<p>My J has decided to major in education. Math, not sure whether it should be secondary or elementary (middle school). School suggestions anyone?
Thanks,
Mbe</p>
<p>You may want to check out the post "I should know this.. but I don't" on the parents forum.. carolyn posted this list:</p>
<p>Tufts
Columbia U (graduate only program)
Rutgers
U of Michigan
Connecticut College
U of North Carolina - Chapel Hill</p>
<p>Most Pennsylvania schools were started as teachers colleges. An education major is almost as common as a business major. I think you need to narrow your criteria if you want usable suggestions. I can think of 6 colleges within an hour of my home that have an education major. </p>
<p>Here are some things to think about when choosing a college for an ed major:
Make sure that if you are looking outside of a home state that the teacher certification is reciprocal with your home state if you think your student will want to teach in home state.</p>
<p>Make sure they offer secondary education degree as well as el ed.</p>
<p>Compare amount of student teaching. I asked a friend of mine in the administration of our School District about the criteria for hiring teachers and she said they really do look at the amount of experience, esp. student teaching.</p>
<p>Look for student teaching within the first two years so that if your student realizes they don't want to teach, they can quickly get out of the program. There is generally not a lot of flexibiltity in an education major's curriculum so you pretty much have to get into the program as a freshman, not undeclared, to get out within four years.</p>
<p>DD is a junior El. Ed. major at the University of Delaware, and the other schools she applied to were NYU, Muhlenberg (altho I don't recall them being known for their ed. dept.), and SUNY New Paltz (wonderful school of ed.!). She considered several others, but decided to limit her applications to the few schools that she was particularly interested in. </p>
<p>To the best of my knowledge, students are generally unable to do their student teaching until at least junior year, since there are so many required courses and tests (PRAXIS, for one) that must be taken first. However, look for schools with programs that place students in classrooms for other kinds of practical experience early in their college career. For instance, DD has had practicums in elementary classrooms since first semester freshman year, doing one-on-one and small group tutoring in math and reading. Now that she is taking her "how to teach" block courses, she's spending more of her time with the students using the teaching theories that she is learning, as well as actually teaching the subject matter. Every semester has seen her in a different school, with a different cooperating teacher, working with kids of different ages and abilities. These experiences have helped confirm for her that she is in the right major, and by the time she begins her student teaching she will have spent a great deal of time in elementary classrooms. She is already developing lesson plans and designing and administering tests, all of which are skills she will need next year. I would recommend looking for these kinds of early opportunities at any school you consider.</p>
<p>Lesley College in Cambridge, MA has an excellent reputation for teacher education....it's right next door to Harvard. They have liaisons with many local schools so students get experience being in classroom settings well before student-teaching time. All three of my children had the benefit of 'the Lesley girls' when they were in elementary school.</p>
<p>marcyr,
no offense, but colleges do differ in their timing of student teaching. Perhaps it's a state thing. My daughter is a sophomore education major at a small college in Illinois. She just completed her first student teaching experience after having had a "block" of just ed classes and having done observations in freshman and beginning of sophomore years. She took the first section of the Illinois praxis (they call it something else) in early January or late December.</p>
<p>I remember reading an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer within the last month about how secondary ed majors with certification in math were scarce and could pretty much land a job before graduation. </p>
<p>Marcyr mentioned Muhlenberg as a possibiltiy. Coincidentally, that was the first college we visited but just to see what a small private college was like. It's about 15 minutes from our house so daughter wasn't seriously interested. Muhlenberg does not offer education classes at it's college but students can get an ed degree from M-berg by taking classes at either Lehigh, DeSales, Cedar Crest, Moravian or Lafayette - all within 1/2 hour of each other. The other schools all have ed majors. Actually, I'm not sure about Lafayette, but the others do.</p>
<p>If I were you, since education is offered at so many colleges, I would narrow it down by prioritizing what is important to your daughter, i.e., location, price, big school vs. small school, private vs. public, etc. Visit as many colleges as you can and make a point of talking to students that are in the ed program.</p>
<p>All of our second tier (as opposed to PSU schools) PA state schools; West Chester, Millersville, Kutztown, Bloomsburg, etc. have very good honors colleges that offer perks to students with good grades and there is no quota for in state students. Our only perk is discounted tuition. All of the above schools were started as teachers colleges and still have a huge percentage of the student population as ed majors.</p>
<p>I've done college visits at U of D, Susquehanna, Millersville, Muhlenberg, Elon University in NC and Penn State with my daughter and can answer questions about any of those colleges. With my junior son who is looking at perhaps a computer science major I've visited 6 other colleges including York, Juniata, Towson (MD) and Kutztown. While we were not looking at the education major at these colleges, all of them do offer it.</p>
<p>Lynch School of Education at Boston College is a great program!</p>
<p>The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York taught you to think about education not just fill in a grade book. I have read that there are some districts around the country that will pay student teachers, but the bottom line is getting the certification in the state where she will want to teach. Long story - short advice-Avoid Hawaii for a teaching career.</p>
<p>For anybody majoring in education, consider very carefully <em>where</em> the school is rather than the overall reputation of a program. For instance, the people who often are hired in prestigious teaching jobs are often graduates of places like CW Post, Hofstra, and Adelphi (all three have undergrad and grad programs.) The most fruitful source of teaching jobs is the student teaching internship in the senior year.</p>
<p>But it can be kinda deceiving at times. For instance, when I was at NYU, the two heads of the music education department were retired teachers from Huntington and Hicksville school districts on Long Island. Therefore, they were able to place each other in Long Island schools very effectively. I imagine now that those teachers have left that students are being placed into more New York City schools.</p>
