Spotlight on...

Educating the Educators

The School of Education is preparing the next generation of teachers for the joys and challenges that come with being an educator. To equip their students for success, the Education faculty uses methods you won’t see in other departments. All the coloring, crafting, costumes, and shaving cream you encounter in the education building is a wonder, but be assured, it is quite normal.

“Classes are designed to teach our students how to teach,” says Field Placement Coordinator in the School of Education, Tonia Boyer.

Back L-R: Tonia Boyer, Dana Reeger, Annette Mahan, Judy Corbin

Middle Back: Gonzalo Ramirez, David Boyer

Middle Front: Wanda Dyess, Bill Kingston

Front: Cathy Box, James Harris, Rhonda Wearden, Dub Hannel, Josh Wheeler

The professors in the School of Education use a variety of teaching methods at the university level so their students can experience different styles that they may one day use when they too become educators. Some of these methods include discovery learning, direct teaching, centers, cooperative learning, experiments, role-playing, and language experience activities. 

Since teaching is such a hands on profession, education majors are given many opportunities, both in the classroom and out in the community, to observe and practice teaching.  Education students practice their teaching skills with each other in the classroom.  They also tutor and teach one and two week units at local schools prior to their semester of student teaching. To prepare for these teaching opportunities, students spend a majority of their time in their “home away from home,” known as the Media Lab. In the lab there are a wide variety of supplies that they can use to prepare lessons, make visual aids, design bulletin boards, and more.

LCU’s School of Education doesn’t simply prepare students to teach, rather they teach students to excel as a professional educator. Education professors make sure their students are prepared for all aspects of their future by teaching them professionalism, educator ethics, how to work with parents and administrators, the best way to teach special needs students, and the best way to teach gifted students to name a few. 

Tonia explains, “Being a teacher is a calling and a mission.  You are in the position to change lives every single day.  Teaching is never boring; there is something new and different each and every day.”

After all the hours of hard work in the classroom, education majors form lasting bonds between their peers and professors. Once they graduate they leave to educate the next generation, but the bonds they created at LCU remain. Whether they come back to LCU for events, have future LCU student teachers in their class, or get a visit from a professor when they are in town, the School of Education is a family within a family at LCU.

LCU Education majors are currently student teaching at:

Lubbock ISD:

Elementary Schools:  Hardwick, Roscoe Wilson, Preston Smith

Middle Schools:  Irons, Hutchinson

High Schools:  Coronado

Frenship ISD:

Elementary Schools:  Oak Ridge

Middle Schools: Frenship Middle School

High Schools: Frenship High School

Lubbock Cooper ISD:

Elementary Schools:  Cooper North

Middle Schools:  Laura Bush

Area Schools:

Shallowater High School

Post Elementary

Patton Springs Elementary

They are also tutoring at:

Lubbock ISD:

Bowie Elementary

Rush Elementary

Lubbock Cooper ISD:

Cooper Middle School

Students are teaching units at:

Bowie Elementary

Lubbock Christian School

Hutchinson Middle School

In all there are 114 LCU students in schools this semester!