I think back to the beginning of student teaching and think about how very unprepared I was for the experience. I felt overwhelmed by the impact I could have on one student, let alone 33 of them.
I learned the basics. I learned to break the lesson down to steps that become obvious as we work through them. I learned that you could move forward in the lesson if you don’t have the students engaged and/or focused. And I learned to be quiet as much as possible in the teachers’ lounge.
I still need my own space to get things organized. That won’t happen until I have my own classroom. I need to remember, too, that while teaching is important, perhaps even one of the most important profession in life, and I am worthy of that position. I’ve always been so intimidated by being a teacher- my teachers growing up were what kept me level when things at home were bad.
I think the most poignant moment I experienced was about 10 weeks in. We were really doing well in class that day- I felt effective and efficient. I had the kids in the palm of my hand. Or so I thought.
We had had some problems with bullying in the class. I’d imagine it’d be about average for the last half of the school year in 5th grade. The children’s emotions (and probably hormones) had heightened to a level where clashes occurred almost hourly. That’s understandable. Children these days have easy access these days to some very cruel forms of human interaction. The students were modeling some of those cruel behaviors. One of the girls found that someone else had written some very cruel things about her on her notebook when she was out of her desk. She was genuinely hurt and I was a little shocked.
I thought about it. I could simply ignore it. Or I could try to hunt down the writer. But this wasn’t the only example of this hurtful behavior.
After thinking about it for a while, I asked everyone to sit down. I was a little dramatic about it, but I really wanted to get the maximum effect. I sat down with them. I had every set of eyes on me. I then told everyone about what I had found. I then told them I was very impressed with what kind of people they are but was very sad that they chose to treat each other that way. I wanted them to really think about whether they wanted to continue to be that way. I then had them work on homework individually until the end of the day. When the day was done, the substitute that supervising me that day said that I had the students “eating out of my hand” by the end. I felt like I made an impact on the students. I still have them run up to me at Wal-Mart when they see me. I hope I’ve helped create better people in my time as student teacher.
