By Sonia Zhang
If your year started off anything like mine, you might’ve realized that it’s your third year as an English major—and you still haven’t chosen the second teachable required to apply for teacher’s college. Maybe you paced around your room replaying Joni Mitchell, unsure if you’ll manage to feel confident, likeable or organized enough in teacher’s college. Maybe you made multiple trips to Arts & Humanities Academic Counselling in a single week, frantically adjusting your schedule to fit the philosophy classes needed for the second teachable you finally decided on the night before. And maybe, in a sparkling spiral of self-doubt, you caught yourself wondering if all your chronic overthinking and tragic introspections were part of some cosmic, esoteric punchline.
During that time, I kept wishing for advice from someone in Western’s teacher’s college who had also majored in English. When it came to writing a blog post for The Coterie, I knew I wanted to provide English students a glimpse into what they can expect from teacher’s college at Western if they choose to apply.
Enter Tom Perquin, a current Western student, a couple of months into the year-and-a-half intermediate/senior program (teaching grades 7 to 12). With a major in English and a second teachable in philosophy, Tom offers the precise insight I was searching for. After a wonderfully informative interview with Tom, here’s what I learned...
Curriculum Expectations vs. Reality
You won’t delve into specific curriculum content like literary devices or grammar. Instead, the focus shifts to a broader and more formulaic approach centered on lesson planning and curriculum theory. Regardless of your teaching canon or the English texts you will teach,
you can apply the provided information they give you on lesson structures and delivery. Ultimately, it’s more about the how than the what of English teaching.
Transferable Skills
While the program is conducted with the approach that most students will be teaching within Ontario, the skills are quite transferable to any curriculum. Whether you envision teaching out-of-province or in the U.S., you’ll leave feeling equipped to adapt any curriculum’s learning goals and objectives into your own lessons.
A Week in the Life:
Currently, Tom has five courses, two of which are for his teachables while the other three are more general. He’s taking an English course and a social science/philosophy course (social science and philosophy are combined as philosophy has a small student population). These courses discuss pedagogy, lesson planning and curriculum planning, as well as the day-to-day activities a teacher can do. Then, there are his psychological foundations and social foundations courses. These courses are more geared towards classroom management and protocol/training to follow in certain situations like handling behavioural issues. You’ll also learn about crafting classroom expectations, involving students in the making of ten rules everyone has to follow, ways to get everybody up and moving every 20-30 minutes, etc. Finally, there’s “Transition to Professional Practice”—a course on professionalism, the legalities of being a teacher and when a situation requires third-party intervention by the principal, superintendent, union, etc. Overall, Tom attends four to six hours of class per day this semester.
The Homework Load:
Expect homework like readings or writing up lesson plans such as a two-page rationale of what your classroom is like and where you are in the curriculum. Most of the heavy lifting happens in class, where groups get 30-minute sprints to create a lesson plan or answer a prompt given by the professor.
The Grading System:
It’s a pass-fail system where your efforts equal success, not perfection. Tom assures that “whatever you put into it, you’re going to get out of it, as opposed to cramming to get 85 or 90 [and] worrying about the actual grade itself.” His English professor also offers in-depth feedback on assignments, giving detailed pointers on “two things you did awesome,” and “two things you can improve on.” The intention is to model the constructive feedback prospective teachers should be giving to students. There are also no exams (I know, shocking!). Think of it as professional job training where the goal is to acquire real knowledge rather than constant memorization marathons for a test.
Intro to Placements:
Starting in November, Tom will have a six-week teaching placement at a high school in London. In terms of getting a placement, you give your top choice for a school board, in London or somewhere else in Ontario, where you’ll teach one of your two teachables. There’s also something else called ‘alternative field experience,’ where you can work for a school board or educational center, but you aren’t in an actual classroom. The placements are unpaid as they are part of your program, but the alternative ones can be paid. In fact, professors encourage you to find paid ones, like summer camp counselling where you can log those hours as alternative field experience.
Final Thoughts:
I hope that after reading this, someone out there feels less alone and anxious about whether teacher’s college is the right fit for them. If this glimpse into Tom’s experience has done its job, perhaps curiosity and excitement are slowly killing those nerves. So, go ahead, replay Joni Mitchell or whatever artist you love. Just remember, the path after graduation is never as scary as our minds make it out to be. Somewhere out there—in the pages of books and the dizzying haze of the internet—there’s a rational prologue to every fear just waiting to be found. Thanks for reading mine!
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