Becoming an English Teacher?

Question

I know this is a bit of a strange question, but here goes...I have just finished my first year of college, and I plan to declare an interdisciplinary major called Classics/History/Politics. I am studying European history, political philosophy, and ancient Greek. I also love English and have excelled in the English courses I have taken in college. If I decided that I wanted to teach high school English, what would I have to do after college? Would it benefit me significantly to choose English as a second major? Do I need to take education classes now? Will I need to later? I know I need to get a teaching certificate, but I'm not sure how much additional work is necessary. I could really use some advice! Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

When I got my degree, I was an English major and a Secondary Education minor.  Unless you want to take a lot of extra classes after you graduate, you can have an education minor and just do it all as an undergrad.  I believe some colleges now offer education certification as a part of their master's program, so that could also be an option.  With the focus of your first year, you could also be a Humanities major, if your college offers that option.  Humanities would allow you to teach English as well as history classes.  So, check with your college to see what your options are for either graduate level or undergrad education classes.  You will need enough classes to have a minor in order to be certified, so you may as well do it as an undergrad if you can.  

Good luck - the world can always use good teachers!

Answer 2

I graduated 2 years ago with a degree in English education. Honestly, your major sounds awesome and I firmly believe that you should major in what you are interested in. An English minor would be a great idea. However, adding an education minor to that in order to get certified would either seriously overload you or keep you in college for the next 10 years. As helpful as my teacher certification has been, my education classes were a total waste of time. I don't believe that I was one bit more prepared to teach than anybody without an education degree. The truth is, you don't know what it will be like until you start doing it no matter how many classes you take. So I suggest you major in what your interests are. If after college you want to teach, you can always look at private schools...they don't always require a certificate. Or you can call your state education department and see what it would take to get certified. It might just be a test or 2. Either way, the best teachers are the ones that know their subjects well not the ones that spent countless mundane hours being told how to teach high school by someone that has a ph.d in education but never actually taught highschool. Believe me.