Profiles

Where was your practicum placement?

King Middle School, Portland 8^th grade ELA

During the spring of my senior year, I was a student teacher at King Middle School in Portland, ME, where I worked with three sections of eighth grade English Language Arts. Working with a diverse student body in which 33% of the students are English language learners, I learned to adapt my teaching to support the students’ diverse learning needs. I hope to continue the reflective practice and reciprocal teacher-student learning that I’ve experienced during my practicum as I teach middle school ESOL in Boston next year.

Why Education?

I’ve always wanted to be a teacher since I can remember, but when I started tutoring I began to realize how rewarding it is to teach. I believe that teaching is one of the most rewarding professions, as teachers help students to develop the skills that they need to think for themselves, to ask questions, and to make informed decisions. And along with teaching skills and content, teaching provides an avenue for building character and ensuring that knowledge is paired with good citizenship. Through Bowdoin, I had the opportunity to pursue a career in teaching during my undergraduate studies.

Where was your Student Teaching placement?

Deer Isle-Stonington High School, Deer Isle, Maine

Following my graduation from Bowdoin in May of 2015, I moved to Deer Isle, Maine and worked at Deer Isle-Stonington High School as a paraprofessional until shifting into my student teaching practicum there in Spring 2016. I was able to teach two different courses in U.S. History. One of them covered traditional content, while the other was a team taught, interdisciplinary effort that was part of the high school’s offerings in their Marine Studies Pathway. Entitled “U.S. History Through the Fisheries,” the course sought to integrate skills and content knowledge of history, English, and marine trades. Throughout my practicum, I collaborated every day with my team of teachers and developed new curricula with the intent of giving each student as personalized a learning experience as possible. While I leave my student teaching experience with knowledge of how to develop better lesson plans or modified assessments, perhaps my most important take away is to remember the process of reciprocal transformation that occurs with teaching and learning. In order for learning to take place, I must first remember to ask not what I have to offer my students, but what we have to offer each other.

Why Education?

I first began to think about a career in teaching after my sophomore year of high school. I had always been a “good” student in the sense that I achieved high grades and was very studious. That year, however, my history teacher became the first to really challenge me to embrace failure and to get out of my learning comfort zone. His approach to teaching and assessing history was far different than anything else I had encountered to that point in my life – he made me actively bring the learning to him, rather than having me be a passive agent in the classroom where he imparted knowledge of the content onto me. After taking his class, I was hooked on history with a new sense of excitement and ownership of how and what I could learn. From that point on, I began to think that becoming a history teacher would not only allow me to continue exploring a subject that I found fascinating and exciting, but more importantly it could give me the opportunity to inspire students to develop confidence as learners in the same way that my teacher did for me.

At Bowdoin, I have taken advantage of opportunities provided to develop an understanding of and skills in educational policy, philosophy, and practice in a wide range of contexts from urban to rural. I took part in two Alternative Spring Break trips focused on learning about urban education, one as a participant in New York City, and another as a trip leader in Washington, D.C. For my pre-practicum experience, I was placed in a tenth grade Civics and Government class at Falmouth High School in a suburb of Portland, Maine.

Why Education?

I attended inner city public schools in Memphis through primary and secondary school whose population consisted of mostly low-income African American students. As a student in elementary school I was classified as “gifted.” Because of this I was afforded many opportunities many of my classmates were not such as extracurricular activities, summer programs, and more academic enrichment in general. My teachers viewed me as superior to my peers because they saw me as possessing some motivation that allowed me to be more academically successful than them. I saw my peers as lacking something to motivate them and so for college I was determined to leave Memphis, determined to find something better for me.

The two education classes at Bowdoin that really changed my mindset about my community and inspired me to pursue teaching were Education 1101 (Contemporary Issues in Education) and Education 2203 (Educating all Students). These classes made me realize a few things. First, these classes made me realize that I was no better than my classmates back home, I was just good at “doing school." I was able to sit in my chair, do whatever my teacher told me, memorize facts, and follow directions without complaint. Even when I wasn’t actually learning anything my teachers saw me as the ideal student because they did not have to worry about me misbehaving. Second, I realized that my classmates didn’t just have a lack of motivation that was keeping them from succeeding. For minority students in low income areas, there are larger societal structures that work against them including attending schools with subpar facilities and resources, racism, and classism that provides unequal opportunities in the education system. The last thing my education classes made me realize is that my community needed excellent teachers to counteract the effects of inequality and that I wanted to be a teacher so I could show my students that they were all valuable whether they were good at “doing school” or not.

In the spring semester of 2015, I will be completing the Bowdoin Teacher Scholars program. This program will no doubt give me invaluable experiences in curriculum, planning, management, and assessing student learning that I hope to bring to my first year of teaching as a 2015 Teach for America corps member in Memphis, TN.

You can watch a video of Dominique's student teaching portfolio defense here.

