By Jamie Davis
First Classman Kate Collins is used to blending into a crowd of other uniformed cadets. When she is “Ms. Collins” in her 1st grade classroom at Central Elementary School, in military whites, she stands out.
Teaching, she says, is what she was made to do. “You’re going to be a soldier? I’m going to be a teacher.”
Collins, a senior at Virginia Military Institute, is student-teaching this fall at the Rockbridge County elementary school in Lexington. She is a full-time student and athlete earning a degree in psychology and competing in track and field. Student-teaching is the final step for completing teacher licensure through the newly accredited Rockbridge Teacher Education Consortium (RTEC).
RTEC, which the state accredited in the spring, was designed to offer Virginia teacher licensure to students from the county’s three universities. Since then, VMI has pulled out.
So Kate Collins will be the first cadet—and now the last—to receive licensure through the RTEC program.
“It’s really sad,” Collins says. “I think there would be nothing better to come from VMI than teachers.”
The original idea was for future teachers to benefit from the variety offered by the three universities, which rarely cooperate. They couldn’t be more different from one another.
- Washington and Lee University is private, non-sectarian, 264 years old and self-consciously elite.
- VMI is public, 174 years old and rigidly military.
- Southern Virginia University is not yet 20 years old, serving a Mormon student body and growing fast.
Individually, these colleges are too small to support a full education program, but joining forces offered more than just increased numbers. Lenna Ojure, director of Teacher Education at W&L, says blending a liberal arts school, a religious school, and a military institute brought a desired diversity to the program.
“We actually thought that … the different types of students working together would make it a richer program,” Ojure says. “Even within the [education] classes you’d have more varied opinions and ideas on issues.”
Students in the RTEC program take methods courses hosted at any of the university campuses as well as complete hands-on training in practicum placements with local schools. Streamlined communications is another benefit of operating as a consortium.
“If we want to partner with the local schools and make a program that was more coherent,” says Ojure, “it was really better if we work together so that we can come to them with one voice.”
***
The RTEC program began to take shape in 2005 when W&L offered a Foundations of Education course for both W&L and VMI students. Prior to this, both universities served education students through an exchange program with Mary Baldwin College in Staunton.
W&L and VMI are still not marketed for education—but student interest seems to be growing. At W&L, the number of students taking education classes has grown by about 50 percent, and those earning licenses from three or four a year to five or six a year, Ojure said.
Haley Sigler, assistant director of Teacher Education at W&L, says the program is just now starting to see freshmen come to campus knowing that they are interested in education—a new thing for the department.
SVU Director of Teacher Education Kim Kearney says Family and Child Development has always been a popular track for them, but the RTEC program offering licensure is a first for SVU students.
“On our campus we hope it’s going to be one of the top programs,” Kearney says.
At the same time that it was accredited, RTEC lost VMI as a partner. Kearney says she thinks VMI’s change of heart reflects its decision to move in a different direction, with STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programming.
VMI Communications and Marketing Director Col. Stewart MacInnis had a different explanation.
“As we got into [the RTEC program] we realized that few of our cadets really could take advantage of the program,” he says. “It’s just not a good fit.”
Both of her parents are teachers in her hometown of Nelson County, but Collins credits a lot of her success and drive for perfection in the classroom to her training at VMI.
“VMI kind of pushes you into a role of being a professional,” she says. “When a lesson doesn’t go just right, I’m constantly thinking of what I could change or do differently.”
Collins says she feels lucky to have gotten through the program in time, but sympathizes with other cadets who will not be able to complete it.
Having taken five classes with a mixed student population, Collins said RTEC classes gave her a break from the rigid environment at VMI and exposure to other women. She says it was a breath of fresh air to come from a class where she might be the only woman to a class with a ratio tipped in her favor.
***
Jordan Yost, a senior at W&L in the RTEC program, has not been in class with Collins, but he has shared class time with SVU students.
“I wish we could have everything on [the W&L] campus,” he says. “But it gives another perspective.”
Yost will be student-teaching this winter, also at Central, and completing licensure before he graduates. Unlike Collins, he didn’t come to college knowing he wanted to be a teacher, but enrolled in the RTEC program his junior year. After graduation, the Fairfax native plans to return home to teach elementary school before pursuing a master’s degree.
In total this year, RTEC will grant licensure to five students—all from W&L. Next year SVU will also see five students go through the program.