<p>So i have a question. I've started college in 2009 at a community college majoring in performing arts. I took some performing arts classes and some core classes. My family moved to PA so i kind of had to go with them. I was going to apply to a college in Pa but my parents decided to move to SC so I picked a college closed to home which was University of South Carolina. I wanted to change my major to Tourism/Hospitality management but I didn't like it to much. I've always been a artistic person and business just wasn't for me. I then changed it to theater because I was interested in technical theater but because of my fear of speaking in public I chickened out and changed it to art history even though I've acted in some play before. I'm not liking art history and thinking I should just change it to Elementary education. people say that i would make a great teacher and i love working with children. The only thing is I've already been in school for about 3 1/2 years and I'm a junior. My classes are all spread out. i really don't have more than any thing regarding to classes. My financial aid aggregate is 26,000 in loans and i might not have enough for the rest of the year. I would need about 2 more years to get a degree in teaching. I thought of going to graduate school but I've done some research and I would need educational experience and recommendations which I haven't done any organizations or experience. So I wanted some advice to figure out if i should change it and get a private loan to finish school? any advice??</p>
<p>This is quite a personal question. You’re not really asking if you should go to grad school for elementary education, but whether you should change your undergrad major to elementary education.</p>
<p>I have two pieces of advice. One, you need to pick a major and stick with it. Your entire life won’t be decided by the undergraduate major that you select, so choose a major that you enjoy reasonably and just complete the requirements. Most jobs are open-major anyway, unless you wanted to do something technical - which it doesn’t sound like - but if you are already at $26,000 in federal loans you don’t have much more time to complete and you don’t want to run out of money.</p>
<p>With that said, in my personal opinion no, you shouldn’t change your major again. Stick with art history and finish your degree. If you’re a junior already, switching your major to elementary ed (which is a course-intensive major) could potentially take another 1.5 years, which it doesn’t sound like you have the money for.</p>
<p>That said, it’s not true that you need teaching experience to get an M.Ed in elementary education. There are some M.Ed programs that are for initial licensure, which means they are for people who have never been licensed to teach before. It is true that you’ll need recommendations, but you can get those from professors in whose class you earned an A (or a high B) regardless of their field - although you’ll be more competitive if you can get a recommendation from a professor who supervised you in Jumpstart or something similar.</p>
<p>But it seems like you have a long history of changing your major and it seems like you just need to actually figure out what you like and what you want to do first. You don’t want to spend tens of thousands on an elementary education degree if all you know is that you like children. There are tons of jobs that involve working with children (one that comes to mind is getting an MFT or MSW and doing art therapy with children). Instead, you should do some volunteer or summer work to see if you really like it. Johns Hopkins’ Center for Talented Youth hires college undergrads over the summer to serve as teaching assistants and residential assistants with their summer programs, some of them for elementary-aged children. It’s paid; you could try that. Or you could try a year as a member of the Match Corps (<a href=“Match Corps — Match Education”>http://www.matcheducation.org/match-corps</a>), apply for TFA, or apply for the NYC Teaching Fellows. Some fancy private schools also hire college students as summer TAs and tutors. Basically, get some related experience first to see if you actually like it before you pursue an M.Ed.</p>
<p>If you can’t figure out what to do, the best thing to do is go work for a few years while you figure it out.</p>