As the new semester continues, most students are getting in the swing of new schedules, classes, assignments, and more. As they adjust, life slowly becomes a little easier and more manageable. However, for many secondary education majors some things remain uncertain—field placement requirements now have stricter rules, are harder to find and some people have not yet even received their placement four weeks into the semester.
Field placements are vital for education majors as they are the times where students are placed in local schools and get to observe classroom life and practice student teaching before they enter the workforce. In previous years, students have only needed twenty hours of field work a semester. This semester, however, the requirement has been increased to thirty hours.
Rachel Smith, a third-year social studies and history teaching major and communication Arts and literature teaching minor, is still waiting for her field placement this semester. She expresses that while field placements are very necessary for learning, they can sometimes be inaccessible. “Having a car is pretty necessary as a teaching major… you know you could be traveling to La Crescent, you could be traveling to Lewiston, La Crosse, you know, out of the area and you kind of need a car just in case,” Smith said.
However, Smith knows there is little she can do about it. “I guess I really can’t complain about it right now because I have time in my schedule to do it, but I do understand the frustration where it’s like, ‘Where am I going to have time in my schedule like to do all the stuff?’ Especially if you’re an RA or if you have a job or you have all of that extra stuff and now you have to add this on top of it? I don’t know how they do that.”
Sarah Schmick is a third-year communications arts and literature teaching major who also has not yet been assigned a field placement. “It’s really stressful because it seems like they keep increasing the number of hours that we need—I get it, I want to be a good teacher and have that experience, but then your classes are all during the school day and then you don’t get your placement until later,” Schmick said. She also notes that many teachers are not willing to have student observers which makes it even harder to find field placements for education majors.
Field placement hour requirements have increased, but it seems like the availability and accessibility of getting a foot in the door of a classroom has only decreased. Hopefully, with pressure from students on the need for more accessible field placement jobs, they can graduate with the necessary hours and become well-rounded teachers shaping a new generation.
