Corban's education program fits very nicely within the entire university's mission to make a difference in the world for Jesus Christ. We believe that our graduates are prepared to teach in whatever school they're pursuing to get a job.
We believe in preparing future educators to not only be excellent educators in the classroom for their students, but to have a biblical worldview that brings Jesus right along with them.
I chose Corban's education program, because I realized how awesome they were at preparing you for life after college. Corban provides many real life experiences that just give you an idea of what life should look like, and they place you under a teacher's wing that really just pulls you along and shows you how to be the best teacher that you can be.
We have designed our program to include as much practicum and time in classrooms as possible to balance the academic rigor of all of the coursework that they're getting, in order to prepare them to be the best teachers they can.
Each year is an education major, you get to have a classroom experience as a student, which is very unusual in an educator preparation program. So coming in as a freshman all the way through your senior year, you'll get to experience classrooms in all sorts of different learning environments, rural schools, private schools, public schools. And this allows you to really see the breadth and width of of what education has to offer.
My heart really lies with grades like K through 2nd in probably a title one school, so lower income and children who don't have as much resources as others do. I just feel like God has really put my heart into that, and I want to serve people who haven't been as fortunate as I have been, and just pushing them to achieve as many goals as they possibly can.
Because education is a helping profession, educators tend to be people who want to help others who want to serve, they have a sense of drive, passion, or calling to do what they do. An educator is someone who understands all the practical components of instructional design, of reflective practice, and that students are holistic learners. And that the understanding within all of those pieces is that God is our strength and provision, and that every child we serve, every family we serve, every colleague we serve beside. We have an opportunity to shine Jesus to them and to serve them in a way that honors and glorifies Him, because that should be our first and foremost goal in all that we do throughout life, through the profession that we choose that we believe He's called us to, so that is my ultimate goal for every student who walks out of our program with a teaching licenses is that they will have that sense of drive and passion for their profession, but they will understand where that comes from. And they will serve to glorify God and all that they do within that.
So one of the factors in letting us know that we're doing a great job, not only in it in preparing educators, but preparing educators who are going to go into the world and make a difference for Jesus Christ. School districts come to us asking for our graduates. "When are you going to have a math teacher graduate? When are you going to have a social studies teacher graduate? You know, do you have a third grade teacher? Do you have a PE teacher? Do you have a music teacher that we could hire right now?" And we get these emails and phone calls all throughout any school year, especially this school year.
Corban's education program has provided a place for me to learn and grow as a human being, also as a believer in Christ, and also has provided a way for me to find kind of my niche in life of what I'd want to do for my career.
It is such a joy to walk down the hallways of the local schools and see the little names and the logos of the university of where the teacher has gone in to see that Corban logo with the shield and the cross in multiple schools all across the Willamette Valley. One of the best parts about being in the faculty of Corban's education program is when we get to go out and observe our teacher candidates in the schools and we run into all of the recent and not so recent graduates that are teaching here in the community of Salem and the surrounding areas. We can see the impact that Corban's School of Education has had on our neighborhood, on our community by the amount of teachers that we have serving in schools in our area.