Why math education?

Though I come from a family of educators, I did not realize the passion I had for teaching until I arrived at Bowdoin and enrolled in Contemporary American Education. I had always loved math and science, and figured I would study physics or environmental studies while at Bowdoin. After delving into a study of the major issues that historically and currently affect the educational landscape in America, I was engrossed in the philosophy, politics, successes, and failures of our education system.

Upon continuing my studies in education, I only became more inspired. I began to further reflect on the impact that countless teachers have had on my life, and my only desire was to reciprocate that feeling for future students. What proved perhaps most beneficial to me was how the students and faculty in the Education Department embodied a tremendously holistic view of teaching and learning. We never saw ourselves as distinct groups of just math teachers or just English teachers, but a group of peers with a common passion. This enabled us to focus on addressing the major challenges of education from a unique collective mindset, while contemplating our disciplines from a remarkably integrated viewpoint.

It would be difficult for me to say a single course influenced me more than another, because each one was uniquely special. The understandings I gained from Mindfulness in Education were distinct from those gained in Curriculum, just as the insights from Educational Psychology were distinct from those of Teaching and Learning. Together, the structure of the courses in the Education Department spiraled to a culmination with the practicum experience, which I feel enabled me to leave Bowdoin as an educator equipped to meet the challenges faced in 21^st century classrooms.

ALUMNI UPDATE: Cully is teaching high school mathematics at the Washington Waldorf School in Bethesda, Maryland.

Where was your placement?

Greely High School (Cumberland, ME)

Where was your placement?

Casco Bay High School (Portland, ME)

Subject area: 11^th grade Social studies

Why Education?

I’ve been interested in teaching long before I came to Bowdoin. In fact, beginning as early as middle school I envisioned myself as a teacher—I even kept notes on lessons or activities from school that I particularly enjoyed, imagining that I would one day use them in my own classroom! As someone who sincerely enjoys connecting with others and thrives off of communication, I always thought of teaching as the ideal profession. At Bowdoin, my education courses widened my perspective and challenged my assumptions; they forced me to see teaching as far more complicated and the role as teacher as far more nuanced (and difficult) than my younger self had always imagined.  But my coursework also reinforced my desire to be a teacher; it expanded my reasoning for wanting to teach from a largely abstract desire to a defined understanding of what was important in the classroom and the crucial part that teachers play in shaping this learning environment. Through one class at Bowdoin, I had the opportunity to work individually with a high school student who was struggling in class and at risk of failing. Her trouble lay in transition to a new school, trouble at home, and difficulty processing in the traditional classroom environment. My experience with her reinforced the mantra that every student can learn and that individual student needs are highly important. Although she has since graduated and is taking classes at a local community college, we are still close today and see each other often, a constant reminder of why I want to teach. Now confident that I want to go on to be a teacher, Bowdoin Teacher Scholars provides an amazing opportunity that allows me to pursue my long-time goal of being a teacher while still supported by the Bowdoin community and the Bowdoin education department. Knowing that after graduation I want to be involved in public schools, getting Maine State certified through Bowdoin Teacher Scholars is the perfect beginning to what I hope is a long career in education!

ALUMNI UPDATE:  Molly has recently moved to New York City following a year as an Inclusion Associate at Codman Academy in Boston.

Where was your placement?

Greely High School (Cumberland, ME)
Subject area: French 2 and French 3

Why Education?

One of the many reasons I came to Bowdoin was for the Bowdoin Teacher Scholars program. The fact that I could, as an undergrad, become a certified French teacher was immensely appealing to me. Starting with ED 1101 my very first semester here, my interest in education studies only continued to grow as I learned about the vast and varied challenges of educating children. I went from simply wanting to communicate and hopefully transfer my enormous passion and enthusiasm for the French language and Francophone studies, to wanting to understand the differences and the tensions between what education should and what education does look like in America. My experience studying abroad in Paris last year only solidified this interest, as I compared and contrasted the French and American educational systems. I started to question my own definitions of education and teaching, and began to analyze my own experiences as a public school student. What does it mean to be a successful student? How do we demonstrate acquired knowledge? How do we successfully engage students with the material at hand? What is the role of a teacher, both in and beyond the walls of the classroom? And so on. As my interest in education studies grew, I knew that the only way to truly understand the issues behind these questions was to get in front of the classroom myself. I know that my experiences as a full-time student teacher at Greely will help me to answer some of these questions, but will also open up new paths of inquiry and create even bigger challenges. I look forward to tackling these challenges with the help of the Education department here at Bowdoin and of my cooperating teachers at Greely. Sometime after graduation, I hope to obtain a master's degree in Education Policy so that I can work towards solving some of these issues facing the American educational system today.

ALUMNI UPDATE: After a year of teaching English in France, Rachel has returned to the States to pursue a Master's degree in policy at Harvard University Graduate School of Education.