By Matthew Lai & Maxxum Nguyen
Emily Barro has been the only AP Biology teacher for the past few years. But this school year, a student teacher has been seen teaching her fifth and sixth periods.
Chloe Yeager is the one who has been teaching those classes, as she is trying to complete her teaching credentials at California State Long Beach. Prior to that, she went to the University of California, Irvine, to get her undergraduate degree in Biology and Chemistry for pre-med. Yeager had many experiences that inspired her from a young age to find the ground to teach, but only recently rediscovered her passion for teaching.
“I grew up playing school with my grandma and my brother, and I would assign them homework and grade all of their stuff… I coached gymnastics, and my mom would always ask me, ‘Why do you work with kids, and why are you being a teacher if you want to go on a pre-med path?’ And so then I decided to take a teaching credential class… In that first class that you take while on the path to getting your credential,” Yeager said. “They make you go to schools and do observation hours. So you have to be in a classroom and observe the students, the teacher, those things, and that kind of reinforced like, yes, this is what I want to do,” Yeager said.
In addition to AP Biology, Yeager also teaches general biology and is credentialed in chemistry as well. Once she has finished her teaching credentials, she can teach: Chemistry, Biology and AP Biology.
“I was an undergraduate student with a biology major at UC Irvine, and then after that, I went to Cal State Long Beach to get my credential, and I’m credentialed to teach biology and chemistry, so I’m at Cal State Long Beach right now,” Yeager said.
Learning the material course and then teaching it is a very hard skill to learn and Yeager, even with experience in teaching from her previous occupation, has learned something from teaching AP Biology.
“The more interactive a lesson is, the more the kids are talking to each other, the better their retention is going to be, because if I stand up at the front of the class and talk at them for 45 minutes, then I’m gonna walk away with being able to get 100% on the test, and maybe they won’t.” Yeager said. “So even breaking up like content by like the call and response or letting kids kind of give me a thumbs up or thumbs down to gauge where they’re at. I want to get as much feedback from them as possible… I realized very quickly. Like I want to communicate with them,” Yeager said.
Yeager got her teaching credential in a non-traditional way. Yeager obtained her certifications for Biology and Chemistry before going into teaching. This left her with observing a classroom for one semester for observation and one semester for teaching. How do other teachers obtain their credentials?
“There’s a couple pathways. You can either know from the beginning that you want to be a teacher, and you can go to a four-year university where at the end you will walk away with your credential, and then you’ll have to prove something called subject matter competency… My program lasted a year and a half. It’s a full year of just classes, and then half a semester of student teaching, which is what I’m doing now. And because I have a degree in biology, I didn’t need to prove subject matter competency because of your degree,” Yeager said.
Yeager then gives her last piece of advice to students who are interested in being a teacher. Yeager explains what high schoolers can do right away in order to learn how to gain experience if one is interested in teaching.
“I would say, if you could get into tutoring, that would be a great pathway to see if you like teaching. If you’re able to explain something to somebody else, to me, that’s like the highest mark of understanding. If you can explain something, and that person can get it, then you know it really well. … That’s a great pathway to even getting resume building experience, that credential programs will take you because you have experience working with kids. Even if that looks like tutoring a sibling, a younger sibling, that’ll give you some good insight if that’s the type of thing you want,” Yeager said.
