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Printer-Friendly ModeEducators in transition
October 19, 2009 —
After Krystal Ruhno picked up her diploma in the Ryder Center three years ago, she immediately faced a difficult choice.
“It was either stay here and keep looking for a job and probably still be subbing, or move away from my family and friends,” said the special education graduate.
So she pulled up stakes and headed to Williamsburg, VA., for a full-time teaching position.
“It was so hard, but looking back I’m glad I did it because I am getting real experience here,” she said.
Ruhno is not the only Cardinal who has had to make this tough choice. Nearly all of today’s College of Education students will face it as soon as they receive their degrees and enter a profession in transition.
Of all the changes in Michigan schools over the past decade – new technologies, tougher standards, stricter security – the first and perhaps biggest that freshly minted teachers encounter is the scarcity of jobs.
Michigan’s prolonged economic woes have devastated key job sectors such as manufacturing and construction. Education is no exception.
Less funding and shrinking student populations have caused layoffs and larger class sizes. Districts statewide have reported receiving hundreds of applications for a single job opening.
SVSU’s education students are feeling the hurt. Some undergraduates have switched majors. Recent graduates can stay and face the possibility of unemployment and an endless job search or leave Michigan for a state with rosier prospects.
That’s what Megan Kersh plans to do. The 2007 Michigan State University graduate will receive her teacher certification from SVSU in December and is eyeing jobs in New England and North Carolina.
“I’ll look around here first, but I’m really not expecting anything,” Kersh said.
Tyler Germain was a bit more hopeful.
“Will I move? We’ll see,” said the English and secondary education senior.
Germain is student-teaching at Bay City Central High School and wants to stay in the area.
“I’ll apply here. My family’s here. But I have to keep my options open.”
This is not the first time Michigan teachers have had such a bleak professional forecast, said Dee Storey. The professor of education recalled that when she began her teaching career in 1972, about 10,000 teachers in Michigan were unemployed.
Storey took her first job in Maine.
“I didn’t think I’d see this again,” she said. “But these things go in cycles. We’ll come back.”
Storey noted that the discouraging labor market has led to a lot more empty seats in her classrooms.
Figures from the Office of Institutional Research show that enrollment in the College of Education has declined one quarter since Fall 2005. Though it is still the largest college, hosting 27 percent of all students, it is down considerably from just four years ago when 39 percent of Cardinals were education students.
In the same period the College of Health and Human Services has grown 87 percent and is on pace to overtake the College of Education as the University’s largest school within two years.
But the forbidding job market is not the only way the teaching profession has changed in the new century. The graduates who land jobs find that new technologies have forever altered how lessons are delivered – and what students expect of their teachers.
“Ten years ago, I could get away with a 30-minute lecture,” said Mike Vincent, an 18-year veteran of Bay City Public Schools.
Now, activities are altered every 20 minutes or so to keep students engaged.
“It’s the same curricula, but in a way, it’s a lot more fun,” Vincent said. With Internet-ready computers, data projectors, DVD players and more in every classroom, lessons have become more interactive and mediaintensive.
Vincent recalled when he first learned PowerPoint in the late 1990s.
“At the time it seemed impossible and complex, but now it’s almost the most primitive technology I use,” he laughed.
Technology changed the studentteacher relationship outside the classroom as well. E-mail has become a standard communication tool, allowing students and teachers to contact each other frequently.
Instant messaging and blogs have made collaboration the norm for students. And servers such as BCPS’s “Ed-Line” allow students (and their parents, too) to retrieve assignments and bi-weekly grades from home.
SVSU’s College of Education students are trained in the latest technology, with some courses dedicated solely to that purpose, said Assistant Dean Nicole Arbury.
Arbury said it’s this kind of realworld training – in addition to extensive field experience – that has given SVSU a reputation around the nation for exceptional teachers.
“Large groups come here from all over to recruit our students – Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina,” Arbury said, because “our students are ready to teach on the first day.”
Yet it seems that the teaching profession changes so quickly that the education program sometimes can’t keep up. Ruhno said she was unprepared for Virginia schools’ approach to special education.
Ruhno said that when she was at SVSU just a few years ago, the emphasis was on self-contained classrooms, since that was the standard in Michigan.
“But in Virginia and most other places, they are moving toward inclusive classrooms,” or special education and general education students in the same class. “I had to take more classes right away to get certified. It was like my training was obsolete by the time I started.”
Still, Arbury said, the program is constantly being modified to adapt to new educational trends and standards. Despite all these changes,
thousands of students still enroll in the College of Education each year, and Storey says she knows why.
“Teachers are not motivated by money,” she said. “They’re motivated by their character. I’m proud of those who still want to go into it, because they can say, ‘I did this on purpose.’”
“But,” she added, “they better have their suitcases ready.”