Teaching the Ropes : Students Get a Look From the Other Side of the Desk

Jennifer Roberts always thought she wanted to be a schoolteacher, but the 18-year-old senior wasn’t convinced of it until last year, after she stepped into a classroom full of kids half her age as a teaching intern.

“Just working with them on a personal level is the best,” Roberts said. “Teachers, along with parents, I think are among the most influential people in children’s lives.”

Roberts is among 41 Capistrano Valley High School students in a program that offers teens a chance to check out the teaching profession from the other side of the desk before college. Usually, students do not get in-classroom teaching experience until after they finish college.

In its second year, the high school’s Education Academy aims to motivate students to consider teaching as an altruistic career with rewards that can’t be measured in dollars.

The program is the most intensive of its kind in Orange County, said Gay Veeh, one of the academy directors and a career education teacher at Capistrano Valley High School, where the program is based.

The students, who are juniors and seniors, get to watch district teachers closely at the preschool, elementary, middle and high school levels. They also can tutor, create bulletin board displays and file papers.

Those who stay in the program are eventually allowed to prepare lesson plans and present them to a class.

Such is usually the heady stuff of a fifth-year college student working toward a teaching credential.

But even life as a student teacher with a bachelor’s degree can be dull and discouraging at times, said Laura Thompson, a seventh-grade world history teacher at Fred Newhart Middle School in Mission Viejo, where Roberts is interning.

And that is why Thompson keeps Roberts busy.

“At first, I had to sit in the back and watch,” Thompson said of her days as student teacher in the late 1980s while at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. “I was bored.”

Thompson said she originally wanted to be an astronaut while in college. After changing her mind, she wasn’t 100% sure right away that teaching was the best career for her.

For Roberts, that career guesswork is gone. On a recent morning, she led Thompson’s students through a quick review of latitude and longitude during a lesson on maps.

Student Timmy Smith, 13, predicted that Roberts would become a good teacher because “she’s nice and good with kids.”

But Capistrano Valley’s program is not just about teaching. There are also lessons on how to move toward career goals--whatever they may be.

The program grew out of a meeting when Capistrano Valley High School staffers were trying to figure out ways to better prepare students for the working world, Veeh said. The idea of a hands-on teaching experience came up as a way to boost students’ skills in other areas.

After all, it’s no easy job to stand and speak before 30 squirming elementary school children or older, more peer-conscious students in their teens. Teachers also figured that they could become mentors for students interested in education careers.

“I’m kind of surprised that more schools don’t have a teacher training program, because we’re the ones who really understand the profession and can share that with students now,” Veeh said.

Capistrano Valley High School’s Education Academy is similar to programs in Fullerton and Santa Ana public schools, Veeh said. The approach is relatively new.

In the first year of the program, students observe professional teachers in action at two schools in the Capistrano Unified School District.

Students in the second year of the program then choose one grade level and classroom that they want to work in for a period of time in the school year.

Erika Aguilar, a 17-year-old Capistrano Valley High senior, said working in a classroom now is the best way to know if she’ll enjoy it later.

Aguilar was busy last week helping fifth-graders in Room 20 at Castille Elementary School, where teachers Danny Bailey and Sandra Wilbur have a combined 30 years of experience.

“She’s getting a bird’s-eye view of what’s going on,” Bailey said as the student intern went from table to table, answering students’ questions and learning their names.

Teri Porcu, 17, had the same type of view at a preschool on the grounds of Capistrano Valley High.

Porcu said she found that she enjoyed the younger students more after watching a middle school class as part of her academy assignments.

“They’re too old for me,” Porcu said of the adolescents. “By then, they’re getting attitudes.”

Roberts said that speaking in front of seventh-graders can still frighten her, but stomach butterflies and sweaty palms go away over time.

“I was just at this school a couple years ago as a student,” Roberts said. “It’s kind of scary.”