As one of the leaders in online education, Ontario Virtual School is not only dedicated in helping our students succeed and providing a quality education, but also helping prepare the next generation of educators.
An important part of Wilfred Laurier’s Bachelor of Education program requires Teacher Candidates to complete a certain amount of field experience before graduation. This program allows future teachers to gain hands on education while completing their degrees, to better help them be prepared for a career in teaching.
With online education continuing to grow and becoming one of the go to educational resources for students and parents alike, it’s imperative that future teachers learn how to create and navigate online learning systems. Which is why OVS is happy to participate in the Wilfred Laurier Placement Program and provide hands on learning in online education.
Our most recent Teacher Candidate, Shawn Goodman, not only completed his placement with us in order to graduate from Wilfred Laurier’s Bachelor of Education, but has recently been hired as a Media Studies teacher with OVS.
Shawn Goodman: Media Studies Teacher
Shawn Goodman completed both his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees through University of Guelph before completing his Bachelor of Education at Wilfred Laurier. He has over two decades of teaching experience. He previously lived in China for several years where he taught English and History at an international high school. He also has experience working with undergraduate students as a teaching assistant.
Shawn chose to do his Teacher Candidate placement through Ontario Virtual School as he wanted to gain more experience with designing curriculum, lesson planning, and remote learning at the secondary school level.
During his placement with OVS, Shawn helped to design our Grade 11 Media Studies course (EMS3O). He assisted in creating extended-range course plans, unit plans, differentiated assessments and PowerPoints for individual lessons.
“Completing my placement with OVS helped me better understand the sheer amount of work that goes into planning and designing a course. Adopting the design down approach gave me insight into scaffolding lessons and creating slides, activities, and resources suitable for virtual instruction.”
Here at OVS, we are happy to have aided Shawn in getting the experience he needed to graduate from Wilfred Laurier. We are also very excited to bring him on as one of our teachers, teaching the course he helped to create Grade 11 Media Studies.
With so much of education moving to online and remote learning resources, Ontario Virtual School is excited to help prepare future teachers for careers in online education.