The Teacher Education and Child Care (TEACH) Institute at Anne Arundel Community College (AACC) makes a positive impact on the lives of children by providing quality education and professional development for current and future child care providers, teachers, and school employees. Two significant assets of AACC’s TEACH Institute are our chapter of the Student Educators Association (SEA) and our Transition Specialist, Judy Sinkovitz, a retired teacher with decades of experience working with high school students.
Judy and the position she fills became a part of TEACH in 2003 through the College and Careers Training Initiative. Though her role has shifted slightly over the years, her primary objective has been to interface with the high school students enrolled in child development or introduction to teaching courses, sharing with them their future opportunities in teacher education, and the means to reach their career goals. Through a series of presentations and various activities, Judy has prepared students to move from high school into college programs, but like any great teacher, she is always looking for better strategies to reach her audience. Judy realized early on that although many of the high school students are committed to entering the field of education, they are often stymied by the actual process of transitioning to college.
Early this year, Judy had the excellent idea of inviting SEA members to assist her on a new endeavor in our local high schools. Eight SEA members, who are education majors, volunteered to go to the schools and discuss teacher education at AACC as well as answer questions about college in general. Some of the SEA volunteers are traditional age students, only a few years older than the high school students, while others had admitted taking the long route to where they are now. Small groups of SEA members, usually three or four, visited six high schools as a panel of AACC representatives. The panel members fielded questions about topics that ranged from the ordinary, such as where do students at AACC eat, to the complex, such as how did participating in fieldwork affect their decision to teach.
The major contribution made by the panel was in offering advice to high school students about being prepared for the next step. “Hearing this from other students, who are just steps ahead of them on the same journey, was invaluable,” confirmed Judy Sinkovitz, who intends to continue using the panel strategy as another resource to aid students transitioning from secondary school to higher education. “We won’t meet the staffing needs of the school system during the next decade if we lose interested students along the way. Bringing a microcosm of the TEACH Institute into high school classrooms and allowing SEA members an opportunity to provide leadership to their up and coming peers seems to be a dynamic combination,” attests Colleen Eisenbeiser, director of the AACC TEACH Institute.
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