Description of the Class

Ed. 100, Exploring Teaching, is a required introductory course for Brandeis undergraduates interested in the possibility of becoming an elementary school teacher. The class has two components--a seminar which meets twice a week for a total of three hours and a field placement. Each week students spend 3-4 hours in an elementary school classroom serving as participant/observers. This kind of early field experience attached to an introductory course became popular in the l970’s as a way to provide contact with real children in real classrooms rather than waiting until the student teaching placements at the end of the professional sequence. In the early l980’s I redesigned a similar introductory course at Michigan State and then wrote about it in a book, Exploring Teaching: Reinventing an Introductory Course, co-edited with my colleague, Helen Featherstone.