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Do I have to take chemistry if I want to become an English teacher?

According to career cruising (a website my school encourages its students to look at), I should take chemistry if I want to become a high school teacher. However, I want to major in English, and I am terrible at this type of science. Should I take chemistry, or should I just take a different kind of science like human bio or global science?

Public Comments

1. Hi there! I am a senior English major about ready to graduate. My goal is to become a high school English teacher. To answer your question, you should take some sort of science class to fill up pre-reqs. That means in the first two years of college, a student needs to take so many credits of science, math, english, humanities, ect classes. After that your classes will start to focus more on what your degree is in - in your case, English, literature, writing, and so on. I believe I took cell biology my freshman year and haven't taken a science class since and that's been almost four years ago. Hope this helped.
2. Haha websites like the one you were on don't actually give personalized information. Don't worry about taking chemistry; while in college just take courses essential to English such as Literature and stuff. In college you usually have to take a few non-liberal arts courses as part of your education, but there are many different options besides chemistry.
3. Just look and see what kind you have to take. It depends college to college. Just make sure you're taking a class that will count toward your major. Personally, I think it's dumb they make students take classes that have little to nothing to do with their magor. I'm a phyc. magor hoping to be in social services..why the heck do I have to take 3 kinds of math?? Nobody knows, and there's no point in arguing or trying to get around it..if your going to a university, talk to people and just ask around to see who the easiest teachers are for those kinds of classes that you know you're not strong in.
4. I studied to become an English teacher and never had to take chemistry. The fact is you have to take several required courses before you get into your major course work. The standards for graduating high school seniors and college students has changed over the years. According to the corporate world vs the school districts, we are allowing students to graduate without the benefit of solid writing, reading and logic abilities. Some graduates are leaving college and have no idea how to write a paper, have not used grammar, vocabulary and other written skills appropriately, do not know how to work in groups and learn to make decisions and talk about these decisions in open forum, using correct language skills. As a teacher in middle school, I have interviewed potential teachers for our school and have been completely disappointed because the basics have left these teachers completely. You should stay close to your dean or advisor and make sure that you are taking the courses you need to take and obtaining the credits you need to have in order to graduate. Guessing can hurt you. What you have to take should be spelled out completely in terms of requirements.....and then you can take electives. I never took chemistry outside of high school, but I I took so many history classes, sociology, psychology, that when I graduated and obtained my degree and took the state's test, I had enough credits/hours to teach not only English, but History, Sociology, Speech and a few other classes that I didn't purposely 'study' ..... Stay close to your advisor! Make sure you take all the required classes you need and then electives. Stay in your major field if you can - and also decide that 'high school' these days can mean - MIDDLE-HIGH. My certification was granted in 7-12......This helped me over the years. I have taught Middle school (Language Arts, Reading, Speech, Social Studies) and High school English and History....
5. You should take chemistry if you're good at math, take bio if you aren't so good at math, both also require memorization of facts so you should have good memory