Bachelor of Arts [B.A] [Teacher Education - Mathematics (7-12)] From Gettysburg College

Students planning to teach must complete an approved major in an academic department and fulfill all the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts degree or the Bachelor of Science degree. Upon completing a program in teacher education, students are eligible for a Pennsylvania Certificate, Instructional I, enabling them to teach in the public schools of the Commonwealth and to apply to teach in other states with similar requirements. Students who pursue teacher certification are required to demonstrate competence in oral and written communication skills and computer literacy prior to certification. A minimum of 60 hours of observation and participation in schools is required prior to admittance into the Education Semester. Students who are seeking an Instructional I Certificate must have successfully completed the Pre-Service Academic Performance Assessment (PAPA), reading, writing, and mathematics, in order to apply for the Education Semester, and, later to complete the Praxis II specialty area test (the subject area for which candidates are seeking certification) in order to be certified.

Math is often described as a "language," and one that many people simply do not get. Like other languages, it has its own symbols and rules for applying those symbols in systematic ways so they make sense to others. Math does require mastering a certain vocabulary of terms and understanding how formulae can be used to help us make sense of both the abstract and physical world that surrounds us.?

But to understand math is to understand something else: it's to know how to?think. School math, especially, imposes order on reality in ways that make the world around us more accessible and "real." In the best math classes students are engaged in construction and deconstruction, in problem solving, and in vigorous debate about the social implications of pursuing one seemingly "research-based" public policy choice over another. That's right: math is about more than numbers and variables and formulae; it's about thinking, pure and simple, about applying what we know about how the world works to the practical problems of living with other people. It's about learning how people lie with statistics not so you can learn to lie yourself, but so you can help others see how they are being manipulated by quantitative data. It's about precision.