Get Educated About Education Studies: The Pre-Education Pathway at Allegheny

Lucy.

Alright, hi everyone, we're going to give people a few minutes to log on. I see a couple participants joining us, so thank you for being here today. My name is Rachel Sloan. I am an assistant director of admissions at Allegany College. Today I'm joined by Professor Susan Sloate and I'll let her do a formal introduction in just a minute. But she's going to be our expert today on education studies, so she's going to do a presentation to kind of walk us through some of the things that are really great for students to nowhere.

Maybe thinking about education studies or you know, maybe you haven't thought about it all and are curious to learn a little bit more as we get started just a couple of housekeeping items, you guys should have access to a chat on your screen today. If at any point you have a question or anything that you want us to know, you can feel free to just type into the chat box. Be aware you won't see it pop up right away. I'll approve it when it comes through and then we'll be able to see it in the chat so.

If you have questions at any point, you don't have to wait to the end, you can take them in and will just hold them for you and ask them at the ends. Well, so feel free to use that at any moment in the presentation.

If you're having any audio or tech issues, usually a quick refresh of your page will fix that, but it seems to be running smoothly today, so I hope there's no issues out there.

And then also add these presentations are being recorded. So if you want to, you know go back to the Alleghanian missions website at any point in time. Needs will be uploaded hopefully within the next week so you can always access them again in reference. The information by watching the session in your free time as well, I'm going to at this moment, turn it over to Professor slow to kind of do an introduction and then start walking through the presentation so.

Over to you season.

Thanks so much, Rachel. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. And for your interest in education studies, as Rachel told you, my name is Susan Sloate. I am both an assistant professor of English, so I live partly in the English Department, but I also am the director of the Education Studies program at Allegheny. So I have a bunch of things to tell you about education studies. First of all, it is a minor.

At Allegany, Anne. It is interdisciplinary and I'm going to just explain what both of those things mean for a student experience. When you're at Allegheny, the reason we have it as a minor is that it's designed to structure and support whatever content area. Someone who is planning to teach might be interested in doing. So it if you, let's say, wanted to be a history teacher. High school history teacher, you could major in history.

Get a real depth of preparation in that content area and then be supported in your plans to teeth by your minor in education studies and so you would do all of the things that you needed to do here to make the steps towards eventual teaching career.

What do I mean by interdisciplinary? That was the other term. I used the idea of education studies here is that.

Teachers and people who are educators in all different walks of life need to know a lot about a lot. And so we've created something that draws on a lot of different forms of knowledge. Just like a good liberal arts student always does that prepare students the very best that can be for an eventual teaching career in education or for using education in any of a number of different ways that they.

But their careers might take them, so we really feel like we've created the best of many worlds by this particular program. The other really cool thing I wanted to just mention about education studies before I jump into it, and one of the things that I love the most about it.

Is that while we have prepared students to become teachers at Allegheny since its inception in the 19th century.

The most recent version of education at Allegheny is driven entirely by students and what I mean by that is that when we underwent some changes in the late 90s and early 2000s.

Students wanted to create this interdisciplinary minor and so about seven years ago, two students, in particular who are now educators out in the world, helped me design this program, along with some other faculty in a way that would particularly respond to student interests and student needs and work for students in the best way possible, and so students continue to be very much involved in the running.

An creation of the program. We have two students who sit on our steering committee. They help make decisions about courses and programming and all kinds of interactions with the community, and so they are colleagues and we we try to incorporate student input in every way we can to the design of the program.

Alright, I'm going to move over to this slide, which tells you basically in a nutshell, what the structure of the education studies minor is at Allegheny. I want to begin by saying one important thing that I'll return to again at the end of the presentation.

When you do education at Allegany, you don't graduate with certification. Our students have a number of ways in which they go on to be teachers and get certified to teach, and I'll explain those but.

