Education Majors Should Go to Career Fair, Too

Photo of the booklet describing the companies
that appeared at this year's Spring ICE.

Since my sophomore year, I have been attending the regular Career Fair that Miami offers in the fall, as well as Spring ICE, which is the spring version of the same event.

As an education major, I often feel out of place at these events, but I’ve found a lot of value in attending these events in terms of approaching potential employers, which is a skill I can transfer to the teacher job fair later this semester.

I chose to go to Spring ICE during my sophomore year in hopes of finding an internship. I hoped something would pan out, but I was exceptionally nervous about attending as a result of the fact that I am an education major.

However, if I hadn’t chosen to go, I wouldn’t have landed an internship as an intern for the training team of a mortgage banking company. Through this position, I was able to teach classes, create material for the classes, and the experience as a whole gave me more confidence going into my field experiences during the fall 2014 semester.

Moreover, through this internship, I was given the opportunity to apply for a position as a campus ambassador for the company, which also gave way to some really cool experiences.

When I returned to Miami for my junior year, I was able to host information nights on Miami’s campus, and I attended career fairs alongside the recruiters, which gave me a new perspective for what employers look for in their employees. As a result of these experiences, I feel I’ve been given an edge when I introduce myself to future employers.

Which brings me to why I think it is so important for education majors to attend these events too. While there are a limited number of education-based companies that attend these events, I think it’s more about the experience of learning how to talk about the skills that you possess and why you are the best individual suited for a particular job.

Because of these experiences, and the fact that I am more comfortable approaching potential employers, I feel more prepared than I think I would have otherwise in terms of attending the teacher job fair that Miami will host later this spring. 

Hindsight is 20/20

If I could go back and start my student teaching experience over, there are some things that I would like to do differently.

First and foremost, I would have liked more information about the school and the specific classroom in which I was going to be teaching. While I certainly had some general knowledge, I wish that there had been a better opportunity for me to gain a better perspective for what exactly I would be stepping into, especially since the classroom I was placed in was so unique.

Moreover, I wish I would have been better prepared in terms of dealing with being tired all the time. I knew student teaching would be exhausting, but I didn’t realize the extent to which it was until I was in the midst of the experience.

Staying organized was more difficult than I had imagined as well. I think I attribute a great deal of this to the type of classroom I was in, and the new grading system my cooperating teacher and I used, but I wish that I would have been able to come up with a better system from the get-go.

Photo I took in September 2015 of one of
the covered bridges in Oxford.

While I figured there would be bumps and surprises along the way, I wasn’t prepared for the problems I did have during student teaching that were unrelated to the actual act of teaching. From the car problems I had to deal with, to issues with technology for the edTPA, I wish I had been able to handle these more smoothly.

On all fronts, I learned a lot from student teaching, and I’m definitely glad that I went through the experience. But if I could go back and change a few things to make the transition easier, I would. Either way, student teaching is a bridge to cross, but the easier it is to cross in terms of the factors outside the classroom, the more enriching I think the experience can be. 

Towards the end of my experience when I finally had a better idea for how to manage the workload and stay organized, I noticed a shift in how I perceived the experience as a whole. It became even more fulfilling than it had been all along, which made it that much more fun.

Student teaching is hard. It’s a lot of work and it’s exhausting, but it is such a rewarding experience in the end. 

My Last Semester

I can’t believe that I’ve already started my very last semester of undergraduate classes. It’s hard to believe that in a few short months, I will be getting my diploma.

Photo I took in October 2013.

Prior to my student teaching experience in the fall, I had finished all of the required education classes for my major. This semester, I am finishing out the classes for my minors, as well as one lingering Miami Plan credit, which also counts for the last credit I need to fill for my major.

My schedule for the semester looks a little something like this:

ENG 293 (Contemporary American Fiction)

ENG 495R (Capstone in Writing and Rhetoric)

ENG 406 (Discourse Analysis) Capstone

ENG 450J (Studies in Genre: The Western) Capstone

FRE 131 (Masterpieces of French Culture in Translation)

ENG 298 (Introduction to Literary and Cultural Study)

KNH 110T (Social Dance)

As per usual for me, this semester will involve copious amounts of reading and writing. But something that is new to this semester, is that I will also be watching a lot of western films. My capstone on the western is cross-listed as a film studies class, so I will be learning a lot about how to dissect a western, which is a genre I know very little about.

Since I’m not yet as organized as I would like to be, it’s hard to say whether or not my semester will be as difficult as it looks. I’m hoping to get to a point where I can start to work ahead in my classes so that it feels easier and less stressful.

It’s still hard for me to believe that it’s my last semester here at Miami. I thought that coming back to classes after student teaching would be a difficult transition, but it turns out that it wasn’t. I’m looking forward to everything that I will learn throughout the semester, both inside the classroom, and outside.