Due to COVID-19, William Jewell College is offering a $1000 scholarship to students applying to the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree. Students are eligible for the scholarship if they apply by May 15 and start courses this summer. 

Created to address the problem of teacher shortages in the area, the MAT program enables people with a college degree to gain certification to teach high school in just one calendar year. 

Dr. Donna Gardner, professor of education, explained the motivation for the program and its goals.

“In response to the emerging teacher shortage in our region the Department of Education created Jewell’s new Master of Arts in Teaching program, which is an alternate secondary teacher certification program,” Gardner said. “The program’s goals are identical to our undergraduate teacher education program goals which are based on the knowledge and skills that a professional teacher needs to acquire. Our overarching goal is to provide the same high-quality teacher preparation to the MAT alternative teacher preparation students as we do to our undergraduate students.”

Taking into account the disruptive effects of the pandemic, Jewell’s department of education decided to take action to make the MAT program accessible to students this year. 

“The MAT program was just approved by the Higher Learning Commission this January, so applicants already faced a short timeline and then [COVID-19] intervened,” Gardner explained. “Jewell made two adjustments in response. First, we changed our policy so that the required certification content test does not have to be passed until the end of the first semester in the program, to give applicants more flexibility. Second, because a lot of people’s lives have been disrupted, the College decided to offer a one-time $1000 scholarship for applicants beginning the program this summer.”

A small cohort of students has already enrolled in the program to begin this summer, and applications are open until May 15. 

“The current cohort is made of half new college graduates and half returning adults who have decided to become teachers. They represent a variety of content fields from business to art to social studies. Three of the applicants will do the one year program and begin student teaching in the fall,” said Gardner. 

In explaining the program, Gardner emphasized the broad curriculum and varieties of content areas.

“The program offers high school teacher certification in 21 content fields consistent with Jewell’s curriculum and leads to teacher certification in grades 9-12 including in some fields in which we do not offer undergraduate teacher certification. Admission to the program requires a ‘B’ or better grade point average in the applicant’s content field as well as overall in their baccalaureate degree,” Gardner said.

Gardner continued by elaborating on the industry needs the program aims to address. 

“There have been claims of a teaching shortage for the past three decades but the shortages were localized or in specific fields. Now there is a real teaching shortage coming in most fields as a large group of teachers retire,” said Gardner. “Jewell responded to that emerging need so that both our own undergraduates who decided late in their undergraduate degree that they wanted to be teachers and that community members who also made that decision would have a quick and/or flexible path to teacher certification.”

The program offers specialized courses to ensure students become effective teachers while taking only necessary courses. The MAT is available for full or part-time students so that participants can finish the program in the manner best for them. 

“The MAT student’s degree in the content field plus the required Missouri Content Assessment verify the person’s content expertise meaning that the student has only to complete the required education courses and student teach.  The program has been designed in both one and two-year sequences so that each student can choose how they would like to manage their study with their personal situation,” said Gardner. 

Students in the program full-time will start summer courses June 1. The one-year full-time program entails coursework in the summer term and both coursework and student teaching for the fall and spring semesters of the program. The cost of the program is $500 per credit hour. Undergraduate students at Jewell can stay on campus for an additional year to complete the program.

More information can be found on the program page. Anyone interested can either apply online at https://jewell.edu/programs/education-master-arts-teaching or email the program’s advisor, Jennifer Wilson at wilsonj@william.jewell.edu.

For those campaigning to be the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, student loan forgiveness has been one of the hot ticket items at all the twists and turns of this election cycle. For many Americans, the thought of having student loans forgiven is a godsend. What a majority of them don’t know is that there is already a loan forgiveness program set up by the U.S. federal government called the Temporary Expanded Public Service Loan Forgiveness (TEPSLF). 

But according to a report by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) this program had approved only 661 applicants out of the 54,184 whose applications had been processed between May of 2018 and May of 2019. Seventy-one percent of those rejected were done so on the grounds that the applicant had not submitted a Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) application. Those confused about how an application for the TEPSLF program could be denied if the applicant never filed an application for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program should find solace in the fact that they are not alone. 

