Despite falling enrollment in Ball State’s education programs, current and former educators discussed the importance of teaching at a panel Tuesday.
Undergraduate teacher development enrollment has dropped about 25 percent at Ball State, said John Jacobson, dean of the Teachers College.
Jacobson was the moderator at a panel discussion about educational reform, where state representative Sue Errington, education students, teachers and members of different charter school associations spoke.
They showed the film “Rise Above the Mark,” which focuses on school reform struggles in Indiana.
Mike Gustin, the president of Options Charter Schools in Hamilton County, said the statehouse has slowly begun to encroach on education.
“They started pushing testing higher and higher on us,” Gustin said. “It happened so slowly, you kind of waited for the revolt to happen ... and it just never happened.”
Gustin said parents tell children they aren’t smart enough to go into certain career paths, all because of testing scores and how they perform on standardized tests.
The amount of testing students should be subjected to is one highly debated issue within education.
Sarah Reason, one of the student speakers and the founder and president of Students for Education Reform, works at a third grade school.
She said one of her third graders walked up to her the other day and asked when she was going to be a real adult. Reason said the student told her she wanted to be a teacher, but her mom told her she wouldn’t make any money as a teacher. So the girl changed her mind and decided she wanted to be a brain surgeon.
“I want to be a teacher, so she has the potential to do whatever she wants to do,” Reason said. “It gives me an amazing amount of fire for what I’m going to go into. There are so many people who want a change, and the first way to do that is by being a teacher.”
Kelly Andrews is a principal at Charles Elementary School in Richmond and a doctoral student at Ball State in educational leadership. She said she has heard a lot of discussion on reform, and she lives it daily.
“There’s a big concern in high stakes testing,” she said. “I see fourth graders throwing up because they’re so stressed. As educators, we feel like a hamster on a wheel.”
When Andrews was talking to a student teacher in her building, the student said the main reason she was going into education was because she wanted to make a difference.
“They are the next generation,” Andrews said. “They are the ones who will be making a difference.”
Kaitlyn Perry, a senior elementary education major who attended the panel, said she thought it was a good sign already that the panelists were agreeing.
“Even school teachers and the state representative were voicing similar ideas,” Perry said. “We have one heck of a job in front of us, but it’s nice to see that people are willing to get the ball rolling. We just need to keep it going.”
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