Student Teaching

I saw a former student last week who is starting her student teaching today.  Of course, seeing her got me thinking about the biggest lessons I learned from my student teaching experience.   


I didn't have the best student teaching experience.   It could have been much, much worse, but overall I didn't get anywhere near as much out of it as I could have.  A lot of that had to do with my personality, but it could have been better with better mentors and just different circumstances. 

The most important lesson I learned from student teaching was that you can't be any other teacher.  You have to create your own rules and consequences, your own procedures, your own lessons, your own grading system.  You can not just adopt these from another teacher.  True, teachers borrow from each other all the time.  But when you do so, you make adjustments.  You can't just take everything one teacher does and try to do it yourself.  During my student teaching, I was trying to just fill in the shoes of my mentor teacher instead of figuring out who I was as a teacher.  As I said, some of this was the circumstances of when I took over teaching because my mentor suddenly was out with pneumonia and I had to take over several days earlier than we planned.  Because of that and my timid personality, I spent most of my experience feeling more like a substitute than the real teacher.  But, I learned the lesson.  When it came time for me to have my own classroom, I was very ready to figure out how to do things my way. 

Other than this big lesson, I would say that student teaching is a great experience to just get you used to the feel of teaching everyday.  Doing attendance, writing passes, using a grade book, writing on the board, handing out papers, figuring out when to go to the bathroom, using the xerox machine, and dressing appropriately (which is a bigger deal for a young woman than a man).  There are the other bigger jobs that one always thinks of, namely writing lessons, grading, and discipline, but these small jobs are important to get the feel of and student teaching provides just that.  And, if you want it to, student teaching also is a great opportunity to try: experimenting with new technology, network with other teachers (both in and out of your discipline), work with administrators, get involved with extracurricular activities, and communicate with parents.