u/BigSwampEnergy

In a year, I will graduate with a Masters of Divinity. But before this, I spent several years working in outdoor education, and my undergraduate degrees were in Physics and Environmental Sciences. When I started my degree program, I was pretty sure I wanted to focus fully on ministry, but lately, I've been wondering if there is a path I could take that would let me honor both of these 'callings' and skills? There is always bi-vocational ministry, but I'm wondering especially about fields that need people with technical backgrounds and high social-emotional, spiritual-care, and meaning-making oriented skills? I love the work of teaching and scientific communication, and am thinking of these as some options, but wondering what things I might not have ever considered? <3 thank!

I'll try and not post my whole life story, but I'm curious how I might learn more about teaching in classrooms and schools. I graduated college in 2019, and most of my experience is working with youth, either in churches or as a parks educator, but I have no formal classroom experience. My academic background is in science, and I've done a lot of informal education work, but have always been wary of classroom teaching because the structure isn't something I've felt like I could handle. Buuuuuut lately I've been feeling really drawn toward it. I'm in an unrelated master's program, where I've been mostly doing youth ministry.

So my ask is, for teachers, are there ways you know of that someone could learn more about classroom teaching? I'm trying to get in my local sub pools, but wondering if it would be weird to reach out to schools to see if there was a way I could shadow someone? Also though it feels like y'all already have enough (too much?) to do so idk how excited someone would be to have another person to worry about.

Anyways, happy to hear perspectives on those ideas or any new ones, and thank you in advance ❤️