Barnard’s Urban Teaching Track
Many students want to attend Barnard because of its location in New York City, hoping that its proximity to urban spaces will provide opportunities to work closely with the people and institutions in New York. While this is certainly true--according to Barnard’s Career Center, about 75% of Barnard students participate in a work internship while at college--some extra work can be required to fully integrate your professional goals with your coursework. If you are interested in teaching after college, either as a full career or as a post-graduation job, you may be interested in Barnard’s Urban Teaching Track as a way to gain pre-professional experience and a teaching license while at college.
During my first year at Barnard, I knew I wanted a career related to improving public education quality and access, and I sensed that my interests in STEM and science education were real passions. I learned that the best way for me to combine my academic coursework with fulfilling pre-professional work experience was through Barnard’s Urban Teaching Track. The different options for minors and tracks in the Education department are described later in this post, but the course of study I chose (the Secondary Urban Teaching Track) provides a path to New York State Teacher certification alongside Barnard’s Bachelor of Arts degree program. In my sophomore year, I narrowed my focus by choosing to pursue certification at the secondary school level (grades 7-12) and by choosing to major in Neuroscience, because I saw it as an intersection of the STEM fields that interested me.
Many universities outside of the US focus on pre-professional specialization, trade licensing, and certification, so as a student coming from Canada (which has a university system similar to Europe), I was concerned about what I thought was the lack of pre-professional experiences associated with a liberal arts college. To clarify, a liberal arts education has countless benefits, such as breadth of thinking and perspective as well as an increased awareness about social and historical issues and how they might come into play in your own field of study. You can learn more about Barnard’s amazing Foundations curriculum on the Barnard website. However, despite its strengths, I was worried that the broad thinking of a Liberal Arts curriculum might be conflicting to my goals in pre-professional specialization programs. I personally wanted my class experience, work experience, and volunteer experience in New York to feel like they were adding up to a career.
In the Urban Teaching Track, the classwork is often rooted in concrete fieldwork in NYC classrooms. For example, in a class called Science in the City, my fieldwork team and I would read about a strategy for making science instruction engaging and use it in a classroom the very same week. I loved being able to think critically and form my own opinions about theory and text by comparing the work of scholars to my own experiences. My learning didn’t stop at Barnard’s gates, because there were so many opportunities to utilize pedagogical strategies during extracurricular experiences such as summer internships or volunteering commitments through Columbia’s organizations that work with NYC schools and community centers. The ability to connect undergraduate coursework to real work and volunteer experiences in New York was crucial in allowing me to see a career path post graduation. Many students gain that same confidence and experience from long term internships in other fields, but for students like myself interested in working in Education after college, utilizing the resources that the Education Department has to offer was paramount to progressing a career from a ‘goal’ to a reality.
There are four different ways to engage with the Education Department at Barnard; also described in further detail in this earlier blog post.
Education Studies Minor: This is the most flexible option because it consists of just 6 courses which investigate major topics in education policy and administration. This has to be paired with a Major in another field and does not lead to New York State Teacher Certification.
Urban Teaching Track: This is a pre-professional course of study that leads to New York State Teacher Certification at either the Elementary Level (Grades 1-6) or the Secondary Level (Grades 7-12). The track consists of Education department courses, liberal arts courses, content/age specialization courses, and a full semester of student teaching fieldwork. Students must pair this with a major in a separate discipline.
(This is the track I am on!)
Urban Studies Specialization: Students majoring in Urban Studies can select a concentration is Education studies ( see #1 above) or a concentration in Urban Teaching (see #2 above) with slightly modified course requirements in addition to completing the Urban Studies major.
Education Major: This newly released course of study provides a deeper dive into cross-disciplinary issues relating to education, but does not lead to New York State Teacher Certification unless paired with the requirements of the Urban Teaching Track.
More information about all four pathways can be found at the Barnard Education Department website.
Undoubtedly, a Bachelor’s degree is a powerful tool in post-graduation the job search process, but an increasing number of fields require specialization in the form of a Master’s degree, especially for leadership roles. By pairing the Bachelor’s degree with a work-ready teaching certificate, Barnard’s Urban teaching Track certifies students to begin work as a teacher without a Master’s in Teaching. Choosing this pre-professional track provides me the opportunity to work immediately after college and hold off on pursuing a Master’s degree until later in my career.
When applicants think about why they might want to be in New York during college, it can be important to consider how access to concrete internships and work experience, when paired with a liberal arts degree, can help students achieve a balance of career preparation and expanding perspectives. In my opinion, the Urban Teaching Track’s strength is in how it combines undergraduate coursework and graduate career in a wholly integrative and meaningful way. The beauty of liberal arts is that students do not need to know their career or major on day one. But if you are interested in education, Barnard’s Urban teaching track is a unique pre-professional opportunity that is definitely worth looking into.
- Elizabeth Hodgson