Future teachers gain valuable experience

What do you need to become a teacher? Skills and abilities like how to mange a classroom or how to interact with children are obvious when it comes to wanting to be a teacher, but where to these skills and abilities come from?  Experience. 

So where do education majors get their experience? It's required of the major to log at least 100 hours of observations with children in a classroom setting before logging in a semester's worth of student teaching. But what about experience outside what is required? 

Ed Wenzel, associate professor for the School of Education, told Lumen that there are many service and job opportunities for gaining experience with working with children outside of the major. These opportunities include teaching Sunday school, being a camp counselor, or coaching a sports team for a summer or after-school program. They could also include many volunteer opportunities such as volunteering at an after-school program or a children's library program. 

"These experiences don't have to involve working with children," Wenzel said.  "Just working with people develops the interpersonal skills necessary for working with children." 

Wenzel included jobs such as waiter/waitressing and store clerk in his list of opportunities in which future students can gain experience outside the major. He said that any job working with people of any age will be greatly beneficial. Skills learned from jobs in which the student has to work with customers or patrons gives the student the people skills needed to work with people in general, something vital to becoming a teacher, said Wenzel.   

 "Teaching involves working with parents, other teachers, community members, and administration, not just working with kids," Wenzel said.

Wenzel also said that while the experiences just mentioned help his students out a lot, he finds that students who have had "direct experiences in interacting with children in organized group settings understand better the theories related to teaching a large group of children. They also have more confidence in themselves when entering a classroom."  

Zach Buros, a senior elementary education major from Richland Center, Wis., agrees with Wenzel. Buros worked at a local daycare when he was in high school before coming to Viterbo to become an elementary teacher. He then tutored at Hamilton Elementary School in La Crosse for a second grade class before securing a position at Red Balloon Child Care and Preschool Center, also in La Crosse, as a child care teacher for the school-agers. 

 "A lot of teaching depends on how comfortable you are with kids, especially when you are working with 15-18 kids at one time," Buros said. "Once you get a group of kids, there is a presence about you that kids pick up on. If you're not comfortable with kids, they will use that and walk all over you. You have to do a balancing act between having fun and following the rules. This takes experience and time."

Some opportunities for working with children outside of what is required for education majors include volunteering at the Boys and Girls Clubs in La Crosse and obtaining a position at one of the local daycares. Opportunities also include becoming a nanny for any of the families looking for one and volunteering at the Children's Museum in downtown La Crosse. Many of these opportunities can be found on the bulletin board on the second floor of the Murphy Center outside of the Financial Aid office at Viterbo, or at the Part-time Job, Volunteer and Internship Fair held every year at the beginning of the semester by the Career Services.