By Reshma Kirpalani
I had a difficult student who was never motivated because he would always get frustrated in understanding the concepts,” William Kiker, a math major in The University of Texas’ UTeach program, said.
One day when the student was especially frustrated, Kiker told him to never give up, to take it one step at a time and to keep trying, keep asking questions.
“The next time I came in, he was the most attentive student in class. He was asking questions and participating,” Kiker said. “It was really cool to see that I had an impact.”
William Kiker
Andrew Perrone, a physics major who is currently enrolled in UTeach, has trouble deciding on the single most gratifying moment he has experienced so far as a physics teacher.
“It’s hard to pick a single moment. What affected me the most is the time that I spent in a physics classroom last semester,” Perrone said. “I was able to observe the students … and it made me want to step in basically and try to inspire, and energize, and excite the students.”
Kiker and Perrone are two of the 500 students enrolled in the University’s UTeach program, the first of its kind. Established in 1997, the program reaches out to college undergraduate and graduate students, as well as new and experienced teachers, to educate math and science teachers.
In January, President Barack Obama addressed the nation on the importance of education. He believes it is imperative to our economy’s recovery that we improve the quality of elementary and secondary education in the United States. During his address, he praised the University’s revolutionary UTeach program.
“It’s a tremendous honor! Many people have worked very hard for the success of UTeach and it is gratifying to receive appreciative words from the highest levels,” UTeach Program Director Michael Marder said.
Since the program’s inception at UT, 19 different universities have duplicated the UTeach program, with 13 of them starting their programs during the 2008–09 academic year, according to a news release from the University’s Web site.
“We have carefully studied the ingredients of our success, and created a way for other universities to replicate it,” Marder said.
UFTeach Associate Director Dimple Malik Flesner said that the impressive statistics coming out of UT’s program led the University of Florida to duplicate it.
“Essentially, we wanted to graduate more qualified math and science teachers and improve education for our own children in Florida,” Flesner said.
Michael Marder photo Tara Haelle
As a collaboration between UT’s Colleges of Natural Science and Education, UTeach is unique because it enables students to earn a degree in math or science, while also getting their teaching license.
“Excellent teachers need to know what they are teaching and how to teach it,” Marder said. “Thanks to collaboration between the Colleges of Natural Sciences and Education, UTeach graduates learn both.”
Kiker believes he has benefited from this collaboration.
“Sometimes I’ll make connections or pick up ideas from my own math teachers,” he said. “I wouldn’t be thinking of all those things if I wasn’t in the teacher certification program at the same time.”
Students in the program develop their skills by teaching in local classrooms three times per semester during the first three years of the program.
“It’s definitely scary at first,” UTeach senior Kristi Hardy said. “But UTeach gives you all [the] skills you need to know that you can teach.”
The program’s Web site reveals that between 60 and 80 new UTeach science and mathematics students graduate each year from the University. Of these graduates, 92 percent become teachers and after five years, 82 percent of those teachers are still in the classroom.
“We spend most of our time on strategies and theories of learning to really engage, and motivate, and facilitate understanding in all of our students,” Perrone said. “We want students not just to sit there passively and memorize, we want them to be engaged learners that form questions and seek out answers to those questions, with our guidance now and in the future, without guidance.”
Hardy also believes that the master teachers in the College of Education are great role models for aspiring teachers.
“Those teachers are a huge part of UTeach,” Hardy said. “They all are very knowledgeable about the content they’re teaching, and they’re really caring and kind and want us to get the best experience possible.”
A 2009 UT College of Education study concluded that the state of Texas contends with alarming shortages of secondary math and science teachers. The study also revealed that schools with high numbers of poor and low-achieving students have the least qualified math and science teachers, and a near majority of prospective math and science teachers do not reveal strong content knowledge their fields.
UTeach student Lauryn Atwood said the nominal teacher salary is a potential reason for this shortage.
“I think being a science or a math teacher is not appealing to a lot of people because you don’t get paid very much and so really the people who want to be math and science teachers have to really have [their] heart in it,” Atwood said.
Andrew Perrone photo Mark Tway
In the face of this statewide shortage, enrollment in UTeach and similar programs has nearly doubled nationally in the past two years and projections indicate that these programs around the country will have produced an estimated 7,000 new math and science teachers by 2018, a UT news release said.
“I think for myself, the teaching reward is seeing the look on a kid’s face when he finally understands something,” Perrone said. “There’s an inherent sense of satisfaction in conveying something to another when they didn’t initially understand it and all the sudden: they have a light bulb moment.”