This is my last semester before I do my student teaching and as I look back at my time here I often wonder about the classes I have taken and the purpose of some of them. I feel that I have taken several classes here that are pointless and will in no way honestly help me become a better teacher. I do understand that I an odd major (Business Education) but I don't see the purpose in classes like Reading in Content Areas. How is this going to help me make my students understand Accounting and Business Law? How are classes like this going to help me be a better teacher? I have had to do over 60 hrs of in class observation and every teacher i have observed all said the same thing "the classes are good but its nothing like the real thing". I think that instead of taking some of these classes that I believe to be pointless we should spend more time in the classroom.

Can anyone make any since of these classes?
Should more time be spent in the classroom?

Tracy Keller

My concentration is sociology and this is my last semester as well and only recently have I been told that the likelihood of teaching sociology in high school is very slim. So, to say the least, I feel very defeated. Like you, I have taken all these sociology classes which I love and now all of a sudden all my education classes are focused on history. Granted, I know that I am technically a "social science" major, but I just feel very left out and frustrated.
I have had absolutely NO teacher observation. Next semester I will be student teaching and I have no experience within classroom walls. I think this is ridiculous.
Not to mention the fact that, to be honest, these education classes are a joke - not this one, I am actually enjoying this one - but so many of these classes just feel like a waste of my time. Let me sit in a classroom and see it for myself!
Sorry, it's just frustrating. I can't help but worry about my future success, or lack thereof.

Tracy:

Every single class a K-12 student takes is connected intimately with the acquisition of reading skills. I would also extend that statement to one's college education. I'm concerned that you don't see this, because it may mean you will not be prepared to really teach all of your students. You would then be in a position of, for example, widening the achievement gap, which I seriously doubt is something you consciously want to do.

I take the "usefulness" issue very seriously, so I spent the first four hours of class addressing it in various ways. I would find your question to be well grounded, in the case of my class, if you had attended class from the beginning. As it is, I'm left to wonder if, for you, the lack of usefulness of your classes might be directly related to a lack of involvement on your part. It makes me afraid this is what could have happened when you took your Reading in Content area class.

That said, I think you are absolutely right to suggest that secondary majors ought to be spending more time actually teaching, and then return to the college classroom to reflect on what went well or poorly. This is a direction I hope our college of ed will take in the future!

I wanted to respond to Tracy. Sometimes, I too, feel like I am not ever going to use some of the stuff I learn in my classes. I guess after being out of school for three years (substitute teaching in the meantime) and returning for a second degree, my perspective has changed. Yeah, I'll agree that EVERYTHING you learn in class won't necessarily be useful, but at the same time, I really think that the various classes you take enable you to connect different ideas across the curriculum. Things I learned in my anthropology classes years ago seem to resurface repeatedly in my Spanish classes. I once took an EMT class (and my certification has way since expired) out of interest, but I don't feel like it was a waste. Despite the fact I'm going to be a Spanish teacher, that EMT class can help me if someone ever needs help or if I get an injury I might just know how to treat it. After studying anthropology (which is a lot like sociology) I really feel I understand people a lot better and that helps me in daily relationships (both culturally and otherwise). No, I didn't end up working in the anthropology field (at least not yet) but that has helped broaden my horizons. This is what I hope to teach my students. To be open-minded and be willing to explore. I do agree that we need to be in the classroom more. I am nearing the end of my Spanish Ed major, and have yet to be in a classroom (other than CI280). However, the WHOLE reason I'm here is because I substitute taught spanish classes for a teacher on maternity leave. I jumped into teaching completely oblivious to what teaching was really like - I had no education classes but I could speak Spanish. Yeah, I hit a few bumps (like some kids cutting class and I was the one who caught them...) but overall, I was able to bond and connect to students and I had so much fun and felt like I might just have made a tiny bit of difference and sparked some interest in the minds of some of those students. The more time that went by, the more I felt that way, too. I guess that's why I'm not so nervous about going out and teaching - I feel like I'm not going to "break" a student, and that the learning process has begun for me in terms of being in the classroom....

Like Tracy, I'm a Business Ed major. In all of the classes I've taken, there is always something new and useful that I have learned. There has also been some assignments that I wonder what the point in them was. ANother advantage I have is working in a high school and having access to current teachers. They have been a tremendous help to me but they have also taught me that not everything I learn in my classes will be used when I begin teaching. I just have to go with the philosophy that my teachers were in the classroom at some time and they are doing their best to prepare me.

I am also a Business Ed. major (it must be a record having three of us in the same class!). I think we are pretty lucky in that in our area get to spend a pretty large amount of time in actual classrooms. I can't imagine having to start teaching without that. Sometimes I feel like some of what we do is common sense, but then I'll run into someone who is teaching now and wishes that he or she had the opportunity to study the kinds of things I'm studying now. I know I can't say "It's all great stuff!" right now because I haven't been in a position where I've been able to put it all to work yet. I guess I just assume that our teachers really do know their stuff and want us to succeed and have it reflect well on ASU and their program.

I agree some classes may feel pointless, but don't be quick to judge them as pointless. Every chance to learn something new should be taken, we as teachers need to be very well rounded when we go out into the real world. I think that the class give us a chance to question the situations that might arise in a class room setting and with guidence from the teacher we can find solutions that might tailor to the situations at hand. Every class we take should be looked at as another tool to put in our bag of teaching tricks even if we feel the teacher in there is not up to standards, we can learn things not to do in our classroom.

Yes, some classes we take here at ASU may seem pointless, but in the end, we will look back on them and say Thank goodness we took them. As a junior, I look back on things I did my first two years here. I thought they were dumb and a waste of time, but now I am able to connect that stuff to things I am learning in the upper level classes. The same will follow us as we go into our own classrooms one day. We will eventually run into things where we can use our knowledge from things we did in college. So when you think a class or activity is useless, keep it in the back of your head for a time when you become a teacher.

I have taken a few courses that I absolutely hated! However, I have come to realize that they mainly just make me more well rounded. That is always a good thing especially going into the field of teaching. Students may not always love the subject we will teach them, but by knowing more beyond our subject of expertise, we may be able to teach them something very valuable. I was fortunate enough to get to tutor at Watauga High (I am a English sec. edu. major) and that gave me a whoel new view of school life. It was very intimidating as I am sure student teaching will be, but I learned a lot. It may be frustrating not to have more classroom experience prior to student teaching but it will only make us learn that much more!

Dr. Turner,

First I’m sorry if I have offended you in anyway. I was just wondering if any of the other students felt this way. I greatly appreciate your feed back and you have made me realize some reasoning behind some of these classes. As far as getting more inclass experience I was wondering if there is anything we could do to change it?

Tracy

I was just accepted to the college of edu. last fall and I am currently taking the four required courses in the coll of edu that I need before my student teaching next fall. As for the first three and a half years at ASU, I had a lot of classes that I thought were pointless. However, after just a few weeks of classes this semester I am really starting to see what will be expected of me when I start teaching. It seems that in my classes this semester that I learn something new and useful everyday. I know I won't use everything I learn this semester, but I can't imagine what I would do without these courses. Nothing is going to be as valuble as spending time in the classroom, but I see this semester as setting somewhat of a foundation for my career in teaching.

I am glad that you said what many of us feel. I have a class last semester that I felt that I wasted my time in taking. I felt this way because it was something that I was not interested in and so now I feel I might have been harsh in my judgement. In college it is so easy to feel overwhelemed with all the requirements. From my experience if a class has not DIRECTLY related to my concentrations I have been quick to judge. Maybe we should just chalk these classes up to gaining a more well-rounded education.