“I realized that being a teacher does not just end once you
leave the parking lot,” Sputh, 18, wrote about her real-life
experience. “It is brought home with you in the form of grading and
lesson plans.”
Sputh was part of an innovative program developed by the South
Carolina Teacher Cadet network that gave a dozen honors students
the chance to spend a year studying the educational field and
working with district teachers.
Students looked at the psychology of learning, the school system
and its changes through history, and teaching characteristics and
strategies.
They then put it all together in a field experience, which took
them into the classroom to work with and learn from a
teacher.
School district teachers and administrators hope the program
will motivate students to pursue careers in education.
“Nationwide there are shortages of teachers in special
education, math, science and foreign languages,” said Assistant
Superintendent Bill Hodges, who oversees the district’s human
resources department.
“I can’t help but hope that programs like this will provide us
with large quantity of high-quality teachers,” Hodges said. “I’m so
impressed with this program I wish it were offered in every high
school in the district.”
Linda Waterman, the Ponderosa High School family and consumer
science teacher who leads the teacher-cadet program,
agreed.
“Teaching really is the hardest job you’ll ever love,” she
said.
The teacher-cadet curriculum was copyrighted in 1987 and schools
in 25 states now offer the program, Waterman said. The Jefferson
County School District obtained the grant that brought it to
Colorado.
Statistically, the South Carolina Teacher Cadet network has
shown that 35 percent of students who participate return to the
area from where they graduated high school to teach, Waterman
said.
“Colorado is just now beginning to develop its own statistics,”
Waterman said.
As an honors program, students must have a 3.0 grade-point
average on a 4.0 scale and be recommended by three educators to
participate, Waterman said.
“Eventually we’d like to see the program in each of the high
schools,” she said.
Sputh worked with Sagewood Middle School eighth-grade math
teacher Myrna Virgin and even taught a few classes.
“She had a lesson plan that used origami frogs to learn about
polygons,” Virgin said. “It was extremely creative and a very
successful lesson.”
Origami is the Japanese art of folding paper into flowers and
animals figures.
Although the program helped solidify Sputh’s desire to become a
teacher, it didn’t do the same for Stephanie Ames.
Ames, 17, who worked with Sagewood Middle School eighth-grade
history teacher Kristen Egenes, entered the program torn between
teaching and counseling. She might teach social science or
psychology in a middle or high school, but is still undecided about
which way to go
“I debated between teaching or crisis counseling,” Ames said. “I
learned teaching is harder than I thought and harder than it
looks.”