Education 10.12 - Flipbook - Page 4
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The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, October 12, 2025
Teaching the teachers
Specialty teaching programs on the rise at area schools
By Linda L. Esterson, Contributing Writer
A
s William Shakespeare’s
famous opening line in “As
You Like It” offers that
all the world’s a stage,
for some students at
Salisbury University, the better
explanation is that all the world’s
a classroom.
The
outdoor
education
leadership program at Salisbury
University (seen here in various
photos) uses the outdoors as the
backdrop for experiences and
learning as they earn a leadership
degree or achieve a minor.
“It’s
such
a
dynamic
environment,” explains Christy
Harper, program coordinator.
Combining the weather, different
activities and the responsibility of
leading people in the environment
can be stressful and stress
inducing. Students learning to
deal with stressful situations while
leading people at the same time.
“It’s experiential education. You
have to know the theory behind it,
but we also put it into practice.”
Students
first
take
the
Foundations
of
Outdoor
Education Leadership course,
which introduces history and
theory of experiential and outdoor
education. Early on, students also
take Wilderness Emergency Care,
which introduces the principles
of first aid in wilderness settings
with the potential to receive
certification in CPR, first aid and
AED use. Other courses offer
the opportunity to be certified in
kayaking, scuba, high and low
ropes courses, Leave No Trace,
which teaches environmental
stewardship.
There’s also a partnership with
nearby WAR-WIC Community
College where students can enroll
in emergency medical technician
(EMT) courses that are recognized
as electives at Salisbury, and
they can become certified as
an urban EMT. If combined with
the Wilderness First Responder
course, they can become certified
as a wilderness EMT, qualified to
perform search and rescue. Before
they graduate, students also earn
first responder certification from
the National Outdoor Leadership
School.
Most of the courses include
off-campus field experiences.
Students in Camp Leadership and
Management put their learned
experiences to task as they go to a
camp and put on a program on an
overnight or over a weekend. For
instance, for the last four years,
students have run an Earth Day
program at Camp Todd, a girl
scout camp outside of Denton.
They put on activities and run
the ropes course and zip line. In
addition, for the last few years,
students have traveled to James
Island to help seventh grade field
trip students with crabbing, fishing
and dip netting, Harper explains.
assistant, teaching some of the
ODEP courses. While some of
her peers secured positions in
wilderness medicine or wilderness
search and rescue, she took to the
educational aspect.
“I can’t wait to kind of employ
some of those strategies that were
taught to me,” she says. “I can’t
wait to implement to my own thing,
and just, you know, hope that I can
do it justice as well as my teachers
did it for me.”
Originally in school for nursing,
Sanchez-Benitez enrolled in the
Wilderness Emergency First Aid
course as an elective. She earned
CPR and AED certifications
and enjoyed the non-traditional
“A lot of elementary education
and secondary education majors
that are either [outdoor education
leadership] minors or just take
the course because they know
it’s going to help them be better
teachers,” Harper notes. “They
want to be able to teach things
differently and get creative with
how they teach. The program
does that for them, outdoor does
it for them, and they love it.”
The ODEL instructors at
Salisbury grabbed the attention
of Alexis Sanchez-Benitez, who
graduated in the spring and has
moved to Costa Rica in the hopes
of securing an outdoor education
faculty position. She spent her last
year at Salisbury as a graduate
Former federal workers are
hired by the school system as
conditional teachers, meaning they
meet some of the requirements to
teach but as content experts in
different fields must take additional
courses and pass exams during
their supervised conditional
employment. Those who are
filling positions in elementary
and secondary special education
programs are directed to CCBC,
and the school is working to add
secondary math to their offerings
for these individuals as well.
(ASD) is now available online at
the University of Maryland College
Park, through the Institute for the
Study of Exceptional Children and
Youth (ISECY) in the counseling,
higher education and special
education department.
Agnesanne J. Danehey, Ph.D.,
assistant research professor and
co-director, advisor and faculty
instructor for the online and
outreach master’s in education
with ASD focus, explains that
the program was designed for
educators in a variety of settings
to gain cutting-edge skills and
knowledge of ASD to enable them
to work with people with high
needs in the school setting and in
the community. According to the
Centers for Disease Control, one
in 31 children were identified with
ASD among a sample of 8-yearolds in 16 U.S. communities in
the organization’s Autism and
Developmental
Disabilities
Monitoring Network in 2022.
learning of experiential education
while in small classes and one-onone time with the instructors. As a
result, she changed her major to
outdoor education and leadership.
