TEACHING FUTURE TEACHERS CRYSTAL GLOVER SHARES HER PASSION


As an only child, Crystal Glover ’97, ’99 loved school and spent hours teaching her stuffed animals what she learned in the classroom.


Placing her teddy bears in seats, she taught them the alphabet, how to count and other important details such as colors and shapes.


As she grew older, the Columbia resident tutored her developmentally challenged cousin who was four years older and had a difficult time in school.


From those experiences, it would seem that Glover would naturally want to be a teacher. “When I first came to Winthrop, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” said Glover, who now works in the Richard W. Riley College of Education as an early childhood education assistant professor. “I was interested in education and once I started taking classes, I took to it. It has always been a part of who I am.”


Since Glover joined the Winthrop faculty in 2014, she has received accolades for her work. Her students and colleagues have used the words excellent, supportive, special and exceptional to describe her.


In fact, her teaching inspires


students and colleagues equally, according to Mary Slade, chair of the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy.


Students love how Glover builds community within her classroom. “Her greatest strength is her generosity of spirit, her consummate dedication and initiative in regards to the welfare of her students,” Slade said.


Glover supervises interns, specializes in early childhood curriculum and helps prepare the education majors for classrooms of diverse populations in terms of race, ethnicity and social class. “We don’t know what kinds of schools our education majors will teach in so we have to prepare them for all types of schools, whether they are in high or low poverty areas,” she said.


Education majors go into the teaching field because they are compassionate, Glover said, adding that she wants to make sure that her future teachers also are respectful and sensitive to different cultures.


Students learn theory in their courses and then head to area public schools early in their training so they can learn how to manage classrooms, master their subjects, learn short- and long-range planning and understand and utilize appropriate technology, Glover said. The senior-level education


majors also follow the same schedule as the public schools so they can attend academic meetings, see a classroom set up and stay through the end of the school year.


“When I was studying to become a teacher, technology did not play a major role in how I planned my lessons,” Glover said. “Now, it is an integral part of the planning process for most of my students. I think it is important to help my students use the online resources that are available to them for lesson planning in a safe, thoughtful and appropriate way.”


Glover can relate to many of her students’ fears about career choices. She earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in education, then spent 10 years teaching first grade in Rock Hill and Charlotte, North Carolina. Her decision to seek her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina Charlotte and become a professor was not an easy one. She remembered crying when she told her principal, and he promised to bring her back to her old job if it didn’t work out.


Once Glover stared teaching on the college level, she discovered that working with education majors is very similar to working with elementary students. “I model things they can do once they become teachers,” she said, “such as putting stickers on their papers and reading stories to them. It is easy to engage them in different strategies.”


Glover and other faculty members are proud when they hear that Winthrop education majors handle the transformation into the classroom well. That is due, Glover said, to Winthrop taking its role seriously as the flagship education institution for the state. “The university offers a curriculum that is thorough and then provides its education majors with a foundation that gives them confidence,” she said.


Watch a video to learn more about Glover and her work with students.


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