how much of a big deal SEL connections and themes are. It was also around the time that things in both the broader world and my personal world really started to go south. I was forced to take a step back both in teaching and in life and one of my biggest takeaways is that my job is to foster human growth first and academic growth second. Thinking about big ideas and essential questions and the activities that would allow them to play out in my capstone really helped me get there. I mean an essential question is not “what makes a strong CER?” It’s “how do I persevere when times are rough?” “How do I express empathy?” And then we gather evidence on those topics to write a CER or an argument or a narrative that meets academic expectations while also giving ourselves time and space to explore those big issues and how they relate to us everywhere we go. SEL learning (especially in middle school) became very important to me and to my lesson planning starting with my capstone and is the framework from which I hope to build most of my future units and lessons. As someone I currently co-teach with said during my capstone, “This is why we read – to learn how people navigate the world and how we can. Not so we can write CERs.”