Concurrent Education at Brock

This past week a friend of mine who is in Outdoor Rec at Brock University asked me for help with one of her assignments.  I thought that it was strange considering I have never taken a class in that department.  When we met up I found out that it was a lesson plan that she had to conduct, she asked me because I'm in the concurrent program.  This was a real eye opener for me, because I have personally never wrote one myself.  It was a real struggle trying to help her because I had no idea what I was doing.  Being a 4th year student in a education program, I should have lots of experience with planning lessons and the curriculum behind it all.  Truth is that prior to this course I have never even thought about creating my own lesson plan and where to even find the required information that needs to be covered. I feel as though this is why I am struggling so much on the current project we are working on in EDUC 4P19, because it is a totally new concept to me.

You'd think that creating curriculum and planning lessons would be something we were to be focusing on from the beginning, not starting in fourth year.  After making an attempt to help my friend and not being able to succeed, it got me thinking about the concurrent program here at Brock.  For the first two years we had to take classes in Child and Youth Studies, which I do believe is important.  However we learned overlapping material in many of the classes, and much of it is totally   unnecessary for an aspiring teacher wanting to teach at a high school level.  In many of the earlier year CHYS programs we learned about theorists such as Piaget and Kohlberg, which is something that we went over again this year in EDUC 8P19.  I understand that it is an important concept to know, however learning it once would have been sufficient, and I believe that we could have made better use of some of the times spent in CHYS classes with learning about curriculum or having another chance at a placement.  I'm not trying to rip apart the Concurrent program, I just feel as though there are ways that the program could be adjusted to better prepare students for a teaching setting.  

One thing that I believe would be beneficial would be more placement opportunities within our classes.  Over the four years I've only been placed in one classroom, which was Grade 4. I learned a lot and it was a great experience, however I am in intermediate- senior, therefore this placement was not really relevant to my previous life goals of becoming a high school teacher.  Also I believe that it would be very beneficial to incorporate a class or part of a class about curriculum and lesson plans.  I feel so lost when looking through curriculum documents, seeing as it was my first time doing so the other week.  I wish I had the chance to learn about it before this class so I would have a better understanding of what is going on during this class, and would have been able to help out my peer with developing her lesson plan.  Con-ed is a great program, and I really appreciate the opportunities that it has given me.  I just wish I felt more comfortable with knowledge around curriculum and had a chance to have a placement within a high school.