The important thing to notice is that this program allows students to explore education to be prepared to be teachers. An in fact to enter the teaching field. But there are a number of paths they they might take after Allegany. To do that. The reason we do that is because a we really want students to be as prepared in their content areas as possible. An in undergraduate certification programs.

You do much less going back to that history example, much less work in history or whatever your content area is then you because you're busy taking education, other education prerequisites and student teaching, and so we really feel that because our students minor in education studies major in their content area, they enter that field with a much greater depth.

Of preparation in their content area and we hear this again and again from our alumni. So our alumni are incredibly sought after as teachers and so keep that in mind and we'll talk about that again when we go down our list of slides here. So just a quick overview of what you would take as a minor at Allegheny. We have an introductory course where we cover a lot of important.

Ways of thinking about education education philosophy methods practice in teaching the sort of current state of education in the United States, in it a sort of contextual Ising that, in terms of global education, so that you can really get a full picture of what education looks like at this moment and what you yourself think about education. What do you believe about education in ways you may be having?

Thought about yet?

You'll need to take some electives and I'll talk about those in a second.

PPP courses of course, from another Department that will allow you some breath. Live context for education in the world. So an example is one of our colleagues in political science. Teaches the constitutional law course and his course allows. Allows students to think about you know what the Supreme Court is said about education and so students who take that course have a great deal of understanding about.

You know what are the laws and how do they impact education in the world?

Teaching internship is a really important part of our program. While you don't do a full teaching student teaching.

Year the way you will eventually in your certification program you get the experience of that over 2 semesters. Usually students take that junior or senior year in local schools and we really work to have you matched with an internship opportunity that corresponds with your interests. So if you decide, yeah, I really want to be a second grade teacher then will place you in a second grade classroom.

Similarly, if you wanted to be in secondary education, we would do the same. You know, if you want to be a physics teacher, we would do that. We also have a couple of extra internship opportunities which aren't requirements, but their tremendously enriching one is our internship in coaching. We have a lot of students who decide that they would like to also coach at the secondary level and so we want students to graduate. Knowing what that's all about in a way.

It's different from having just been an athlete, and so this is an opportunity to intern with a coach and and think through the whole process of helping with training, helping with maintaining the health, and well being of athletes and so on. And then another wonderful internship is in the middle schools where we actually help middle school teachers with local school gardens and teach in the classrooms.

About nutrition and gardening. And you know all of the kinds of things that really help families become healthy and and think in healthy ways, OK?

I'm going to move over to the next slide and just mention a couple of the courses that we offer and I won't go through this whole list but just point out a couple of them.

So one of the courses that is extremely popular with our students is foundations of special education. I think it goes without saying that any person who is an educator will have students in their classroom who have diverse needs and so foundations of special education really helps students prepare for those really different needs of different students in their classroom in a complex and comprehensive way.

I'm just going to mention my class children's literature because I know it incredibly well. That's of course that a lot of students take who are interested in elementary education. We spend the whole semester really thinking in deep ways about children's literature, its place in our culture, how children's literature helps both connect children to social expectations, and resist them in some ways, or give them escape from it.

And it's just a wonderful class. The students who take it bring so much to the table and I enjoy it every time I teach it and I just wanted to mention multicultural education. I've had many of my students tell me this is taught by Professor Heather Roberson. I've had many of my students tell me that it has been a life changing experience for them. Needless to say, we live in a diverse world and preparing for diverse classrooms is crucial.

For all of our educators, no matter where they are teaching an that course really helps students think in the most important ways possible about what a diverse classroom might look like. So obviously there's many more courses I could mention here. And if you have any questions about any of these, I'm happy to answer them.

Let me go on to the next slide.

I wanted to just mention teaching opportunities beyond the teaching internship. This is just a short list, but there are many more beyond this. So if you're really excited about teaching and getting teaching experience, there are programs both in the summer and during the academic year that you can be part of in our community in Crawford County, in local schools, and so on. So one is led by my colleague.

For Lisa Whitenack, it's called 4th graders and scientists as scientists rather and obviously when we're past Covid, which I hope we are all very soon.

