Secondary Education Major
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About the Major
Elon’s teacher education program offers secondary education licensure programs in the high school subjects of English, history, math and science. K–12 licensure programs are also available in music education and Spanish.
Jobs in Secondary Education
- High school English teacher
- High school history teacher
- High school mathematics teacher
- High school science teacher
- Spanish teacher
Past Elon Secondary Education Internships
- Alamance Burlington School System
- Orange County Schools
- Guilford County Schools
- Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools
Related Majors
Opportunities on and off campus helped build career path for secondary education major
It wasn’t long into Chloe Yoon’s 2018 visit to Elon University as a potential Teaching Fellows applicant that she found herself impressed — impressed with the campus, the School of Education, the Fellows program and, most of all, the professors.
“Getting that first impression of the faculty and how passionate they were really blew my mind,” she said. “The professors ultimately were the biggest pull for me. But additionally, [Elon has] so many extracurricular opportunities that extend learning. You have the hands-on learning experiences, and you also have the travel experiences that focus on education. … They were very clear about their focus for a holistic learning experience in the education sector, and that was exactly what I was all about.”
Yoon was accepted into the Teaching Fellows program, sealing her decision to attend Elon. And while her time on campus was interrupted by the pandemic, she still found ways to take advantage of the many opportunities that piqued her interest, including study abroad, university clubs and student government.
Elon’s a school that gives back to its students and tries to make it as student-led as possible. I think having those leadership opportunities were definitely something that changed me as a person for sure.
But the most valuable experience, she said, was the time she spent inside high school classrooms learning from teachers in the community.
“I was in the classroom starting my freshman year of college, and so getting that constant exposure to different teaching styles, different teachers, different students, different curriculums definitely gave me a wide variety of perspectives,” said Yoon, who majored in secondary education and teaching.
Elon gives its education students the chance to observe and assist in local classrooms throughout their four years; that hands-on experience culminates with a semester of student teaching during their senior year. Yoon student-taught English at Eastern Alamance High School, instructing students of all levels and abilities, including honors students and English language learners.
She said she was attracted to secondary education because high school students — having already been taught the basics in elementary and middle school — can engage in conversations on a deeper level. “Specifically with English, you can talk about much more complex ideas … and dive deeper into what that means to them and start to pick at what they make of the world,” she said. “That’s a very formative age for them, where they’re figuring out what they want to do in life and they’re becoming adults and maturing.”
When she wasn’t in a high school classroom, Yoon filled her plate at Elon with numerous extracurriculars: She was a consultant at Elon’s Writing Center, an academic tutor for local high school students through Elon’s Center for Access and Success, and a member of the Social Peace and Social Justice club and the President’s Student Leadership Advisory Committee. Most significantly, she was elected student body vice president in 2021, giving her the opportunity to truly engage with the campus through the Student Government Association.
“Elon’s a school that gives back to its students and tries to make it as student-led as possible,” she said. “I think having those leadership opportunities were definitely something that changed me as a person for sure.”
As someone who had been interested in education policy since high school — and was increasingly paying attention to social injustices happening around the country — Yoon embraced her role in the SGA. By then, she had come to the realization that she wanted to eventually pursue a career in education policy. While observing high school classrooms, she had seen how different socioeconomic backgrounds affected student learning. And she found herself more and more engaged by conversations with her professors about different policy topics, including school choice and teacher protections.
“Discussions with them about more controversial topics on education allowed me to look at the full picture of what was going on in the policy world … and I just became really interested in navigating those tricky questions,” said Yoon, who minored in policy studies, poverty and justice, and teaching English as a second language. “As we started to get into more specifics and I heard more expert opinions is when I really developed the passion for it.”
Her interest in education policy, however, didn’t affect her immediate career plans: She knew that to be an effective policymaker, she would first need to be a teacher.
After graduating from Elon in 2022, Yoon spent two years teaching English at Edison High School in Alexandria, Virginia. In the fall of 2024, she will begin pursuing her master’s degree in education policy and analysis at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, where she hopes to concentrate her studies in identity, power and justice in education.
“I think it’s widely known and said that in order to make laws and dictate what happens in the classroom, you want to have that classroom experience first, and I stand behind that wholeheartedly,” she said. “I think that we have so many policymakers these days who have never been in the classroom and don’t know what it’s like to deal with students and classroom management, and so to have the experience of teaching first was very important to me.”
Did You Know?
- Secondary education programs leading to North Carolina licensure require completion of a major through the appropriate academic department; this provides candidates with a strong content knowledge foundation. In addition, candidates complete professional studies courses and other requirements for teacher licensure that build their teaching knowledge and skills.
- Candidates in the teacher education program participate in a variety of clinical experiences in diverse school settings throughout the community. Early clinical experiences typically begin by the sophomore year and may include tutoring, observing, classroom assistance and small group instruction. The culminating clinical experience for teacher candidates is a full semester of student teaching in the teacher candidate’s licensure area.
- Secondary education majors also have the option to complete add-on licensures for special education or teaching English to speakers of other languages.