[elementry school teachers] how come you guys can teach all subjects??

Question

Maybe this is not the case only for elementary school teachers, but one of my friends is elementary school's teacher, and ofcourse, she teaches every subject. But her major at college is english. I am just so curious that how she could teach all subjects. I know she is very good at teaching English or maybe history, but science would be totally different area for her.

I asked her a couple times, and I told her that is amazing, but I guess she doesn't think that's too great. And I didn't want to ask too much question.

Also, another person I know is a biology teacher, and one day she was on-call, that she had to sabstitute one junior high school. I was surprised that I not only taught biology, but also taught other subjects. I am, again, very surprised, and wanted to ask details.

I mean, how do you teach things that you are not familiar with!? or are they so smart?? sorry for the silly question, but I am so curious...

Answer 1

Well, in elementary school, all of the subjects are pretty simple and you don't have to be really an expert in each one to teach it. Also, they could just research it and then teach.

Answer 2

I was fortunate enough to have my teacher training earning an elementary education degree (a B. Ed. rather than a BA plus a PDP for teaching).  I had 2 years of general studies and 3 years of teaching methods courses which included training to teach the core subjects: Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies as well as Art, Music, Physical Education and Drama.  My final year focused on my concentration areas of Language Arts (including teaching English as an additional language, and Early Childhood Education).  During my 3 years of teacher training I had 3 practicum placements.  The 1st was in a grade 4 class for 2 weeks, the second was in a kindergarten class for 4 months and the 3rd was in a grade 2 class for 2 months.

I was really pleased with the education that I recieved.  I've been teaching now for 10 years and I find that I can pretty much teach anything.  Once you learn how to teach and how to manage a classroom effectively, the rest is easy.  No matter what grade level you have there will usually be someone who knows more than you on any given subject (from a Kindergarten kid while you are investigating dinosaurs right up to a grade 12 student investigating black holes), a good teacher knows how to teach all students effectively, to challenge them beyond what they even imagined.

Answer 3

When you go to school for elementary education you study all four subjects.  The topics covered in elementary school are done on a very simple level that you can study the topics yourself and teach the class.  Most teachers do research to become experts on the subjects they have to teach.  Other teachers just depend on the textbooks.  There are textbooks that tell the teacher what to say, what the kid should say what they should do and how.  So it doesn't take much thinking.

As for being a sub, you can sub any subject because you don't really teach it, you are just a body in the room.

Answer 4

Elementary schools primarily teach reading and writing skills and basic arithmetic.  Other subjects they teach on a very basic level, and a person with even a mediocre general education can teach them.

Also, elementary-school teachers--and secondar-school teachers and college teachers, for that matter--have teachers' editions of all the textbooks that they use.  These books provide them with detailed information on how to teach the contents of these texts, so that even people with a shaky background in what these textbooks teach can perform reasonably adequately in the classroom.

Harleigh Kyson Jr.

Answer 5

I am an elementary school teacher and that is a good question, I guess I never really thought about it. When you teach elementary you have 4 core subjects math, science, social studies and Language arts (reading and writing). However although there are 4 subjects many schools focus on something specific. for example my entire school district focuses more on the math and Language arts portion than the science and social studies. That is not to say however that science and social studies are not taught. As a teacher you have a set curriculum that you follow and there are different text books that are adopted for each of the different subject areas. A teacher can use the teacher manuals from these different adopted text , if he/she is not familiar with or very strong in that particular subject,in order to teach her lesson. Also very effective teachers not only use the resources in the class room but spend countless hours on their own time finding other information to integrate into the lesson.

I hope this helped...