<p>Here are the questions you should ask any education department:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>(The most important question) Where do graduates find jobs after graduation? What kind of jobs are they? (middle, high, etc.) If the school cannot list specific cases of where they place students, it should raise a red flag. If too many students are not teaching after graduation, you should wonder why.</p></li>
<li><p>Where will I most likely be doing my student teaching?</p></li>
<li><p>In which states will I have certification and which states will I have reciprocal certification when I graduate?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>JW</p>
<p>jonw222-
I agree. In our school district teachers are most often hired from PSU, and other Pennsylvania schools. I can assure you that the colleges you mentioned are not on the radar screen of our administrators and I'm sure that our PA school graduates are not the typical Long Island hires.</p>
<p>That said, the reason for that is (IMHO) that the majority of applicants are not from out of state or even out of the area. This really is an important reason to think carefully about where you/your student is going to school. I think it's very, very common for college grads to fall in love with the area where they go to school, feel comfortable with the place they student teach and then want to stay there. In our district, it's common for people to be hired after substituting or working as an aide in the schools. Most of the aides in our schools have an ed degree and are just waiting for a full time teaching position to open up.</p>
<p>kathiep said that muhlenberg did not offer education. this was one of the schools i looked at with my d - they do in fact offer education (not through the other schools you'd mentioned, but through their own dept)- we met with someone from the dept. my d was interested in elementary ed so i don't know about secondary, but i thought they offered that too.</p>
<p>in general re ed programs -- a lot depends on the state in which the school is. in some states, ed simply is not considered a major -- you have to major in some other subject and and then take the courses necessary for teacher certification in addition. in other states, it may be a major, but you may also have to either major in another subject as well or have an "area of concentration." when we were looking for schools, we found we had to be VERY careful in searchnig since if you searched simply by "majors", you could leave out schools that in fact offered teacher certification. I live in ny and was able to go the website for the state ed dept and get a list of all colleges in ny state offering elem teacher certif.</p>
<p>what we also found was that there were a number of schools that didn't offer teacher certif themselves, but you could take ed courses and get certif through another local college. </p>
<p>i would also go to the websites of schools that otherwise met my daughters criteria and search around to see if they offered education - typing "teacher certification" into the site search usually helped. i also found there were schools that offered "ed programs" that DIDN'T lead to certification - not sure why, maybe it was a matter of them not wanting to bother with meeting all the state requirements but wanting to offer an oppurtunity for people to explore the field?</p>
<p>Then a decision becomes whether you want to go to a place that has a sizeable ed school (eg.boston university, syracuse university) or one where the ed program is just a small program within a liberal arts college or university (eg. Vassar). Another decision is whether to not worry about certification undergrad and just go for it for a masters since many states require you to get a masters eventually anyway. Another interesting school my daughter considered - Clark U in Worcester - emphasis is on urban education (not surprising given Worcester) and they seemed to get the kids into the classes quickly. (Also a nice plus about Clark was they have a fifth year free program - if you maintain a certain average you can stay for a fifth year free and get your masters - apparently a fair amount of students in the ed program take advantage of that.) </p>
<p>my daughter ended up deciding to go to a school with a relatively small ed program, rather than one with a large ed school. it was a matter of balancing all the other things she was looking for with the desire to get certification.</p>
<p>I was wrong! Not sure how I got this wrong because when we visited (2002) we attended their open house just to see what a small private school would be like but after getting there we saw that it didn't have elementary ed and I remember thinking that we should have gone to Moravian which is another very close small private college. Maybe they added elementary after we visited?? I'll keep quiet now!</p>
<p>Does anyone have any information on majoring in music education? My niece in NJ is very interested in becoming a music teacher. She is a very good musician-piano, flute, piccolo-but not elite performance quality. She has received conflicting advice on whether to look for a school with a good ed reputaion that offer music ed or a great music school and then get a teaching cert.</p>
<p>She has visited Moravian and really liked the school. Plans to visit TCNJ, UDel and Ithaca. She thinks she prefers smaller and in the mid-atlantic states but is open to suggestions. Good grades, top 10%, avg SATs. Financial considerations will factor into her decision.</p>
<p>My 3 sons,
My son has a friend who is a freshman at Kutztown University of PA and is a music performance major but has been the percussion person for Moravian's jazz band since High School. I guess they just can't get a good jazz percussionist from the school. He loves their jazz band but chose Kutztown because he thought it's program was better. Kutztown just added a music ed program last year. </p>
<p>I know another young man who is a senior music ed major at Moravian. He has had a great four years - just realized he'll graduate this month!
It seemed that he was having a performance every couple of months. We often have Moravian students student teach in our schools.</p>
<p>A friend of my daughters is a business & music ed major at Millersville University of PA in the honors program. She has said her only complaint about the music classes at Millersville is that they seem education oriented instead of just plain music oriented. I've looked at Millersville with both of my kids and if you are looking for a financial and academic safety school, this (or Kutztown, or West Chester) might be interesting to you. The honors program offers special housing, early registration for classes and special trips, etc. My cousin's daughter from NJ went to Millersville for that reason.</p>
<p>kathiep
Thanks for the info on Kutztown and Millersville. I will pass all this onto my niece.</p>
<p>my-3-sons-
My son in a music performance major at TCNJ but most kids there do music education. The school was a 'teacher's college' when founded and ed is still one of it's strongest programs.
It has elementary ed but on the HS level the kids actually major in
history education, english education, etc.
They boast about their very high exam passing rate and placement.</p>
<p>I don't know much more about the ed program. Our son is very satisfied with the school,especially the small class sizes and individualized attention. Very pretty campus, not enough dorms!
Any specific questions, you can send me a message!
Good luck to your neice :)</p>
<p>musicmom
Thanks-I think TCNJ is a great choice for her. Glad to hear your son is so happy there.</p>