Switching from teaching preschool to teaching high school is a pretty big change, but Karen McWhite saw it as an opportunity to make a positive impact on high schoolers and helping them learn about a career path that involves working with children.
McWhite is in her sixth year at Timberland High. She has a background in teaching preschool for seven years at Goodwin Elementary in Charleston County. During that time, she loved working with preschool students, but she felt the urge to get involved with high school learning in hopes of inspiring others to pursue a career in working with children – especially since there is a nationwide teacher shortage.
“I enjoyed and I loved working with my pre-k kids,” she said, “but then it was kind of like, ‘I need to go to high school so that I can get other people to want to work with pre-k kids.’”
She went on to teach parenting education, food/nutrition and consumer education at Edisto High, but when the opportunity came about to lead Timberland High’s early childhood education as part of the high school’s Career and Technology Education program, it was a no-brainer for McWhite. Now she is leading a program that gives high school students a chance to see what it would be like to be a teacher to young children.
“Early childhood education is the foundation, really, for the beginning of your world,” she said. “I tell my students, ‘You are impactful within society because we’re building the next generation of learners and students.’”
There are two classes within Timberland High’s early childhood education program. Students in the level two class are currently participating in an internship at St. Stephen Elementary to serve as teacher assistants in preschool, kindergarten and first-grade classrooms twice a week.
It is very much a collaborative effort between Timberland High and its feeder schools to make this yearly internship possible and provide hands-on learning experiences for McWhite's students.
“We did a lot of prep last year,” McWhite said. “We talked a lot about the different standards, and the different areas of child growth and development.”
Timberland’s program opens doors to careers even beyond teaching, like running a daycare center, pediatric medicine, social work and more. The internship is truly an opportunity to help solidify students’ decision to pursue the education track after they graduate.
Some of McWhite’s former interns even landed jobs prior to graduating, working as part-time teachers' assistants within the district. McWhite has had some students go on to get jobs substituting through Kelly Services.
The biggest standard McWhite tries to reinforce with her students is health and safety, so her students get their CPR certification through the program.
“We teach them those skills so that when they do leave, that’s another thing they can have under their belt,” McWhite said. “All of those little tidbits give them job opportunities.”
McWhite has a small group of six interns this semester at St. Stephen Elementary. They travel by bus to the elementary school every Tuesday and Thursday morning and spend about two hours with the children.
Her students are witnessing how the younger children learn, and most of them agree that their biggest takeaway so far is that children learn in different ways – and it is the teacher’s job to find that way.
Senior Elizabeth Bunch’s future aspirations are to lead an agriculture department and teach agriculture as well. In addition to completing the early child education program at Timberland High, Bunch has already completed Timberland High’s agriculture courses.
Bunch is interning in a first-grade classroom and said she has learned that young children have different learning styles. Her favorite thing to do with the first-graders is help them work on their math.
Bunch said she loves how curious students are at their age.
“They’re so curious – they ask questions all the time,” she said. “They talk to me about stuff they do at home, their siblings and their teachers, and stuff they
do in class when I’m not here.”
Senior Renee Wright works with children outside of school; she helps out at the daycare her grandmother runs.
Wright is interning in a kindergarten classroom, and it has been an eye-opening experience.
“They’re open-minded – they just say a lot of stuff, they’ve got different learning styles,” she said. “We’ve got to find where they’re strong at, where they’re weak at.”
Wright is currently undecided about what she wants to do after graduation; she is in between pursuing early childhood education and sports medicine.
However, she has enjoyed watching the kindergartners learn.
“They’ve been working on their letters a lot…I think that’s my favorite,” she said.
McWhite is always moved by seeing her students interact with the younger students.
“My favorite part is seeing them actually connect with the students,” McWhite said. “When they see my students…it’s an opportunity to have that older sibling that they can kind of look up to.”
McWhite said the internships in the program would not be possible without the support of Timberland High’s principal, Tim Evans, as well as the principals and teachers of their feeder schools (her program has also interned at H.E. Bonner Elementary in the past).
“I’m just really grateful for all the hands that go into making internships possible,” she said. "I'm really happy to have such a supportive team."