Students gain new respect for teachers in Education and Training course
By: Ariel Inman
Coloring pages are passed around and the smell of crayons fill the air as the children excitedly scribble across the page, eager to show their new friends their art skills. The high school student aids warmly encourage each student individually, smiling as they move from desk to desk.
This occurs every Wednesday when 15 Hudson High School students travel to Bonner for hands on teaching experience. These students are part of the Principles of Education and Training course offered at Hudson. Participates in this program go to Bonner Elementary for their first semester and Peavy Primary their second semester to see first hand how teachers prepare for and lead their classes.
“The students who go to Bonner assist in the classroom in various different ways, sometimes they go to the copy machine and make copies for teachers, sometimes they work individually with students one on one, or with students who need extra help in multiplication, spelling, or writing.” Suzanne Ratcliff, instructor of the class, said, “They work with remedial students, they also work with advanced students who are maybe gifted students who have extra assignments and they do enrichment with them.”
The class is a great opportunity for students to get first hand experience of what they will be dealing with in the work force.
“I want to be a teacher so it’s a good experience to see how the kids are taught in school and we get to see it in the classroom from a different perspective.” K.D. Warner, current participant, said, “ My favorite part is getting to know the different children because they all have different personalities and it’s cool seeing all of their different likes and dislikes and learning how to work with those.”
Suzanne Ratcliff teaches and organizes the class to coordinate with the other campuses. The students have also volunteered at Bowling Special Olympics the last two years.
“It’s helpful because the students who are going over to Bonner are getting to see what teachers do day in and day out and they’re going to have the opportunity to work with students early on to maybe know what age or what speciality they want to go in.” Ratcliff said, “It’s also helpful because they get to see what the jobs and the duties of a teacher are and the ethical responsibilities before they go to college, because a lot of times in college you don’t actually get into those classes until your Junior or Senior year and it’s really late at that point to change your mind.”
The class is appealing to both students who are interested in pursuing a career in education and those who are not.
“A lot of students are put in the class maybe because they don’t really know what they want to do and the counselors want to give them a taste of it and they find out that working with young children is not where their comfort level is and they want to pursue a job in another career area.” Ratcliff said, “Last year I had a Freshman boy who wasn’t really excited about the class and he went over there and he got to work with Coach Stewart and really ended up loving teaching P.E. and that’s something he said he may want to do. He can see himself being a coach now and before that he couldn’t really see himself doing anything like that, as far as professionally goes. So it’s a great opportunity for these students to figure out what they want to do and if kids are part of that career path.”
The class was started last year as part of House Bill 5 and consisted of 21 students who had the opportunity to experience the program for the first time.
“This class gave me an insight on just how much our teachers work and how much they put into it just to teach us on a daily basis.” Ramsay Campbell, former participant in the Principles of Education program, said, “They don’t just show up for a paycheck, they show up because they’re here to educate us and make our lives better.”
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