This will be back in action that we're taking a little pause this year, but it's been a tremendously successful program in which we bring all of the 4th graders in the entire proper County School District, the campus, and they get to do real science in real labs and get a taste of what it means to to be a scientist in a college level. And they have so much fun. Our students are Allegany students are involved in actually.

Teaching them in, leading them through you know, lab experience is an. It's just a tremendously exciting program for everybody who's involved.

At the MLK Junior Mentoring Program is a long standing and really important program at the middle school to help students who may.

Middle school students who may otherwise struggle to succeed, have college mentors and sort of see what being a student looks like and where it can take you and those relationships that develop between our students and the middle school students are very strong and very meaningful, so that's a really great program.

And I just wanted to mention the last one, which is a brand new thing that we started. Thanks to covid. Actually, our education studies students right now are tutoring families. Currently just Allegany families tutoring all of the students who are in hybrid learning whose parents need an extra hand while they're also trying to work can lead their lives and the.

Wonderful thing is that those that support that.

Online tutoring for for their children is being provided free of charge by our education studies. Students who are getting academic credit for that and we're planning to continue that on in a variety of ways. An offer that more broadly down the road, even in a post Covid world and the great thing for our students. The great benefit to them is that on line learning is not going to go away and so our students are getting the experience.

Of teaching online as their undergraduates, and may need to draw on that skill down the road. It's going to be a real bonus to be able to sort of advertise yourself as having had that experience if you choose to take advantage of the app.

Alright, I'm going to circle back around now to what I told you about the fact that our students don't receive certification at the undergraduate level, but they get it through a variety of ways in the years immediately after Allegheny.

One of the things that we're seeing in the world of education is the higher demand for.

New teachers who have a Masters degree or who will get it while they're teaching. And So what are students? There are basically three ways that our students enter the teaching profession after Allegheny.

The first is by going to a one year teaching and Masters rather and certification program after Allegheny.

And that's a really important way for students to be prepared to then enter the classroom so we have a special affiliation with the University of Pittsburgh School of Education. They also don't certify their undergraduate students because, like us, they see those four years of undergraduate work as incredibly important in preparing students broadly to become teachers.

So what you do is after you graduate from Allegheny, you are guaranteed admission to the University of Pittsburgh School of Education with a minimum of a B average from Allegheny and by fulfilling certain prerequisites that we offer.

Through our education studies minor so you would graduate from Allegany with a major often in your content area and then a minor in education studies which has allowed you to fulfill those prerequisites and then you would go to the University of Pittsburgh. If you chose that route an in one calendar year so you would start in the summer after you graduate from Allegheny, Anna. One year later you would have both your certification.

An your Masters degree you'd be able to enter the teaching field at the Masters salary level, which is a significant bump and you would have all of the sort of requirements in place, including your student teaching to begin to enter a job by that year. By the end of that year. So basically, one year after.

Are you, you graduate from Allegany? You would have a Masters degree and a job.

The University of Pittsburgh spent incredibly successful in placing students as well, so so it's a really great path. We also have a similar program with Xavier University in Ohio.

And I'll just say our students are not limited to those programs by any means. We send our students to similar Masters and certification programs all around the country. Just as an example, we have a student right now completing her Masters and certification program at the University of Chicago. We have someone who's just completed hers at at the University of Pennsylvania. We have someone at Columbia and we have someone who's just started her.

Program at the University of Michigan this fall. We also have students.

We've gone to programs in California and Virginia and and so on. So depending on where you'd like to go next, the.

There's many, many possibilities and we work very hard with you as you get ready to make those decisions. To help you find a program that's right for you.

Um, some of this sort of 2nd way besides these Masters and certification programs that students go into the classroom is we have a lot of students who choose to take an international level teaching experience. So we've had students do Fulbright teaching in Kenya in Ecuador, in Germany, we've had students teach in South Korea and we have students teaching in China. So there all lots of.

