THE RECORD Online

Fall 2002 Features

The Education of a Teacher

Recognizing what it takes to train a teacher who is prepared for the complexities inherent in educating children is the job of the Teacher Education Program at Greenville College, a program that traditionally has turned out well-equipped teachers who know intimately well the path they’ve chosen and embrace it with confidence and pride.

A Brief History
In 1855, the college was first established to serve young women. Then Almira College, the institution operated into the late 1890s when diminishing financial support prompted the school’s trustees to declare a state of exigency. In 1890, a group of Free Methodist clergy and lay leaders purchased the campus property and renamed it after the town of Greenville. After renovating “Old Main,” now known as Hogue Hall, the first coeducational student body was admitted in 1892.

As the college sought to combat ignorance and to provide an environment conducive to uninhibited study, it also sought a means to provide aspiring teachers the resources necessary to engage students. As a consequence, the first education courses were offered during the 1929-30 academic year, the Teacher Education Department was established in 1949, and the Illinois State Board of Education approved the program during the early 1950s.

During recent years, the Teacher Education Program has shown a marked increase in student enrollment. From 1993 until the present, the number of students either enrolled or accepted in the program has increased from 195 to slightly over 300.

Today, the Education Department offers four major degree programs: Early Childhood Education, Elementary Education, Secondary (in nine content areas) Education and Special Education. Greenville College remains one of the few Christian colleges in the country to offer a degree in special education.

(History compiled from the Greenville College Conceptual Framework for Professional Preparation Programs, Fall 2002)

"They'll be exposed to real-life situations outside the classroom learning with hands-on, practical experience in a real-world context."

Learning by Example
Teaching is not for the faint of heart. For those who haven’t stood at the helm of a classroom for the first time, looking into a sea of expectant – and sometimes taunting – stares, mere description cannot suffice. To fully understand what’s required to successfully face such a scene, one must experience it firsthand. To obtain a job in most professions, experience is an asset. In the field of education, however, experience becomes the difference between a career with longevity and one that proves too overwhelming to even attempt. Fortunately, the GC Teacher Education Program has designed a plan for prospective teachers to both learn the theory and practice the craft of an educator before their first job is secured.

Experiential learning is not a new idea in higher education. For years, colleges and universities have understood that undergraduates benefit from internships and field experiences. Teacher education is no different. “For students to sit in classrooms, take notes and learn about theory provides little opportunity to see whether the theories work,” says Dr. Ed Blue, Director of Teacher Education and Head of the Department of Education. “We send students out into the field to gain practice using good theories.”

At Greenville, several unique approaches to shepherding future educators through the Teacher Education Program exist, providing tools to gauge interest level and help students gain practical experience in the classroom throughout their four years at GC.

First, when students express interest in the program, they are encouraged to enroll in a course entitled Orientation to Educational Opportunities, a requirement for all education majors. The one-credit class acquaints students with the program and requires 30 hours of classroom observation. The course is designed to help students determine whether or not they’re ready to commit to pursuing a teaching career, says Dr. Ken Schmidt, Professor of Education. “We want students in the classroom so they can see that teaching is not this wonderful thing that they thought it was when they were seniors in high school, visiting a grade school and tutoring a child out in the hallway. There are good days and bad days,” he admits. “Getting students in there early allows them to see what it’s really like.”

The Exceptional Child course taken in the sophomore year requires 30 more hours of observation in a special education classroom. Following this course, with 60 hours of observation time logged, students can still change their major and graduate in four years. Though GC has always required a substantial amount of observation — starting very early on in the education major’s college career — many colleges and universities have revamped their programs to adhere to the state of Illinois’ recent mandate to embed field experiences into all methods courses and most of the professional education courses.

Student teaching, usually done in an education major’s final year, is an intensive clinical experience serving to prepare an individual to take his or her own classroom. To facilitate the student teaching process, all prospective teachers have an “early experience” completed the August preceding their student teaching session. Each student is assigned a cooperative teacher — a professional teacher in a local school — who guides them through preliminary meetings/workshops and the first two days of school with the children. The student then sees how the teacher prepares the room, plans to grade students, greets the children when they arrive and deals with parents at the beginning of a school year. “When I got my student teaching assignment, I just showed up. I really had no idea what I was doing,” Schmidt marvels. “There’s no other program in the state of Illinois that does this early experience.”

Because Greenville is a small community, the Education Department has a significant amount of contact with the classroom teachers in the area and cooperative teachers are hand-picked by the department; many are GC alumni and all must have a master’s degree. Students are placed according to their specific needs, a luxury that many larger schools cannot afford due to sheer numbers of students.

