Tales from Teacher's College

Tales from Teacher’s College

We learn a lot of different things in Teacher’s college. We learn the fine art of educating the world youth. We are given the skills to prepare units, lessons and activities that will engage students and give them the wisdom to be responsible and productive members of society.

However, there are many other things that were taught to us as we were preparing to embark on our teaching journey. These are my stories from teachers college.

Everyone’s biggest comment when they found out I was going to go back to school to become a teacher was “Are you crazy? Why would you want to put up with kids all day?” I can’t say the thought didn’t cross my mind.

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I decided that before I made this big transition in my life I had better make sure that this is what I really wanted to do. I signed up to volunteer at an elementary school and spend some time working in the classroom environment. I started working in a school near my house 4 times a week which was easy because I worked at night. I was helping out in two different classes. One was a grade 2 class and the other was grade 5.

I was helping out with things like reading groups and math. When I wasn’t working directly with students I was able to observe the classroom teacher. I got to see how they prepared lessons and organized their class. I learned so much about how they dealt with classroom management issues and dealing with difficult students.

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I knew after the first week of volunteering that this was exactly what I wanted to do. I enjoyed the feeling of helping kids understand concepts that they were having a hard time with. Seeing the smile on a kids face when they had that “ah ha” moment gave me a sense of pride in what I was doing that I wasn’t getting from my current job.

I immediately started looking into what I needed to do to apply to teacher’s college. I was prepared to make a major career change and I wanted to get started as soon as possible. I enrolled in a couple university classes about children’s psychology and literature and prepared my application to teacher’s college. That was over 15 years ago and I have never looked back. One of the best decisions I have ever made in my life.