Lots of opportunities for global experience. Again, post covid for teaching internationally, so that's a really exciting Ave if that's something you're interested in. And then there are special recruitment programs that are eager to get really highly skilled undergraduate students from schools like Allegany, Anne. What those programs do?

They are often run by foundations or or by States and they recruit students high, achieving students from high achieving undergraduate institutions like Allegany, the Common Begin teaching and they they have you. They support you. You get your teaching salary right away and they support you by giving you course work towards your certification and Masters degree so.

For example, we have a student currently who graduated two years ago who is receiving his certification and Masters degree while teaching in the state of Mississippi, and he's getting his certification and Masters degree at Oldness and currently and he'll. So he's sort of earning and learning at the same time. Getting all that experience and there's a lot of special mentoring support that happens in that way too. We also have a student who is currently.

Um, starting his program at Duquesne University, he is also a Woodrow Wilson Foundation teaching fellow, and that is a fantastic and highly competitive program for students interested in teaching in the Sciences, and he's going to be a secondary chemistry teacher, so there's lots of opportunities, and my job is to help students find those opportunities, access those opportunities and find things that work for them.

As they enter the teaching field so.

Those, that's a really quick at.

Sort of across the across the board. Look at Education and Allegheny. I'd be happy to answer any of your questions.

Yeah so.

Hi Rachel.

Well, thanks Susan, that was very informative. I even learned a few things such as really great. So thank you for putting that together. Any of the students or families or parents or whoever is on the call with us today. If you do have any questions for Susan, you can utilize the chat box on your screen and feel free just to type it in and then we'll go ahead and take those for you. So I'll give everyone a minute in case you can ask any questions she was, and in the meantime I might pose a question.

Share

To you I know one of the things that Allegheny is really proud of is our emphasis on undergraduate research and how every student does a senior research project before they graduate and things like that. Would you be able to share any examples of research that students have done in education studies? Or, you know, related or things that you thought were just really great projects? That kind of you know, help them continue on that journey.

Yeah, sure I can think of two really specific ones on that might be interesting to students. So my colleague Jennifer Foreman does a lot of research in something called Universal Design for learning, and it's a way of it's a sort of theory of teaching that takes normal curriculum and breaks it down so that it is designed.

To be as maximally accessible for all different learning abilities an she's done.

Done a lot of research and presented papers on this and has had students involved in that research in the summers with her, so that's been an they've presented at conferences. They presented at a conference in Cleveland and one in Chicago, so it's a great opportunity for students. There are a lot of summer research projects that students get involved in in the local communities, and so so there's been there. Have been a few.

In developing summer.

School programs that education studies has also been involved in those students will work with local community stakeholders who try and address that. That sort of gap that opens up when students are off for the summer, not our students. I don't mean that. I mean local, you know I mentioned Middle middle school students and so we try to try to create programming that helps students from the local community.

They not lose their learning and then I I'm working on some children's literature research and I've had students work with me on that. We I have a an essay that's that's in its final stages before publication, and that's been an incredibly rewarding experience. My student, who worked with me.

Did all kinds of research in archives of the London newspapers during the bombings in World War Two, looking at what happened to children and and the mass evacuation of children out of London. And so we've learned a ton together and that researches is showing up in an article that we're that we're working on publishing so.

That's awesome, that's really interesting. I don't wanna read that an so we didn't have any questions come in. Which is OK because the presentation was really great and covered things very clearly. So thank you for that season. If anyone who's you know on this call today, things have questions afterward. You can always feel free to just email admissions at allegheny.edu and we can help answer your questions or help connect you with you. Know Professor Sloat to really do more.

I'm so young, you know, worry if you think of something later, we're happy to continue the conversation with you. So thank you everyone who joined in today. Um, if you're going to any of the sessions, either at 12:30 or 1:00 o'clock, make sure you check your emails for those links as well and enjoy the rest of your weekend. Everyone. Thanks, Susan.

Thanks yeah, thanks for joining me.