Program coordinator joins SEMO for change of environment

Joe Bradshaw grew up in Chaffee, Mo., and at the age of 5, he knew he wanted to be a teacher. He also had a passion for history and the people that made history, so he decided to make teaching and history his life.

Bradshaw went to Southeast Missouri State University for both his undergraduate and graduate studies. He then went on to student teach in Dexter, Mo., and finally ended up at Cape Central High School.

Bradshaw taught at Cape Central for 30 years, where he was a social studies teacher and the speech and debate team coach. Bradshaw was also one of the sponsors of the drama club, Red Dagger, with his wife, Cindy Bradshaw.

After 30 years, Bradshaw retired from the public school system but decided that he still wanted to work. He then accepted the Secondary Social Studies Program Coordinator position at Southeast on an interim basis in August.

Q. How long did you teach at the high school level and where have you taught?

A. I actually began my career at Cape Central High School and 30 years later I retired from Central. So Central has been my first and only high school. I taught social studies and a little bit of everything in the social studies field. I think there were only three classes that I hadn't taught: Missouri History, Sociology -- OK, there were only two classes that I hadn't taught.

Q. What made you decide to teach at Central?

A. I think I liked the prospect of teaching at a bigger school. I like the prospect of having a different kind of student than what I had grown up being part of. Also, I student taught at Dexter, which is a different community, but still a middle-class, professional community, and I really liked those kinds of kids.

Q. What made you want to make the transition from the high school level to the college level?

A. Once I retired from the public schools I knew I still wanted to work, but I wanted to do something a little different for a long time, so I actually applied for a job as the field coordinator for clinical experience, basically the student teacher administrator, and while I was waiting to hear about whether or not I had gotten that job, this job came open on an interim basis. I took this job because it involved more teaching, whereas the other one was more of an administrative job. This [job] just had a little bit more of an appeal to me, so I went for it. I've still got the better part of the year, and I am going to enjoy every minute of it.

Q. What does your job entail?

A. I prepare social studies teachers; that's what I do. Right now I'm teaching a class called "Introduction to Teaching Secondary Social Studies" where the Department of History is the only one that has a course like that.

It's taking prospective social studies teachers and giving them a very hard dose of reality of what it is to teach social studies, and we start them on a theoretical basis. We start them in the process of learning how we expect teachers to teach -- a 50/50 mix between theoretical and practical.

We also are teaching the techniques of teaching secondary social studies. These are for those that are seniors. They're doing Block 3 right now, and they'll do Block 4, which is student teaching next semester. I'm trying to prepare them to do all that. Next semester I will teach a class on curriculum development. The goal of that class is to prepare the prospective teachers to not only set up individual lessons but literally how to prepare an entire year's worth of lessons and how to prepare a curriculum, one that fits with state standards, one that fits with national standards but also one that follows what we call "good teaching."

Q. What is "good teaching" to you?

A. Well, it's really been rethought over the years, but right now, in my way of thinking, good teaching is about identifying the things we really want them to know -- the big ideas that we want them to know and getting away from this minutia that, "OK, this is what you have to know."

You know as well as I do when you take the test, you cram for the test, you walk out of the classroom, if you had to take that same test the next day, you would do about half as well.

I don't teach my classes that way. I want to know the big ideas. So we start with the big ideas, and we start with what we call a backwards design. After we start with the big ideas, we determine whether the students got the big ideas through assessments, whether it's tests or homework or in class, "Do you understand?" then you come up with lessons for it. The whole world works this way.

Q. What made you so passionate about social studies?

A. I just have a passion for history. Conveniently, the love of history that I have fits in nicely with social sciences because I love history because of the people that are a part of it.

I'm not real big on "this war, with this battle." That doesn't really interest me very much. I want to know about the individual lives.

When I was growing up, the kids wanted to be a cowboy, a fireman, an astronaut, professional football players. As a 5 year old, if you would have asked me what I wanted to do when I grow up, I would have said a teacher. It's what I've always wanted to do, and it's still what I want to do.

Q. What is your favorite part about what you do?

A. My favorite part about what I do is the interaction with students, where they get as passionate about it as I am -- or at least close. My favorite part is getting to know people on such a personal report to the point that I almost think of them as my kids and just like I wanted my own children to learn, to learn well and to be knowledgeable and understand the world around them.

I kind of feel that way and that has done nothing but grow over the last five, six years that I've taught. So I felt such a big responsibility about my need to make sure they understand the world around them.