My final semester and I was embarking on the journey I always knew my university education would end with. Student teaching.
I had considered doing an internship but I didn't want to prolong graduation, and I also wanted to do folk dance as long as possible, so student teaching it was! I had gotten my assignment the semester before and before Christmas break I had even gone to meet my mentor teacher, Wendy King, and got the Geography book I would be teaching out of and a bunch of her material on my hard drive. (And oh what a trial it was for me to get that stuff from her Mac computer to my hard drive, yet another reason I dislike Apple. But I digress.)
There was actually an interesting way that I arrived at being paired with Wendy. I was originally with another teacher, but a student who had been paired with him in practicum went up and told my professor that there was no way he should have a student teacher because he had been terrible. Thanks for standing up for me. :) I told my professor that if he felt like it was the right placement for me I wouldn't make any waves, but a while later he emailed me and told me that they were switching my placement. He never told me why, though I later found out why and let's just say my classmate was right in standing up for me.
Then, halfway through Christmas break I got an even bigger surprise, my professor emailed me yet again and asked if I would mind co-teaching with Madde Belnap? Uh, sure, why not? I had a rough idea of who Maddie was from my practicum class. I'll be honest, I was pretty worried because she had seemed like a pretty outspoken person in that class and I didn't necessarily agree with everyone she said. But, I said to myself, everything happens for a reason.
Why yes it does. Though Maddie and I had our problems, they were actually opposite of what I expected them to be! I am kind of a planning freak and doing lesson plans and scope and sequence is not just my bread and butter but an absolute joy to me. Maddie, however, is a much more free spirit than me, and wasn't as much of a planner than me, being much better at being flexible and in the moment in the classroom than me. So planning with these two different personalities could get difficult. Even more difficult when you added in a mentor teacher. Planning with three people is just hard, no matter how much you love all people involved. So I won't pretend it was easy. But I also won't pretend I didn't learn a TON from the experience and didn't come out loving Wendy and Maddie more than I ever thought I would.
As the semester went on, Maddie and seemed to get a handle on things, copies, lesson plans, disciplinary problems, writing tests. Yeah, did you know that writing tests is hard and that whenever there are mistakes students just LOVE to point them out? We became more relaxed and better friends and had more in the classroom with each other and with our students. And as time went on we got to help more and more with Wendy's AP World History class. Which was awesome!
Oh the kids? I guess I can talk about them. So Wendy only taught Geography classes and a couple of AP World History classes. Interesting because I was a History Teaching Major, not Social Studies Composite and not even a Geography minor (even though the Lord told me to get that minor, I just decided to ignore Him because I am endlessly prideful. And now I see why He told me to get it, oops.). So really Maddie and I were teaching four Geography courses, and we got fresh students at the second half of the year, so they were all ours. Score. We did get to help teach the AP World classes, but the Geography classes were all ours and Wendy was great about stepping out and really letting us have full authority.
Maddie and I took charge of two of the classes but we both taught in all the classes. I had 3rd and 8th, and she had 4th and 7th. Timpview had odd/even days so it went 1/3/5/7 one day then 2/4/6/8 the next. We had 1st period prep (the BEST to do last minute prepping for a new lesson) and 6th period prep (which really ended up being a super long lunch) and AP World was 5th and 2nd.
Discipline wasn't half as hard as I had expected and let me be honest, I kind of love taking cell phones from children. I'm a total jerk right? But seriously you take a few the first week of school and then it isn't a problem. The best compliment I ever got was when a new student had his cell phone taken from him about halfway through the term and his neighbor said to him "You chose the worst class to text in". That's right. I found that wearing severe pencil skirts and heels and wearing my hair in a bun made me feel the part of a disciplinarian. It also made me pretty distinct from the students, both in look and in feel, so it was easier for them to obey me. Don't worry, I was nice to them too, eventually. To be honest I never felt like I had to be super mean or anything at first. Just strict.
The students? I can't even express to you how much I love them. I haven't thought of the much recently, but as I write this, faces come up in my memory and I can't help but smile. Even though I thought I would come out with all these dears in the AP classes, truth is I just closer to my Geography students. Even though they were harder to handle and less excited about learning, they were my students, and we shared something! Even though let me tell you, I think the AP students were more sad to see us go than our Geography students, they were such dears and I really did love them. Promise.
I had my golden students who were hard workers and sweet and loved to learn. Wow some of them loved to learn so much! One of my students, if he asked a question I couldn't answer, would look it up for himself and come and tell me the answer the next day. And some of them were so thorough about their work and homework and did everything expected of them and much more!
Other students were more of a challenge, but I can gratefully say that I didn't leave not liking any of my students. All of my challenging students I was able to get to know in a way that helped me realize what it was that they really needed in their lives that caused them to act out. Some of them just needed more attention (and for positive things), some of them needed to feel needed, some of them needed to be largely left alone, some of them needed to just feel comfortable with me, some of them needed to admit they needed extra help. All of them just needed to feel accepted. I mean come on, we're talking about 9th graders. Oh and human beings. We were all 14 once and we still had human feelings, and human desires, and human reactions. And when we were acknowledged as humans instead of 14 years olds, didn't we respond much better to that? That's what I tried to do, treat my students as humans instead of 14 year olds. Because heavens 14 year olds are crazy. But humans are great. My confidence in 14 year olds actually skyrocketed after this experience, I saw their potential even though I didn't always know how to untap it. But isn't that the constant quest of a teacher? I can't wait to reach that goal. And for all the adventures I'm sure I'll have along the way.
I gained an even better testimony of why the Lord chose a 14 year old in the Restoration of the truth. It's a pretty awesome age.
Oh and PS, when your professors tell you that you should ONLY student teach and not have a job or take any other classes (or maybe do both? Like have a job and do PAC...) you should definitely listen to them. That way you don't have a breakdown in the middle of the semester and you definitely won't get two colds right behind each other.
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