20th January 2012
Student teaching
I posted earlier just for fun, but I’m sitting in the back of the classroom during the final class hour on a Friday afternoon. I taught this morning, planned and graded for a few hours during my guiding teacher’s plan time, and now I’m observing some class time - ostensibly, at least. I’m supposed to be here at school until 3:30, even though I’m not teaching for the rest of the day and I don’t really need to do any observations right now… so… well… here I am. Trying to stay awake by writing for a few minutes.
What is there to say about student teaching?
I love teaching. And I love being a student. This is why I’ve spent nearly my entire life either in school, teaching, or involved with the education industry somehow.
But student teaching is not like being a student or like being a teacher. I have to submit my lesson plans to my professor and my guiding teacher ahead of time for review. Lesson plans have to discuss learning theory, have to address the needs of individual learners, have to consider forms of formal and informal assessment. These are all good and worthwhile things, and as a teacher I plan on utilizing learning theory and ensuring that all students have access to the learning taking place - but having to to write out those thought for each plan takes time.
The most frustrating thing about the process for me is probably planning and scheduling. For my program (on-campus MAT at USC!), we have different requirements for our teaching load each week. Eventually I’m supposed to teach a couple of my guiding teacher’s class sections 4 or 5 days a week for a few weeks (before switching to a different grade level). At the moment, however, I’m only teaching about half of the weekly class time in a few sections of class. I would love to take over more class periods, but 1) the semester is almost over at the beginning of February and so there are not many class periods that aren’t already planned out; 2) the classes I’ve been working with most of my time in LA have been very project oriented which means we spend a lot of time in the library doing research or having group work time; and 3) my GT likes teaching her classes and doesn’t entirely trust me with her classes yet. Again this is fine with me - my GT is a good teacher. However, I have a hard time explaining these issues to my professors at USC, to whom I am supposed to be turning in video recordings of planning session and/or teaching every week - including lessons where I try out new strategies learned in MAT classes… This is difficult because, as explained, there really isn’t much time for me to teach anything, let alone try new strategies. It can also be rough when my USC professors ask me to try different strategies that my GT either doesn’t know or doesn’t approve. It causes me distress trying to decided who I should try to push - my professors or my GT.
All in all, I still really like the school I’m working with (Orthopaedic Hospital MMHS), the students in my classes, and my teachers and classmates at USC. But as mentioned above, I am really, really happy that it is almost the weekend. I do have to write a few papers, but I also get to sleep in. And I’ve been looking forward to that all week.
(More to come about these adventures later. I wish I could tell you all more, but prefer not to talk more specifically about my professors, GT, or students on the internet because the internet never forgets - though I don’t have anything bad to say about any of them!)
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