A student of teachers. A teacher of students.

For this, my final semester, I am student teaching in a 9th grade geography classroom at Timpview High School. Yes. It's going well. Thank you for asking. 


It's an awkward stage to be in. Student teaching. Did you ever think about those two words together? And why is it that the second word is the verb? We never say we're studenting. But I've gotta say, that as much as I'm teaching, I'm studenting much more. 


It seems ironic that when teaching we learn the very most. In fact we talk about this often in the education major. If you want students to really learn the material, have them teach it to someone else. Seems backwards-ish. But teaching is the most active form of learning. I always understood that. Ethereally. (Is that a word too? I'm not getting a red squiggle under it. So I'm trusting spellcheck here. But can anyone actually say that out loud? Ethereally. That's not easy.Try it.)

 But now I am beginning to really understand. The other day I taught about landform production. Subduction. Plate tectonics. Weathering. Yawn. Keep in mind folks, I'm actually a history teaching major. History ≠ Geography. I mean I love the human element of geography but the physical element? Let's just say that was one of my less good grades in college. So my mentor teacher, after watching me lecture on it the first time, told me to study it until I cared about it. 

So home I went and National Geographics I did study. At one point, while reading about subduction and tsunamis, all of the sudden I wanted to, nay, had to see a video of a tsunami. I was interested! I watched Youtube videos of tsunamis for a while then quickly wanted to finish the article I was reading and move on to another I'd found about earthquakes. 

So basically what I'm saying is. So far I've learned a lot of things through student teaching. Mostly, however, so far I've learned to learn. Even though I thought that was what college was all about. My mentor teacher put it well today when she said that's what is great about being a teacher, you have to study continually. 

Well good. Because I love to learn. I just have to remind myself every once in a while.