Today is Thursday, June 10. Forty-two years ago, June 10 was a Monday. It was an important day in my life because I began teaching as an assistant professor that day. I had done some teaching on the university level earlier for the University of Maryland but I was a graduate assistant then and didn't have quite the same responsibilities. This day, I taught summer school sessions of educational psychology and a seminar for master's students in which they were to write a paper that more or less served as a thesis. I came with a PhD in research methods, measurement and statistical analysis so I felt more than prepared for the seminar. I had a doctoral minor in psychology and one in philosophy, too, so I ought to have been prepared for the ed psych course. However, despite having a bachelor's in elementary education as well, I had never had a course in educational psychology, as such.
I didn't realize that the ed psych class would be a mixture of elementary and secondary majors taking the course as a requirement for student teaching and certification by the university and the state as teachers. Doctoral students are required to do lots of reading and thinking and I had done that. A common focus in graduate school is theory, whose theory of what and how does evidence and experience support and confirm the theory. But, I had also taught for four years in the 5th grade, an experience I enjoyed wholeheartedly and might not have left without a strong need for more money for my family and me. In getting my elementary education major, I found there seemed to be little logic and system to the work I was required to do. I did not enjoy that experience so when I found I was required to go for an advanced degree for continued certification as a teacher, I explored options. One option was a master's degree in the teaching of science or mathematics but in exploring that path, I found it would be too long and expensive to acquire the needed undergraduate background required in most schools. I thought about my experiences and concluded that I would like to focus on research and methods of research that might ultimately put teacher training on a more formal and systematic basis.
Through good luck as well as assistance in both guidance and scholarships, I got involved in a doctoral program that seemed just right. It was fun and I learned a great deal.
When my wife went for her doctorate at a very different school in a very different time, about 28 years later, she faced a great deal of reading related to postmodernism and philosophical doubt and the recognition of assumptions and arbitrary methods and ideas from our cultures and habits that govern our thinking. I did not and had never heard of those subjects as a college student, a teacher or a young assistant professor. They might well have shortened periods of confusion and unhappiness in my undergraduate teacher training. But even without them, I knew for a strong fact that teachers need to know plenty about themselves personally to be able to read and understand their students. It took several years for me to get a grasp of what I might do with my classes that would assist them but I started on the job right away.
