Educators and doctoral students offered advice and shared career experiences Tuesday in an effort to guide aspiring graduate students seeking to become teachers and to promote resources that students could access along the way.
Marcus Penny
In a Jan. 16 online panel sponsored by the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, leaders and alumni from the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers (IRT), an organization that works to support students through grad school and increase educator diversity, highlighted the realities and hardships of being a teacher, as well as the ways in which the IRT benefitted their own journeys.
According to IRT associate director and panel moderator Catherine Wong, IRT’s free graduate preparation program provides those accepted with multiple kinds of assistance, including advising, application fee waivers, access to grad school recruiters, and workshops.
Panelists praised what the IRT did for them, discussing how the organization bolstered what they knew about the teaching profession, expanded their professional networks, and helped them understand key educational concepts.
The world is rapidly changing, and so is the educational landscape, said panelist Marcus Penny, a STEM instructional coach for Boston Public Schools. Individuals do not need to be limited to the public school system and to traditional avenues of education in order to attain their education. Rather, options and communities online exist as well, he said.
Being a teacher is not easy work, Penny said. It’s not a profession that is often highly regarded, but it is one that comes with joy and is important when it comes to fostering and nurturing future generations, he said.
"The importance of having teachers, professors, school leaders out there in the profession is to really think about how to cultivate and allow for the next generation to be their authentic selves and find their identities,” Penny said.
