TEACHING SECOND GRADERS BECOMES LEARNING EXPERIENCE

For Leta Wagoner, teaching second grade is a learning experience, but one made easier by a revamped teacher education program at Southeast Missouri State University.

Students in the College of Education are introduced to a variety of teaching experiences long before they do their final student teaching.

Those experiences, said Wagoner, make student teaching easier. "I feel much surer of myself," she said.

A senior, Wagoner is student teaching for seven weeks this semester at North Elementary School in Fruitland. She will spend the second half of the semester student teaching learning-disability students at Alma Schrader Elementary School in Cape Girardeau.

Wagoner will graduate in May with a bachelor's degree in elementary education and certification in the area of learning disabilities.

"By the time we get to student teaching, they have tried to put us in a low grade like second grade and an upper grade like fifth grade," she said. "I think it makes you more well rounded.

"By the time we graduate, I think they have really prepared us for what is expected of us," said Wagoner. "It certainly builds confidence in us, I think, by the time we are finished."

A non-traditional student, the 41-year-old Wagoner enrolled at Southeast in 1968. She dropped out after two years and married.

She returned to school in 1988. "When I came back in 1988, I had about 60 hours of credit, but nothing in elementary education."

Wagoner said she's glad the teacher education program provides so many teaching experiences that "progressively get you ready for really student teaching."

Up until a few years ago, would-be teachers generally didn't get into the classroom until they student taught for eight weeks in their senior year.

"I had friends who went through the old student-teaching system and they said it was frightening," recalled Wagoner. "Some people were literally so miserable; they said they never taught" after graduating with teaching degrees.

"It's sad to me to think you go through four years and student teach and then you hate it," she said.

But under the new education program, students generally know before they student teach whether they like teaching.

"We are much more professional students when we step into the classroom," she said.

Wagoner, for example, has had teaching experiences in an Anna, Ill., elementary school and St. Vincent's Elementary School in Cape Girardeau. She also has done some special education work in the Oak Ridge School District.

The mother of two daughters, ages 10 and 13, Wagoner said that her teaching assignments have made her more understanding about her children's teachers.

"I know as a parent I would like to feel that the people out there teaching my children are really on the ball. I think people around here should feel pretty confident in their teaching staff," she said.