During the first five weeks of the student teaching session, all students are placed in a Special Methods Course (ED401). Together with two other student teachers, an individual is assigned to a local school and clinical teacher who, while teaching his or her own class, also mentors the three students he or she is assigned. This initial five weeks allows the student teacher to concentrate on the basics of teaching — lesson planning, discipline, grading, etc. Instead of jumping right in and taking over the class, the teacher in training has a chance to observe the clinical teacher and perfect these key areas.

“At the end of the five weeks,” says Schmidt, “most of the students are very well equipped. In fact, they’re pumped up and ready to go. They feel much, much more confident.” Evidence of the value of this five-week experience comes in the letters elicited from alumni of the program who cite the Special Methods Course as the best way to prepare for the student teaching session.

An Elementary Advisory Council, comprised of teachers who have worked with GC students, support the continuation of the Special Methods Course. Having seen the polished teachers that emerge following the five weeks of practice and observation, they know firsthand the value of the experience.

The evidence of what happens when these kinds of early experiences are not made available is all too plentiful. One of the on-going problems in education today is the lack of teacher retention. Young teachers are leaving the profession at an alarming rate, contributing to a very real teacher shortage, largely due to failure to prepare them in a realistic and experiential way for what they’re about to face: comparatively low salaries, long hours, large class sizes, and poor administrative and parental support, to name a few.

The good news: Greenville’s retention rate remains higher than many other colleges and universities, arguably because of the solid preparation GC’s program provides. “We’ll keep churning out the teachers,” says Schmidt. “It’s up to America to wake up and start respecting education. It’s just going to take time.”

Ambassadors of Christ
Though the current theme for the teacher preparation programs at Greenville College, “Preparing Teachers to Serve in a Culturally Diverse World,” was adopted only four years ago, the intent was established when the first courses in educational pedagogy were offered.

As the Teacher Education Program continues to reevaluate what training future teachers require, providing cross-cultural experiences remains a high priority, both to satisfy state certification requirements and to foster personal development.

It’s important to first define the term “diverse.” It encompasses not only race, but socioeconomic status and geographic location. “People who live in Sorento [a rural community northwest of Greenville] are from a different culture than those who come from the city of Chicago or St. Louis,” Schmidt asserts. Blue agrees, adding, “We try to place students in field experiences located in both rural and urban areas. We feel they need to be prepared in each of those milieus in order to confront what they’re going to confront as teachers in the years to come. Probably, even more than that, to be prepared to serve people regardless of their background.”

One way in which the Teacher Education Program is affording its students cross-cultural experiences is through partnerships it has established with several St. Louis-area schools. Education majors may do field experiences or even student teach in urban locations such as the Adams School in the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood or across the river at the Venice School. Cahokia and Krietner are two other schools that also have entered into agreements with GC. Krietner, in fact, has a 45% Mexican population where children are learning English as their second language.

Adams School, which is located across the street from the Lighthouse Free Methodist Church, has recently undergone a $16 million renovation made possible by several philanthropic donations. Though the school had closed after the winter of 1993–94, it reopened in August 2001, much to the delight of the neighborhood.

Joe Culumber, Director of GC’s Leadership and Ministry Master’s Program (LAMP), has served as interim pastor at Lighthouse Church for the last year. In networking in the area surrounding the church, it became clear to him that Adams School anchors the neighborhood. Upon meeting the school’s principal, Ms. Sharonica Hardin, Culumber became convinced that a great opportunity existed there. Finally, Blue, along with several education majors, visited Adams and also recognized Hardin’s desire to develop relationships not only with the church, but with Greenville College.

Consequently, the college has purchased a building containing four apartments, also across from Lighthouse Church, which will ultimately house 20-25 GC students from various majors, including education. These students will do internships in their respective majors and take classes in the evenings. Starting this fall, GC education majors will have the opportunity to student teach at Adams School, fulfilling a portion of the college’s vision of establishing an urban study center in St. Louis.

“People from the community will benefit from having much-needed resources of money, talent and skills being brought into the neighborhood to help in different ministries,” says Culumber, who will be chairing the college’s Urban Studies Center Committee. “Students will get a cross-cultural experience and an urban experience that they can’t get in the city of Greenville. They’ll be exposed to real-life situations outside the classroom so they can begin to integrate classroom learning with hands-on, practical experience in a real-world context.” He continues, “They’ll be challenged to rethink their own cultural values, their own religious values just by being in a different setting.”

Greenville College education majors are thriving because of these hands on, diverse experiences that clearly are integral no matter what the course of study. The bottom line, though, is that GC is in the business of developing ambassadors of Jesus Christ, transforming students for lives of character and service. “That is foremost than anything we do at a Christian college,” says Schmidt. “That’s what really makes us unique.”

Last updated: December 10, 2002