The term “boot camp” might have a negative connotation, but for education students enrolled in SPED 441 and SPED 465, “boot camp” is just part of their curriculum.
This summer, 11 Southeastern education majors took part in the “Summer Enhancement Camp” as a step toward earning their degree. These teacher candidates were given a class of elementary students to teach for the duration of the camp, which took place in June.
According to Dr. Nicki Anzelmo-Skelton, the camp is meant to supplement the learning of the children in a fun, engaging atmosphere while also giving the teacher candidates a dose of “real-world experience.”
“We do academics, but it’s all hands on experiments and fun stuff. No worksheets! We don’t want it to seem like it is work because it’s summertime, and we want to get the message to kids that learning is fun,” said Skelton. “This is ‘real world teaching’ because what we do is we get the applications for the students ahead of time and we met before the camp started and we said ‘Here, here are your students.’ They had to call the parents, they had to get to know the kids, they had to test them so they would know what kind of skills to work on in the camp and that is exactly like the real world.”
For the teacher candidates, this means setting up a classroom complete with rules, procedures and a host of lesson plans.
Senior elementary education major Lauren Pennington described the process as being long, but rewarding.
“We’re doing this the whole month of June, and we started in the middle of May. We worked to get our classrooms ready and then all the planning and stuff starts before we write eight lesson plans a week,” said Pennington. “Nobody is telling us what to do. It is all us, so I think it’s a great experience, and we get to make our own mistakes. I think it’s definitely preparing us.”
As for the make up of the classes, Skelton said that the camp is inclusive, meaning that the teacher candidates had a mix of regular education and special education students.
The inclusive classroom presents the challenge of addressing multiple students with varying needs. For Pennington, this problem presented itself in the form of motivation.
“Some of these kids are falling behind so they don’t necessarily love school,” said Pennington. “We have to get them motivated and ready to learn because who really wants to take school during the summer?”
Senior elementary education majors Erin Gaspar and Jessica Thomas elaborated by saying that their kids made them adapt their process on the fly.
“Our kids are wild. They’re so sweet, but some of them are just very low and others are very high, so it’s very difficult to meet everyone’s needs and not have some kids running around the classroom as the other ones are doing work,” said Gaspar.
“You’re always changing it a little bit, tweaking it. The other day we had a class that just wasn’t getting money so we had to stop, go back and re-teach it all,” added Thomas.
For Skelton, the intensity of the summer programs is one of the benefits to teacher candidates. She shared her belief that it is as close to real world experience as the candidates would get.
“Our students call it ‘boot camp’ and it is a ‘boot camp’ because it’s pretty intense, but when they get finished with this camp they are ready for the world. Student teaching is much easier for them, the rest of their methods are much easier for them.”
The Summer Enhancement Camp is part of the required methods for elementary education majors with an add-on certification in special education. The teacher candidates take both SPED 441, Practicum in Assessment and Evaluation of Individuals with Exceptionalities, and SPED 465, Inclusion Practicum. At the end of the camp, the teacher candidates receive six credit hours for their work. Skelton and associate professor Dr. Ellen Ratcliffe lead the classes.