Am I comfortable speaking to large groups or am I more comfortable in one-on-one situations?
So important. Teaching is essentially a vocation. The main skill or craft of teaching is communication (with students, teachers, parents and community). You can be the best student academically, but if you can't communicate your knowledge in a way which others understand, you won't be effective.
Keep in mind as well that depending on your specialisation (primary, primary/secondary or secondary), you need to satisfy certain requirements. AFAIK:
- Secondary (2 method areas of 1 double-method, at least a minor in both)
- Primary/Secondary (1 method area, the other is primary)
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here for more info on what I mean about this. As a secondary teacher, you are qualified in one or two method areas (e.g. you can be a Math/Sci teacher or Math/IT teacher or a Geography/History teacher or a Health/PE teacher etc etc).
There are also double degrees in Science/Education, however, you won't be able to specialise in both primary and secondary education.
Not necessarily true. As I stated in my previous post, some undergraduate programs offer the P-12 stream such as the Monash Bachelor of Education (Honours) and Victoria Uni Bachelor of Education (P-12). Additionally the MTeach at several institutions offers prim/sec as a specialisation. I know for a fact Monash does this.
Out of curiosity, what subjects would you be interested in teaching? If you're wanting to teach maths or science I really would recommend taking Methods and even Specialist.
Whilst it would be a benefit to do specialist/methods to be a qualified maths or science teacher, I feel that it isn't compulsory to do methods or specialist. You can be an effective teacher without doing these subjects. Ideally one would be doing some sort of double degree paired with Education and therefore would be doing the math component to meet the VIT requirements anyway. Obviously if it is a pre-requisite to any courses you are interested in, then clearly you need to.
For example, my undergrad was in IT and I did 4 statistics units from 1st-3rd year level and discrete mathematics in 1st year which enabled me to be qualified to teach mathematics. For me personally I wish I did at least methods because now i'm going to have to learn the entire course from scratch due to the fact that I may be called upon to teach it when I start. But the key takehome message is that you don't need it to be a good math teacher.
Thanks