ginlindzey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ginlindzey) wrote2007-12-31 10:34 pm
ginlindzey) wrote2007-12-31 10:34 pm
Entry tags:
problems with student teaching
Ok, I've calmed down. And I've been thinking.
Yeah, my own student teaching was a horrible experience in many ways. 1st, the woman I did it with (passed away a couple of years ago), was truly two-faced. She milked me for all I was worth before state competition, having me come to school early to train her certamen teams, stealing my materials and using with her late afternoon classes without my knowledge (until I walked into class one day to get something I left)... I mean, she could have asked permission.
My supervising professor, Gareth Morgan, was an amazing man who was really interested in teaching and helping me to become a good teacher. He asked to see what I was the worst at--and in this case it was reading/translating with students. My supervising teacher always divided the class into groups, gave each group a paragraph, so in essense students only did one or two students individually. We had talked about this in advance. Then on the day Gareth was to come, I got really sick. I had a fever. I skipped my morning classes with the understanding from the teacher that she please, please, please do the lesson with those kids the way I had planned so both classes would be at the same place. Did she do this? No.
I dragged my feverish ass up to school. Gareth came. Poor Gareth saw a horrible class, so horrible that he fell asleep--not that I noticed, but the students did. After class one particular stereotypical dumb blonde (no offense! and I have blonde children!) dance team girl type came up to apologize for how bad class was/how poorly they performed.
I was feverish, frustrated, and upset with the teacher for not doing the one thing I asked, AND THEN this teacher started to totally CHEW ME OUT for doing translation on a day that an EVALUATOR came! I mean she chewed me up one side and down the other, making it very clear that the last thing you ever do when an evaluator came was translation. I tried to explain that Gareth knew it would be a bad class, that he wanted to see it so we could discuss what to do to make it better. She didn't care. She didn't care at all.
And all of this was before things really got bad in her room.
At state JCL competition, the certamen teams I trained did well and placed. One of my old high school chums came up to congratulate me and my supervising teacher. The teacher took it as her praising me, a San Antonio trained JCLer, and no one else. Which wasn't true. Not at all. So the next day we're in the teacher's workroom/lunchroom and we were talking about competition in front of some English teachers and ALL OF A SUDDEN FROM OUT OF NOWHERE she totally tore into me about the San Antonio teachers running everything. MAN, it came out of left field. I don't know WHAT was going on in her warped mind, but I'm guessing in retrospect that she was somehow threatened by me. I dunno.
When I only had about 2 weeks left of my student teaching, she switched the seating arrangement in the room so that the two sides faced each other. Maybe it was only 1 week left. All I know is that things had gotten so bad by this time that one day when I was walking across the UT campus I debated stepping out in front of a car, wondering whether I might only break my leg or if I'd accidentally kill mysel--I was that miserable and depressed. THEN she switched the room, which made my classroom management problems a nightmare, and they were already bad.
It was before school when I had discovered the change in the seating arrangement, and for whatever reason I was so overwhelmed by this that I escaped to the teacher's workroom. No one was in there at first so I sat myself in a corner and admittedly started to cry. One of the English teachers that I observed came in and kindly asked what was wrong. I told her--I thought in confidence. I just didn't understand why my supervising teacher couldn't wait one more week until I was gone... Well, the English teacher mentioned it to my teacher. When class began and students started filing into the room and COMPLAINING about the seating arrangement, thinking I had done it, I calmly explained it wasn't me and that it wouldn't be a problem (as if it were no big deal). The teacher then spoke up, loudly, in front of all the students, that yes, she had done the change and that IT WASN'T FOR OTHER TEACHERS TO KNOW--that is, I shouldn't have gone crying to someone about it. Which is NOT what I had done!!! I had just given myself a time-out so I could cope with the change.
AND I SURVIVED. I survived and learned and all that.
So maybe I wasn't a good supervising teacher when it was my turn. I did try to let her do stuff her own way, or at least I believe I did. I tried not to micromanage. Did I have all the answers? No. I had never experienced students as badly behaved as the ones I had that year, and I freely admitted that my classroom management plan that I had used previously wasn't working with them. And even if mine didn't work well, I could see the gimmicks she was trying as just gimmicks. I could point out why they wouldn't work, or would only work temporarily. She didn't listen, or she just simply believed I was wrong.
The problem with a lot of those students that year was bottom of the barrel self esteem. Self-esteem that was so low that it was easier to blow off a test and fail because you didn't try, than to try and fail anyway. And if they've decided that they can't do it, they become horrible behavior problems. One of those kids repeated Latin 1, failed it again, and was upset that I wouldn't let him into Latin 1b. And I had had this kid in exploratory. I had already had him for 3 years. He had serious ADHD, extremely low self-esteem, and even though I worked hard to help him along, he just kept giving up on himself.
The class my student teacher had included 3-5 kids just like him, all feeding off each other, etc.
And maybe my own inability to have established a classroom management system that really worked BEFORE she arrived did set her up for failure in some ways. (But I didn't know I had problems with classroom management before that year!) But she also didn't try to understand the real problems with those students, esp those kids with low self-esteem. Or at least, that's what I thought. I could be wrong. I could be way, way off.
