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Thursday, October 7, 2010

Diving into Quarter Three

Geography?

So at the outset of quarter three I have been amazed to learn that many Masters in Teaching programs require no (or very little) social studies courses unless you are getting an endorsement in the humanities. Luckily, Antioch is NOT one of these. Our teacher was a former student at Antioch who has returned years later to ensure that students at AUS get a solid grounding in social studies because it can so easily be left out of the curriculum all together.

For our first class we we did the ubiquitous 'get to know you' activity and then delved into some heavy questions: what is social studies, and why does it matter? One of our text books is even titled "Why Geography Matters" and from the first 20 pages the author makes a convincing case that it does indeed matter.

This class in particular is looking very attractive for another reason: every student will be writing one lesson plan every week. If this sounds like a lot of work, well, it sort of is. But here's the two major plus sides: 1) it will get us used to writing lesson plans relatively quickly (which will no-doubt be an asset come next year) and 2) at the end of the quarter we will all have nearly 90 lesson plans ready to go! So far I like where this class is going...

Tonight we will get our first glimpse of the math and science methods classes so stay tuned next week for updates on those.

Until then,
Keep it real.

Mike

3 comments:

emleepage said...

Hi,

I am a Geography major in my junior year looking to transfer to Antioch... are you a student there? Do you like it? Any insights on the college would be much appreciated!

Thanks,
Emilee

Mike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike said...

Thanks for the question. Yes, I am a student at Antioch Seattle, I am in the Masters in Teaching program. I am about halfway through and so far I have really enjoyed it. My summary of the school is that they really design their programs so the students have control of the process, how much you learn is pretty much up to you. So if you are self-motivated and want to take charge of your degree than you will love Antioch. If you just want to do the least amount of work possible to get that piece of paper than you probably won't get much out of it. If you want more info I would be happy to answer more questions or point you towards an adviser, email me if you'd like. mevans3@antioch.edu. Good luck!