FHS has a new club aimed at guiding the next generation of teachers. 

Teaching is one of the most important professions someone can pursue. From the age of five to eighteen students are with teachers for at least six or seven hours each day. Starting in Kindergarten, when we begin our mandated education, to the end of our senior year, we lean on teachers for support.  

In the past couple of years, there has been a rapid decline in educators in America. This drastic decrease in teachers cannot be blamed on one particular reason. This could have occurred as a result of a multitude of factors building up over time throughout the years of employment in this profession.One major factor would be the change in teaching during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Some argue the pandemic set back the behavioral and socioemotional development of the students. In other words, it left the students less mature than usual and much less motivated to succeed in school. All of these sudden changes concerning education and the development of the children of America took a toll on teachers, and sadly led to many teachers feeling burnt out and inevitably losing their passion for teaching and driving them out of the profession. 

 To combat this unfortunate statistic, NYSUT (New York State United Teachers) took the liberty of funding teaching clubs throughout Long Island. The club’s goal is to inspire future teachers and help them get their foot in the door of the profession in hopes of creating a more diverse workforce. In our TALAT (Take a Look at Teaching) club, we have been going over the basics of teaching in different ways. We have had guest speakers come in and talk about their experiences as teachers, even one in particular that taught abroad in England. All of these guest speakers have helped showcase a different perspective and a unique take on teaching that is really eye opening.

The TALAT club recently went on a trip to Hofstra University to observe college teaching classes, sitting in on two classes.  First, a lecture revolving around adolescent education and how to effectively teach new concepts to students. The professor was very friendly and definitely understood the struggles of college students and changed the setup of his curriculum to accommodate. He made it clear that college students have too many classes and tests they have to take at the end of the semester, and as a former student himself knew that retaining all of that information and keeping up with all of those readings for months is close to impossible. So, he decided to run his class differently by assigning reading that the students have to do every two weeks and then come in and take a quiz on that reading.  The students seemed to feel less stress and enjoy the class more because of the twelve quizzes throughout the class versus two large ones in the middle and ending of the semester. 

Secondly, we sat in on more of a hands-on elementary education class where they were practicing doing hands-on activities to teach volume to fifth grade students. The students worked in groups of four, trying to see who could build the most amount of cube structures with the certain height requirements of the structures with the least amount of paper. The goal of this lesson was to learn tactics on how to teach the basics of volume and how you can incorporate the formula of length times width times height to help get the volume of structures. This class was very different compared to the lecture we sat in on. The drastic difference between the two classes the teaching club observed helped the future teachers see what sort of college classes they will be taking shortly. These classes also helped the members of the club understand the basic differences between early education and adolescent education. This helped us form opinions on which we felt that we liked better and will definitely help us narrow down which one we will be majoring in for college.

The TALAT club is grateful for NYSUT funding our club and giving us all these opportunities to learn more about the profession.  It has really opened our eyes to many possibilities of teaching in our futures.  And if you are a student with any interest in teaching, please stop by Mrs. Falasco’s room and join our club.  All are welcome!  We hope to see you there.

*image from takealookatteaching.org