<p>My D was accepted to Columbia. Can anyone describe the "feel" of the students and staff. She'd be at Columbia Teacher's College (graduate school program). Thanks so much!</p>
<p>My future DIL graduated there within the past 3 years. I picked up from her these attitudes at CTC: dedicated, helpful, highly professional and committed to their work, able to create friendships after-hours. Faculty was nurturing in a grad school way: not goopy sweet but alert to each student and guiding them to become VERY well trained, placed and successful in the field after graduation.</p>
<p>The coursework is serious and requires reading and investment of time. It’s Columbia and the faculty is educated, intelligent, at the cutting edge of research. But they want students to learn the theory IN ORDER TO APPLY it. So that grad school is not up in the clouds, ivory tower style. They are rather practical folks, not only intellectual; but very intelligent/applied. The faculty is in and out of actual elementary schools all the time.</p>
<p>The student teaching assignments were at one point gruelling because of geography; i think they have one (of several) assignments out in Rockland County which meant going out by train and starting her day at 5 a.m. to make class by 8. But that’s just one of several rotation/assignments. The rest are within NYC. Evidently the kind of experience they get once they are in Rockland Co merits the long trip. I did feel sorry for her during that rotation!</p>
<p>She continues to gather on occasion with her CTC graduated classmates now that they are working in the city. She’s friendly to begin with, a real hard worker/no complainer, and empathizes with other teachers-in-training. (then comes home to vent to my son!) So if you hear your D “vent” to you understand that she might need someone just to hear her out; it doesn’t mean she needs anything solved by you. Just a good set of ears, sympathy, encouragement and good nourishing food for a healthy break. The students have to put up with a lot of stress but the stress comes from their placements and the schools they serve. To each other, the students and faculty appear to be a source of STRENGTH and support. They delight in swapping stories about the individual students they teach, with whom they sometimes fall completely “in love” in a teacher way – talking about what they did cute that day or what remarkable progress (in special ed, it can be tiny but hugely important). They share like they are moms, but these are “just” their students. It’s okay to get involved and wrapped up in the students. It’s a “warm” grad school, in other words; not cold and frosty! That’s my impression from just listening to my DIL.</p>
<p>Good luck to your D. Friendliness, caring, openness to others (as compared to whines…) seems to be what they cultivate to keep everyone’s spirits up. The work is hard but they all know they are doing something extremely worthwhile.</p>
<p>Many years ago I went to Teachers College and I loved it! By the way, there are more than just teachers getting advanced degrees there. Everyone is so helpful, the Columbia area is vibrant, filled with kids 18 and up (I was 30 when I went so I was one of the old ones, but nobody cared.) </p>
<p>The professors are some of the most respected people in their fields, very open to a variety of learning styles. It was an amazing experience for me.</p>
<p>Is the coursework impossibly difficult?</p>
<p>I got the impression (about CTC) that it’s time consuming but not incomprehensible! </p>
<p>And here’s my take from training elsewhere in teacher ed: Any graduate rogram in Teacher Ed requires dedication, long hours of work, emotional involvement. But the course material is not akin to advanced philosophy or nuclear physics to understand it. </p>
<p>In my own experience in grad school (teacher ed, regular track, for Grades “PreK-Grade 6”, not Spec Ed, one year post B.A., and in Canada): it was actually kind of dumb intellectually, but they work you really hard. The most clever students figure out how to not overwork, but I wasn’t one of them. I put in endless time on (for example) creating a wow-ee 3D bulletin board or masterful lesson plan, but there comes a point of diminishing returns where it won’t get any better. I found it hard to say “good enough” and wrap up my project assignment or paper. I imposed on myself burn-out and sleep deprivation. In retrospect I worked TOO hard in grad school for teachers education. That’s probably my personality. </p>
<p>The course content was MUCH simpler than undergraduate courses in, for example, history, philosophy, religion, math. I went to a top-30 LAC for undergrad. My later Teacher Ed graduate courses were nowhere near the “brainbreakers” of my undergraduate studies, which for me focused heavily on the Humanities and Social Sciences, rather than Math or Science. </p>
<p>You are talking about theories and methodologies to REACH CHILDREN. It’s not intellectual rocket science; children are children. There’s some brain theory research articles, for example, but the understanding needed from it is how that applies to children’s ways of learning. If a particular artifcle is challenging I’d also be confident at CTC that someone would gladly help by having coffee together to give a verbal synopsis to a classmate, or shared discussion to figure out a very science-based research article that is arcane but has a conclusion teachers need to understand. It’s not cut-throat competition; teaching is collaborative and colleagial. People would help each other. Nobody with better grades has the edge on getting a job later; it just isn’t that kind of profession.</p>
<p>It just takes heartfelt dedication from the graduate students to do all the assigned work. But it’s NOT impossible intellectually, not even close IMO.</p>
<p>What may feel new is the course theory, the “pedagogy” about how people learn, what motivates or impedes them from learning, some brain theory and linguistics. But the entire time you study how to teach the math or reading, you are actually talking about math at the level of Grades 1-6, or perhaps 1-12; nothing higher. The English isn’t complex literature; it’s about various programs to help a child learn to read books at the level of “Matilda” or “If You Give a Pig a Cookie,” or successful ways to introduce children to their first poems. Those poems might be at the level of “Rain, rain go away” not T.S. Eliot. But HOW to get children to read and delight in poetry – by walking through the rain together; by assembling word-cards into experimental phrases; by writing an acros-tik using the word “MOTHER” for every first line…those are the lessons about poetry in grad education classes. HOW TO TEACH it.</p>
<p>How to determine when and why a child can’t progress, AND how to manage a group of children with individual needs and personalities – that’s also new information. It’s interesting and accessible. A lot of course-readings, as I recall, are field reports from the classrooms; what works and what doesn’t. It’s practical.</p>
<p>I hope that helps a bit.</p>
<p>Sounds very interesting and it also seems that everything that you learn is something that you need to know and you will use…so unlike undergrad work!</p>
<p>It sounds as tho Columbia TC grad work is doable.</p>