Although, that is one of the perks of being an Education Major. We get to do science experiments in class, read colorful picture books, and meet some of the best teachers and students around, but it’s not all fun and games.

Being an Education major is more demeaning than people think, and we deserve more credit. Sure, we don’t have to memorize the entire skeletal system, shoutout to those Bio majors, but here’s why it’s definitely harder than you think.

Everyone thinks they can teach, but there’s more to it than that. Creating a lesson plan takes time and effort and is way harder than it sounds. You have to think about every aspect of the lesson, like how are you going to get the students hooked in the opening? Show them a video, make them get out of their sets and do a physical activity?

Those are both great ideas, but only if they match up to the standard you’re teaching the class. And if it doesn’t align perfectly, well then you have to start all over.

Even when you think you’ve got lesson planning down to a T, you have a new professor that wants you to use a different lesson plan format! It would be so much easier if all Professor used the same outline, but the truth is every teacher is different and by the time you’re ready to student teach, you have upwards of 10 outlines to use and how do you know which one is best?

Lesson planning is just the beginning of it too. Sure, you’ll rarely find an Education major writing a 10-page research paper, but that’s because we have projects instead. And projects are more time-consuming.

Designing a simple fourth-grade math lesson could easily take a couple days. Not to mention 1 out of every 2 projects is one where you have to co-teach, meaning you and a partner have to teach a lesson together and sometimes neither of you know where to begin. Here’s a tip though; always start with the standard.

Talking about standards, as someone from Connecticut, getting to understand the Common Core and New York standards has been a challenge. But we all have to do it. Standards can be confusing and would probably mean nothing to someone who isn’t an Education major if you showed them one. But our whole career revolves around reading, understanding, and interpreting standards that I’m convinced aren’t even written in English sometimes.

Since standards are the new guidelines for what students should learn and how teachers should give them that information, Education majors have to learn new ways of doing things. There’s no doubt that everyone in college will learn new things and see things they’ve never seen before, but Education majors have to learn new ways to do things.

Math is the best example. We come to discover the way we learned to add in elementary school is the wrong way, meaning now we have to sit through an hour or so of learning different ways to add 35 to 67. (Hint: you have to break both numbers into their parts first) It’s hard to learn something new, but it’s harder to throw away the foundation of your education and build it back up with new methods.

And once you're ready to go into the field, good luck. Gaining experience in real classrooms is essential, but we’re overwhelmed with fieldwork hours. Currently, I’m in different classrooms all over the Hudson Valley for 5 hours a week.

It might not seem like much, but on top of classes, studying, and extracurricular activities, observing in the classroom can be tiring. You’ll see things you’ve never seen before, like kids eating their test because they didn’t know the answer. Nothing can prepare you more but it’s definitely not easy.

Despite it all, I wouldn’t change my major for anything else.

The good out-weighs the bad and it’s worth every second of it. You get to meet some great kids and share your knowledge with them. Yeah, it takes a lot of time and effort, but the first time you help a student and they have that light-bulb moment, it’ll all have been worth it.