Teaching Future Teachers: Teacher Education 1 increases advertising efforts to encourage enrollment

In an effort to generate more interest in the class Teacher Education 1, English teacher Samantha Feinberg and Assistant Principal Susan Leonard have been working with Digital Design students to create posters and hang them up around East. 

Teacher Education 1 introduces students to teaching as a career through developing lesson plans and studying developmental theory. 

Feinberg and Leonard would be the co-teachers of Teacher Education 1 which, despite it being an option for several years, had never previously had enough interest to make it an official course. According to Feinberg, three people requested it last year, while at least 10 requests are required to justify having it.

“I wish that there had been a class like this back when I was in high school because I knew that I wanted to be a teacher, and I was ready to do something about it,” Feinberg said.

She hopes that Teacher Education 1 will serve as a useful class for students looking to find out if an education-related career path is the right fit for them. 

Teacher Education 1 is open to sophomores and up with a recommended prerequisite of Child Development. It’s also a semester-long class that takes up two blocks, allowing for travel time to East-feeder elementary or middle schools where students will gain experience teaching in a classroom. 

The rest of the curriculum will be loosely based off of a textbook, but largely customizable so that students can give their input on what they want to learn. 

“It could be more focused on lesson planning or the history of teaching, there’s so many different ways it could go,” Leonard said. “But we’ve got to get enough people first.”

Feinberg and Leonard are hopeful that their increased advertising efforts will encourage more students to enroll in the class — especially because of the constant need for teachers.

“The impact of a good teacher is amazing and it makes all the difference,” Leonard said. “Every kid deserves that and the only way every kid will get that is if we build the teacher force.”