My journey through Graduate School to earn a Masters of Art in Education. I was on track to become a teacher, but now everything has changed, and I'm on the job hunt with a Bachelor's in Liberal Arts and a Master's in Education with no teaching certificate.

 

Gearing Up

I spent a few hours this evening going over Chapter 1 of Educational Psychology and Chapter 1 of Teaching Through Text. I took extensive notes. In my stocking last year Mom gave me this cool four in one pen that was cool, but I thought it wasn't very useful. I should know better. I can write important terms in red ink, the rest in black ink, and it has a highlighter built so I can emphasize text in a secondary way. It came in very handy.

The Educational Psychology chapter just laid out the basics of the subject and covered some of the subjects in the field. It discussed three types of research (Descriptive, Correlational, and Experimental) and introduced a few terms.

The Teaching Through Text book is written with a higher level of reading than most textbooks I've read before. It uses lots of larger words but I only had to use the dictionary once. I thought they were mis-using 'commensurate' but they weren't. The book has a more propaganda style in this introductory chapter. Perhaps its the vocabulary that the book uses, but it really comes across as "This is the best way to teach, and you're a bad teacher if you disagree." It's quite one-sided. I wonder how the other students will react to it. Of course, I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to start reading that one yet. They didn't really point out which books were for which class, so I'll lug all of those books to classes on Monday and see what I can leave home.

I also did a bit of shopping for supplies today. Three folders for three classes, a stenographers notebook for taking notes (I wish I knew shorthand) and a full size notebook for assignments and my own detailed book notes. I am prepared.

I hope.

posted by Josh English at 6/21/2003 10:16:00 PM