In 2018, Congress funded the TEPSLF to help those who were ineligible for PSLF because their repayment plan was not under the guidelines set for the program. In the requirements for eligibility for TEPSLF, one must have filed an application with PSLF and been rejected before even being considered for TEPSLF. To apply you must send an email to FedLoan Servicing saying that you were ineligible for PSLF. What confuses many applicants is why they had to submit an application for a program that they knew they were ineligible for. 

This confusion in the requirements for both the PSLF and TEPSLF has caused some parties to file lawsuits against the loan servicing companies for their poor communication. Many people who met the 120 required monthly payments were denied, being told that they did not have the right kind of federal student loan or repayment plan. 

To solve this issue the GAO suggested that the option to be reconsidered should just be placed at the end of the initial application to the PSLF. Other solutions to this issue have been proposed by Democratic presidential hopefuls. The most widely known of these plans is that of Senator Bernie Sanders, who sets no requirements for forgiveness. His plan affects all of the approximately 45 million debt holders and their combined $1.6 trillion of both federal and private student debt. 

A more conservative plan comes from Senator Elizabeth Warren. Her plan would cancel $50,000 of debt for those who have a household income under $100,000. For those who make over the $100,000 threshold, she proposes a phase-out of $1 for every $3 over the threshold. A person making $130,00 would receive $40,000 of forgiveness and so on. For those with an income of over $250,000 there would be no forgiveness on student loans. 

There is one glaring issue with all the proposals to forgive student debt. Under federal law, loan forgiveness is seen as taxable income. The average amount of student loan debt for those who graduated in 2017 is $28,650. If all of that was forgiven as taxable income, the average person would be forced to pay an extra $4,000 in income tax. That is $4,000 that many Americans do not have. If all $1.6 trillion of student loan debt was forgiven, the total amount of income tax on the forgiveness would be $591,999,960,474.

In order to prepare for their future careers as teachers, the students in William Jewell’s Education Department gain in-class room experience through field work. Students must complete 40 hours per semester in a primary or secondary classroom. Throughout their time at Jewell, students will complete field work in urban, suburban and rural locations.

During field work, a student spends time in a classroom under the guidance and supervision of a cooperating teacher. At first, they may observe and help the teacher with lessons. Eventually, as they become more comfortable in the classroom, students will teach lessons on their own. The lessons generally correspond with what the students are learning in their education classes at the time.

Shannon Brady, sophomore and elementary education major, said lesson planning is the most time consuming part of field work.

“If I’m teaching a lesson, I have to have that lesson plan prepared, make sure I have all my materials, and I go over the plan again to make sure I know what I’m doing,” said Brady.

Abby Rowan, sophomore and elementary education major, said that when they are not teaching lessons, students may have to work with small groups or individual students in the classroom, or help the cooperating teacher with whatever tasks he or she needs completed in a given day.

“Just as my cooperating teacher becomes a resource for me, I become a resource for her,” said Rowan.

Mr. Robert Stoll, an education instructor and field work director, said that this relationship with the cooperating teacher is key to field work. He maintains that it not only helps the student do

well in the classroom setting, but it preserves Jewell’s relationship with schools so that it may continue to give students the opportunity to work in the classroom.

“We have a good relationship with schools in the area. Schools like working with us because our students have a lot of experience in the classroom and they know how schools work,” said Stoll.

Jewell’s education program maintains that is more rigorous than other schools where field work is concerned. They report that most schools do not require as many hours or offer as many opportunities for student to be in the classroom before student teaching.

“We want them to have as great of an experience as possible, and that’s only possible in the classroom,” Stoll said.

Students agree that this experience has helped prepare them for their teaching careers.

“Fieldwork has given me so much time in the classroom. Observing alone helps to prepare for teaching, but when you are able to jump in and learn hands on through providing support for students and teaching small groups, and then eventually a full lesson, you get a good taste of what teaching will be like,” Rowan said.

Brady shared this sentiment.

“Being in the classroom…gives you a feel for what your career is like, and can really determine whether or not this field is for you,” Brady said. “I feel like I’m a step ahead of the game when it comes to student teaching.”