08/02/2025

Prepper Stories

Driving Education Greatness

Teaching 101: The journey of teaching future teachers

Teaching 101: The journey of teaching future teachers

Abbey Pawlitzke’s “Teaching 101” course visits CMC Edwards on Might 26, 2022. Back again row, left to suitable: Kaylan Hernandez, Tovah Pollack, Boris Gavrilov, Abbey Pawlitzke, Jaiden Ortega, Valeria Ruiz and Valerie Saguilan. Entrance row, left to ideal: Kennedy Waltz, Raquel Rojas, Kayla Caballero, Jasmine Lopez, Sofia Luevanos, Taylor Collett and Harper Loff. Not pictured is Milagros Amancio.
Courtesy picture

As instructor shortages carry on amid colleges nationwide, an totally distinct viewpoint can be observed at Gypsum Creek Center College, just one that gives a brighter glimpse at the long term of training in our county.

It all starts with a single class: Abbey Pawlitzke’s Educating 101 May well Time period challenge with her 14 long term educators in the home, ranging from sixth to eighth grade, all eager to go after careers in training.

From there, the Eagle County School District, Colorado Mountain College and our higher group come in to offer help. “Kids have possibilities for education at Colorado Mountain University and then any graduate of ECSD that comes back as a trainer has an computerized job interview,” Pawlitzke explained. “We really test to make the love of instructing in potential lecturers, and give them prospects to occur back to the neighborhood, or even keep.”



Although the marriage with CMC is not contractually binding, community schools do hold an eye on college students from our space pursuing teaching levels, primarily all those heading as a result of CMC. “There are presently a good deal of ECSD graduates instructing in the school district, and we have very a number of of them who have arrive via our plan,” reported Elizabeth Qualman, director of instructor training at Colorado Mountain Higher education. “We do have an being familiar with with ECSD that our teacher prep graduates do get prioritized.”

When the middle schoolers visited CMC on Thursday, Qualman was loaded with joy by the curiosity and ideas that each and every participant introduced. “It was excellent observing how excited they have been to engage in the lesson I brought to them. One particular of the young ones stated, ‘This is this sort of a amazing faculty, I’m undoubtedly coming right here,’” Qualman included.



For Pawlitzke, the project is about far more than just an M-Expression. “Teaching is my enthusiasm and I adore performing this,” Pawlitzke stated, noting that the pleasure of teaching overwhelms the difficulties normally reviewed in the general public forum. “I want other persons to knowledge the joys of it and knowledge the pleasurable elements and not just browse and listen to about the terrible headlines of training … There are some actually magnificent pieces to teaching, like the college students and the local community and sharing what you really like.”

With the assistance of her students, fellow workers and our neighborhood, Pawlitzke speedily recognized she was not on your own. “And then it grew to become super easy to fulfill two months of chances for children,” she stated.

As aspect of the Educating 101 system, the Vail Everyday group was invited to teach a “Journalism 101” course to the learners so they can share their experiences. The next 4 subsections had been organized by the learners in the course of that session.

Experiencing the teaching occupation

Students at Gypsum Creek Middle Faculty end the calendar year with a two-week undertaking-based mostly learning opportunity. Learners in Teaching 101 are fascinated in the job of educating. “I chosen teaching 101 as my M-phrase course since I like becoming close to young ones since you in no way know what they are going to do or say,” stated Kayla Caballero, a sixth grade GCMS student. “For case in point, when I went to toddler time at the Gypsum Community Library I observed toddlers interacting with the story by singing alongside, repeating just after the librarian, and acting out the story. They were being finding out letters, how publications do the job, and new vocabulary,” Caballero mentioned.

Preparing to teach

Teaching demands a large amount of scheduling and planning. For occasion, we experienced to put together for a browse-aloud at Gypsum Elementary College. We had to get ready a browse aloud and we had to observe. “What I did to put together for these field visits was, I took notes, browse content, viewed movies, and checked out books for distinctive quality ranges. I also study to my peers and practiced my go through aloud,¨ Kennedy Waltz, a university student at GCMS reported. We are studying how to be improved teachers, and we have prepared and labored extremely tricky to make all this achievable.

All over the neighborhood for upcoming instructing

In teaching 101 we have gone on many distinctive discipline excursions to different locations. “We have gone to Crimson Hill Elementary Faculty, Gypsum Elementary University and the Gypsum Library. We are also heading on a subject vacation to Colorado Mountain College in Edwards,” mentioned Kaylan Hernandez, an eighth-grader at Gypsum Creek Center School. We received to observe a classroom and went to the library to learn about looking at aloud. When we went to GES we acquired to do a examine-aloud and notice distinctive classes. On Thursday we are going to CMC to find out about programs academics just take, scholarships, and the daily life of a future teacher.

Mastering outside the classroom

We have realized about the subject of educating for the earlier two months. We’ve long gone to Crimson Hill Elementary Faculty, Gypsum Elementary and the Gypsum Library. “I feel that we uncovered the most at Gypsum Elementary for the reason that we did the most there. We examine aloud to a course and bought the working experience of currently being a instructor,” claimed Boris Gavrilov, an eighth-quality GCMS student. It was truly intriguing to get the really feel of being a instructor mainly because they participated a great deal greater than I considered they would. Overall, this was just a fantastic working experience and we would undoubtedly do it once again.

A venture well worth repeating

Pawlitzke’s job has sparked an concept that Qualman hopes will resonate across the district. “I want to attain out to the rest of the middle universities in the valley for subsequent spring mainly because we could do the similar point,“ Qualman claimed.

“I informed them we seriously will need to make instructing seem cool once again. The pandemic has brought on plenty of strain for lecturers so I questioned the little ones how they imagine they could make the training job more captivating to long run instructors. Virtually each and every one group started out with university student relations and was incredibly university student-centered. I requested them to consider about what your students will value and by some means we get can get via this (teacher) scarcity,” she stated.

Kaylan Hernandez, Tovah Pollack, Boris Gavrilov, Abbey Pawlitzke, Jaiden Ortega, Valeria Ruiz, Valerie Saguilan, Kennedy Waltz, Raquel Rojas, Kayla Caballero, Jasmine Lopez, Sofia Luevanos, Taylor Collett, Harper Loff and Milagros Amancio contributed to this report.