By Mari Wright
Staff Writer

There are those who come to Bates to get an education and there are those who come to Bates to get an education minor.

Students who see teaching in their future often choose this latter option to allow them to seek certification after graduation and leave Bates with lots of hands-on classroom experience in education. The students at Bates who have chosen to minor in education will tell you a story of hard work, stress and the rewards of working with children. These students do the same amount of homework and studying that is required of all other Bates students, but also spend time in local classrooms, sometimes more than 70 hours in one semester, to complete the work required for an education minor.

The education department at Bates is small, with only four professors, some of whom have only been at Bates a few years. While no major in education is offered, students who are interested in the subject can choose from two different minor degrees: Teacher Education (with a recommendation for Maine teaching certification for 7-12 grades) and Educational Studies. This second option, which does not qualify students to become certified, still requires 30 hours of classroom time for each education class taken in a semester. Students must complete seven courses as well as teach and help out in a classroom setting, write and do research for lesson plans, meet with departmental advisors and grade papers. This time adds up, requiring education minors to be focused and organized in order to complete work required of them as both students and teachers.

Sarah Bryan, a senior minoring in Teacher Education, has spent most of her final year at Bates inside a high school classroom teaching Spanish. This semester alone, she has spent over five hours a day teaching at a school 40 minutes from Lewiston. Bryan’s outlook on teaching and the education system has completely changed since she entered the program at Bates.

“I don’t think people realize how intense teaching can be,” says Bryan. “You have to learn how to present yourself to people who are sometimes only three years younger than you, prepare lessons for each class, and know how to deal with kids who sometimes have awful situations…it’s all really difficult.”

Bryan, who wasn’t really interested in teaching as a career until she arrived at Bates, plans to teach at Hebron Academy beginning next fall, where she will teach Spanish at the high school level.

Marcia Reinauer, a sophomore minoring in educational studies, does not plan to teach directly after leaving Bates, but still puts in 30 hours of classroom time in a semester for each education class she takes. She has worked at Lewiston High School and several of the local elementary schools and has even developed a full classroom curriculum as part of her experience. The hours she spends in the classroom or “field” take much of what would be her spare time.

“It’s a lot of work; it’s like taking two courses because of all of your time in the field. I’m not going for certification, but I still have to spend a lot of time in the classroom to minor in educational studies. I really don’t know how people handle more than one education class in a semester, that really requires so much work, but there are people who do it.”

With this work comes challenges. Teachers and students in the Lewiston area are not always receptive to Bates students and their efforts in the classroom. Reinauer says they often have developed the “rich kid stereotype” about people from the College. “They don’t always consider that we might have had to work really hard to get here,” says Reinauer.

“But overall, I think that the schools have learned to appreciate the Bates students’ help in the community.”

Bryan, who teaches outside of the Lewiston-Auburn community, also finds socioeconomic issues to sometimes interfere.

“I’ve had problems with a lot of my students assuming that I’m really rich,” says Bryan. “Sometimes they can get really aggressive about it. They always tell me that I must be ‘loaded’ if I’m going to Bates.”

Along with facing the challenges of the classroom on a daily basis, students like Reinauer and Bryan also complete research papers and field journals for their education classes.

“I’ve turned in more printed pages this semester than I’ll probably ever do for even my thesis,” says Reinauer. “It’s a minor that takes a lot of work and keeps you very busy.”

Despite the work required, students seeking a minor in education build personal relationships with young people within the local community and are able to see firsthand what it means to be a teacher. Because of this, they recognize the many rewards this experience brings them.

“Even though it’s really challenging, I would say that people who minor in education enjoy giving something back to this community,” says Reinauer. “It makes you happy to make even the smallest difference in a child’s life.”




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