All post-secondary students have opinions on their assignments, instructors, and what their program has to offer. However, given how many students in the Education Assistant and Community Support (EACS) program I’ve talked to are sharing the same thoughts and opinions, it might be time for a change.
I enrolled in the EACS program thinking I was going to learn how to support younger kids who are struggling in their classrooms to understand what’s going on. Throughout this 10-month program, however, a lot of us never really understood what was going on.
For starters, a lot of the lesson plans looked as if they were created with AI, with very wordy and unclear instructions. I reject teachers using AI, even if it might make their job easier. (The “created by ChatGPT” watermark and open AI tool tab were the giveaways.)
My classmates and I have spoken about this, and we agree that just because something is wordy, it doesn’t mean it makes sense. This further becomes an issue when our teachers insist that their lesson plans do make sense—yet when we ask for clarification, they simply echo that the instructions can be found online.
For us as students, the hardest part of the assignment becomes understanding what we are supposed to do.
Assignments and lesson plans aside, the program material itself is repetitive and seems to fall under what one would consider “common sense.” Myself and many of my classmates believe that using kind language to fellow staff and students should not be something that people need to learn in a post-secondary environment. It should be something a person does because they do it outside of school, even when they aren’t being graded.
My classmates who have been in the program for longer than me have mentioned that some intended learning outcomes and assignments are the exact same as those from previous terms. I’d like to see more attempts to include new insights in the lesson plans that can deepen our learning and keep the course material relevant.
In this program, there are two practicum terms, but there’s not much preparation for these. With only two labs before the practicum semester, this seems to be insufficient training to approach the inherent responsibility tied to working with children and those with disabilities. Because of this, we don’t feel as competent as we should when entering the field. In fact, we spend more time learning about mindful breathing than we do about educating or supporting the young student body. We’ve learned more in three days of practicum than we did in three months of classroom instruction.
To better prepare us as students for the field we are studying, I would propose a more hands-on learning approach while also removing the parts that are just obvious common sense.
It’s important to recognize that while some aspects of this program are working well, some aspects need to be worked on. Furthermore, a lot of us in this program feel like the teachers could benefit by being more receptive to student feedback. Hopefully for future students, some changes will be made to make their experience in the EACS program smoother than mine.