Thursday, March 16, 2006

Teaching Skill but Lacking the Content

I have one year left in the Technology Teacher Education undergraduate program at Brigham Young University. After taste-testing from several majors, this is where I have ended up. My wife and I felt so good about this program and about becoming a high school teacher, that I quit my full-time job, we sold our home, and I went back to school full-time. It has been quite the transition. I have really enjoyed teaching (both youth and adults) through my various church callings. I am currently the teacher development coordinator at church. I love to learn about the techniques involved with teaching and how to engage the students. I have come to the recent revelation that as far as being a high school technology teacher, I do not have a lot of content knowledge. I have one more year to gain some approximation of content knowledge, but I don't know how much more I will really pick up. I thought I was going to teach woodshop exclusively, but now I'm leaning more toward teaching general technology classes. Woods, electronics, Basic Stamp, Illustrator, html, digital video, are all of interest to me. I don't have much depth in any area though. I'm going to be learning right beside my students. I think my problem is this: I learn a new topic in a class where I am given a series of assignments, those assignments have to be completed relatively quickly, I just try to get them done, and then we move on to a new topic. Ideally I would be able to take time outside of class to delve deeper into the topics of most interest to me. I don't have much time outside of class to do that though. As I develop interest in a given topic, I formulate grand ideas of what I plan to do outside of class to push beyond the class assignments, but after I get off work and eat dinner, the will power and desire just aren't there anymore. I have kind of resigned myself to the fact that I won't be the "best" teaching candidate out there, but I will be A candidate. I guess I'm just going to have to get a job first, and then spend my time gaining the depth of content knowledge that I want. I think teaching is going to be great, but it will be nice when I actually know something.

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