Like my Children’s Literature class I took in the Fall of 2020, this course was geared toward education majors; however, I did not feel so out of place as I had then. I knew so many students in this class, whether from honors or because we had been in Children’s Literature together just the semester before, so I was very comfortable. What also made me feel comfortable was the fact that I had already taken three other sociology classes during my time at Longwood; however, despite the fact that this class was somewhat a review for me on the sociology side of things, I ended up being surprised by how much I did learn. This included not just information about education itself, but the long history of racial segregation of public schools in Prince Edward County. This personal historic connection was honestly more than I had expected from this course, but I was presently surprised by how interesting it made the class.
Aside from the fact that this class counted toward an honors course, one of the reasons I chose this class was that it counted toward my Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minor. I did get that from the class, but I also got so much more. So much of the course focused on differing opportunities in education based on class and race, which is important for everyone to understand, whether we are educators or not. One of the main topics we discussed that really interested me was the differences between types of schools, such as public, private, and charter. I was particularly intrigued by learning about people’s different views on charter schools, as my sister taught at a charter school recently and praises charter schools. I liked being able to add to the conversation and present the ways in which charter schools can actually increase the educational divide between classes and races.
Public Elementary School Teaching in the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study was created by Dr. Lee Bidwell’s Sociology of Education class on April 12, 2021. With the techniques and background we learned in this course, our class conducted a study on challenges the COVID-19 pandemic presented to teachers and students.