“It genuinely felt like finding a
niche,” she says.
The Community College of
Baltimore County (CCBC) is one
of 11 colleges and universities
to receive a Maryland Higher
Education Commission (MHEC)
Teacher Quality and Diversity
Program grant to support
displaced federal workers. The
community college is a Maryland
Approved Alternative Preparation
Program (MAPP), a state-approved
pathway for career changers to
become licensed teachers and
Qualified conditional teachers
will be put in a cohort and
shepherded through the program,
which will provide coursework and
culminate in praxis testing in their
content area and future student
age group and a national portfolio
assessment, in order to become
fully licensed.
At CCBC, leaders prioritized
offering the program as part of
its continuing education umbrella,
offering a nimbler schedule not
constrained by the traditional
semester calendar. The program
will carry a less expensive tuition
and also boast a flexibility
necessary for Baltimore County
teachers who are working while
being students.
The program prepares students
for a variety of roles. They learn
to become outdoor leaders who
can lead wilderness or adventure
trips. They can become camp
directors, wilderness therapists,
national or state park rangers
and lead educational programs at
schools. Some also continue their
education to become firefighters.
In today’s schools, the most
impactful teachers are the ones
who are creative in grabbing their
students’ attention.
classrooms and the Feds to Ed
grant is a clever way to recruit
career changers to the teaching
profession.”
was approached by MHEC to
expand and adapt its program
to meet the needs of displaced
federal workers.
CCBC received $100,000 to
create an infrastructure specifically
to help federal workers become
special education classroom
teachers, in partnership with
Baltimore County Public Schools.
The grant is part of a state program
created by the governor’s office
called Feds to Eds, to promote
teaching as a new career track.
“What this has done is put
unprecedented
attention
to
teacher vacancies,” says Jessica
C. Brown-Strott, CCBC assistant
professor and MAAPP program
director. “There are not enough
fully-licensed, highly-qualified
teachers in Maryland’s K-12
“We will train them in their
classrooms, not ours, and
we’ll work with them and the
infrastructure that they have that
supports their teachers,” BrownStrott explains. The coursework
is 100% online, and there are
remote synchronous opportunities
for advising and professional
development.
“CCBC was awarded the grant
to adapt and scale up our existing
approved teacher preparation
program to support displaced
federal workers who are ready
to use their experience and
knowledge to teach,” Brown-Strott
summarizes. “The grant not only
helps people who are ready for
the next chapter of their careers,
it has provided unprecedented
awareness of existing teacher
vacancies in every district in
Maryland.”
A master’s degree in special
education with a specialty focus
on autism spectrum disorder
The online M.Ed. comprises 10
courses over two-and-a-half years,
beginning with an introduction
to ASD course, broken into two
parts and focusing on the use of
evidence-based practices for the
inclusive classroom or academic
setting, Danehey explains. The
courses also delve into evidencebased practices for working in
reading, writing, mathematics and
activities of daily living.
“We focus on the education
of students with autism spectrum
disorder and then follow up
with social and communication
challenges and strategies for
working with students with autism
spectrum disorder,” Danehey
adds. “We want them to have a
working vocabulary of what are the
characteristics of students with
autism, because then it makes
sense why we focus on the social
and communication strategies.
That’s the major category in the
diagnosis of autism spectrum
disorder.”
Expanding the program to
online access enables students
to participate after working fulltime hours. Many are classroom
teachers in general education
and special education while
others work professionally as
speech therapists, occupational
therapists, physical therapists
or service providers in adult
education. Some parents also
enroll to gain expertise and tools
to help them guide their children
who were diagnosed with ASD.
The program’s 47 current students
are from Central Maryland and
Washington, D.C., with others
from as far as the Eastern Shore.
The first cohort will graduate in
May.
Maryland also offers a graduate
certificate program for teachers
who have students with disabilities
or autism in their inclusive
classrooms. Neither program
yields Maryland State Department
of Education licensure, however.
