They may still call themselves students and The Bluff their home, but senior education majors are starting the beginning of their professional career.
An education major’s senior year consists of two school placements as student teachers. In their first placement that lasts until Thanksgiving, they devote their mornings to student teaching and their afternoons to college classes. After Thanksgiving, they switch to a different school to teach full-time with a cooperating teacher (CT) until graduation. Their placements include observations from University supervisors and a work sample detailing their lesson plans and approach to the teaching of a ten day unit.
Education majors have been logging field experience hours since freshman year in local classrooms, garnering training through observation and hands-on experience.
Despite previous classroom experience, education majors find senior year a crash course in balancing school, a social life and entering the professional world.
A Balancing Act Between Student and Teacher
Kristi Convissor, Holy Cross School, Third Grade, Elementary/Middle Education Major with Social Studies endorsement.
For Kristi Convissor, life has become a case study in switching roles from teacher to student, multiple times a day.
Her two worlds are separated by a short walk from Holy Cross School through the University Park neighborhood, but they require a very different way of being. Convissor admits that it is hard to switch into student mode while in her classes at UP. She finds herself critiquing her professors, and some students in her UP classes pick up on her “teacher-y air.”
“When I walked into my politics class the first day, I was wearing my student teaching clothes,” Convissor said. “They thought I was the professor!”
Convissor admits that she feels different than other college students, and that student teaching is like having a demanding part-time job. But the excitement and passion she has for her classroom shines through as she animatedly speaks about the kids in her third grade class, pounding her hands on the table in excitement.
“One student just doesn’t understand numbers. We started multiplication, and it was a scary thing for her. It’s hard for her and she knows it,” Convissor said. “By the end of the lesson, she was smiling, she was happy and she got an 86 percent on it. Which for her, is amazing.”
These success stories, make the 6 a.m. mornings worth it for Convissor. She credits the education department and field experience for preparing her for student teaching. Yet, the process of teaching multiplication for this history major is a challenge.
“I have some moments where I’m like ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’” Convissor said “but there are other moments where I know, ‘I can do this, I can teach multiplication!”
As her second student teaching placement approaches, Convissor still hasn’t been told by the education department where her next placement is, and she was supposed to have met her cooperating teacher weeks ago. Convissor is unsure why she hasn’t been told her placement. It’s a source of stress and insecurity for Convissor as she looks ahead, but she is hopeful that her next placement will be as engaging as her current one.
Public School Blues
Kristin Hortsch, Kelly Creek Elementary, fourth grade, Elementary Education Major with reading endorsement.
In her fourth grade classroom at Kelly Creek Elementary in Gresham, Kristin Hortsch is facing the reality of being a teacher (and a real life adult) in the public school system.
“Working in a public school has been the most terrifying thing ever,” Hortsch said. “The stress and the pressure on the teachers is just terrible.”
Everyday Hortsch sees the stress today’s achievement-centered educational system puts on teachers.
The high achievement standards set for low-performing, high poverty schools like Kelly Creek is a main cause of stress for teachers. Hortsch believes that for students with huge educational gaps, there is just not enough time for them to reach benchmarks.
However, this doesn’t stop her from celebrating in moments where her hard work and planning finally click with students. Recently, she did a lesson on the food chain, involving active, engaging activities learned in her education classes, and all her students aced their tests.
“I was so proud. Like, Oh my gosh!” Hortsch said. “This is learning gains, this what you want to see as a teacher!”
Yet, lessons don’t always work out perfectly, and are subject to the limits of time and curriculum. Hortsch’s work sample was on regions of the United States. She was frustrated about not having enough time to cover the subject completely in depth, as well as having to use a CD that “basically read the textbook out loud.” She was doubtful about the success of the lessons, but remains optimistic about the overall experience of student teaching.
“Working with kids is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Hortsch said.
From Thanksgiving until the end of the fall semester, Hortsch will be in a reading intensive classroom at Kelly Creek for her reading endorsement. After that, she will be in a second grade classroom at Holy Family School.
Sacrifices for Health
Nick Herb, Cathedral Catholic School, seventh and eighth grade Language Arts, Secondary Education and English Major, Drama Minor
Many student teachers have to make sacrifices their senior year – no more Thursdays at the T-Room, cutting back on an off-campus job, but for Nick Herb, this sacrifice was a bit more personal. As a secondary education and English double major, Herb had to write his senior English capstone this semester. Originally, he was excited about examining F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” But faced with the reality of balancing multiple large projects over the semester, he made a choice.
“It was either sacrificing myself and my health, or sacrificing this great idea that I wanted to write on.”
Herb switched to a capstone topic that incorporated his educational background and interest in creative writing by creating a guidebook to teaching reading comprehension through creative writing. Herb speaks animatedly about this project, which he is already implementing in his classroom.
“It’s to get students writing better and reading better,” he said.
As a seventh and eighth grade language arts student teacher at Cathedral Catholic School in Northwest Portland, Herb has already run into some students outside of the classroom at a Pilots volleyball game, smashing that middle school myth that teachers don’t live outside school.
“I was watching the game standing in one of the corners, and I see them come down from their seat across the court and sit down on the steps and hide their phones to take a picture of me. So I look at her and smile and wave and she turns bright red in the face!”
A high point for Herb has been the positive response he got from students after a meditation activity he first learned about in his Acting I class here at UP. He read a meditation to them and had them visualize what they were hearing.
“That was the high point to see them do that and be so excited about sitting still for 15 minutes!” Herb said, a bit awestruck. “I had several come up to me and ask me if we could do that again.”
Herb looks forward to incorporating more of his interest in drama in his next placement after Thanksgiving. He takes over a drama class in La Salle College Catholic Preparatory High School in Milwaukee. In an interesting coincidence, his cooperating teacher, Ernie Casciato, taught both Herb’s mother and uncle when they were in high school.
Herb is especially interested in the jump in discussion and maturity that comes in the move from middle school to high school.
“I’m excited to get into high school, because that’s where I want to be teaching,” Herb said. “I’ve never really wanted to teach middle school and this is merely reinforcing that fact.”
