Future Teacher, Forever Student

Before there were formalized schools, there were living rooms, church halls, back steps, battlefields, and the great outdoors. Education came in all shapes and sizes, from the modern understanding of “traditional” study through the analysis of past writings and artifacts to the natural signals one learned to recognize on the farm before an approaching storm. Students were not just young people hunched over a book shielded from the world behind brick walls. They were citizens learning how to manage a family business, reading and printing newspapers, planting seeds, plowing land, and striving to better prepare themselves for the future, whatever it held for them. Today’s students aim to do the same. Yet their education seems to have restricted itself to the boundaries of school property, or perhaps it occasionally wanders beyond county lines. What happened to learning about your environment— and all the life that lived and lives within it— by experiencing everything it has to offer fir...

Since 2013, the Education Department at Saint Michael's College has sponsored a department-wide common read , featuring compelling narratives that inspire critical thinking, deep reflection, global activism, and connections to teaching. Throughout the year, students and faculty are encouraged to attend several events centered around the selected text, including author talks, film showings, workshops, and panel discussions. For the 2018-19 academic year, the Ed. Department chose Girl Rising: Changing The World One Girl At A Time : a vivid, non-fiction account of the hardships faced by girls living in countries or immersed in cultures that in some way hinder their opportunity to receive an education. Based on and building off of a documentary of the same name, author Tanya Lee Stone gives the reader a closer look at the causes and effects of a girl not getting an education; using a mixture of pictures, graphics, and quotes to provide a window into the world of girls interviewed f...