So does anyone have a GOOD student teaching experience? Well, they must. After all, even my student teacher did say she had a great experience at the school she went to. AND I AM GLAD SHE DID. I'M GLAD SHE KNEW SHE HAD TO FIND SOMEONE SHE CONNECTED WITH. I'm not so anal that I believe I should be everyone's cup of tea. I know I'm not. I fully realize that.
And what do we get from this rant? Maybe a better awareness of how difficult this aspect of teacher training is, how emotionally charged it is, how frustrating, how critical, etc. This is one of those things many people hate, many people want to skip, etc.
But as I sit with Scrubs and Greys Anatomy playing in the background, I am reminded that internships for doctors can be equally emotional and frustrating (of course if not more so!). But doctors understand that there is a pecking order, that there is a certain way you do things or you do jump when someone says jump because it is life or death. Teaching is a personal profession with so much at stake: you are training a future teacher AND risking your own students. The only person with nothing at stake is the supervising professor, frankly.
Is there a better alternative to student teaching? A necessary evil? Maybe just a lot more shadowing and mini-teaches without the stress of longterm teaching?
Well, I dunno... but if you are having, have had, or suspect you are about to have a horrible student teaching experience, you are not alone! And it doesn't mean the world has come to the end....
Yeah, my own student teaching was a horrible experience in many ways. 1st, the woman I did it with (passed away a couple of years ago), was truly two-faced. She milked me for all I was worth before state competition, having me come to school early to train her certamen teams, stealing my materials and using with her late afternoon classes without my knowledge (until I walked into class one day to get something I left)... I mean, she could have asked permission.
My supervising professor, Gareth Morgan, was an amazing man who was really interested in teaching and helping me to become a good teacher. He asked to see what I was the worst at--and in this case it was reading/translating with students. My supervising teacher always divided the class into groups, gave each group a paragraph, so in essense students only did one or two students individually. We had talked about this in advance. Then on the day Gareth was to come, I got really sick. I had a fever. I skipped my morning classes with the understanding from the teacher that she please, please, please do the lesson with those kids the way I had planned so both classes would be at the same place. Did she do this? No.
I dragged my feverish ass up to school. Gareth came. Poor Gareth saw a horrible class, so horrible that he fell asleep--not that I noticed, but the students did. After class one particular stereotypical dumb blonde (no offense! and I have blonde children!) dance team girl type came up to apologize for how bad class was/how poorly they performed.
I was feverish, frustrated, and upset with the teacher for not doing the one thing I asked, AND THEN this teacher started to totally CHEW ME OUT for doing translation on a day that an EVALUATOR came! I mean she chewed me up one side and down the other, making it very clear that the last thing you ever do when an evaluator came was translation. I tried to explain that Gareth knew it would be a bad class, that he wanted to see it so we could discuss what to do to make it better. She didn't care. She didn't care at all.
And all of this was before things really got bad in her room.
At state JCL competition, the certamen teams I trained did well and placed. One of my old high school chums came up to congratulate me and my supervising teacher. The teacher took it as her praising me, a San Antonio trained JCLer, and no one else. Which wasn't true. Not at all. So the next day we're in the teacher's workroom/lunchroom and we were talking about competition in front of some English teachers and ALL OF A SUDDEN FROM OUT OF NOWHERE she totally tore into me about the San Antonio teachers running everything. MAN, it came out of left field. I don't know WHAT was going on in her warped mind, but I'm guessing in retrospect that she was somehow threatened by me. I dunno.
When I only had about 2 weeks left of my student teaching, she switched the seating arrangement in the room so that the two sides faced each other. Maybe it was only 1 week left. All I know is that things had gotten so bad by this time that one day when I was walking across the UT campus I debated stepping out in front of a car, wondering whether I might only break my leg or if I'd accidentally kill mysel--I was that miserable and depressed. THEN she switched the room, which made my classroom management problems a nightmare, and they were already bad.
It was before school when I had discovered the change in the seating arrangement, and for whatever reason I was so overwhelmed by this that I escaped to the teacher's workroom. No one was in there at first so I sat myself in a corner and admittedly started to cry. One of the English teachers that I observed came in and kindly asked what was wrong. I told her--I thought in confidence. I just didn't understand why my supervising teacher couldn't wait one more week until I was gone... Well, the English teacher mentioned it to my teacher. When class began and students started filing into the room and COMPLAINING about the seating arrangement, thinking I had done it, I calmly explained it wasn't me and that it wouldn't be a problem (as if it were no big deal). The teacher then spoke up, loudly, in front of all the students, that yes, she had done the change and that IT WASN'T FOR OTHER TEACHERS TO KNOW--that is, I shouldn't have gone crying to someone about it. Which is NOT what I had done!!! I had just given myself a time-out so I could cope with the change.
AND I SURVIVED. I survived and learned and all that.
So maybe I wasn't a good supervising teacher when it was my turn. I did try to let her do stuff her own way, or at least I believe I did. I tried not to micromanage. Did I have all the answers? No. I had never experienced students as badly behaved as the ones I had that year, and I freely admitted that my classroom management plan that I had used previously wasn't working with them. And even if mine didn't work well, I could see the gimmicks she was trying as just gimmicks. I could point out why they wouldn't work, or would only work temporarily. She didn't listen, or she just simply believed I was wrong.
The problem with a lot of those students that year was bottom of the barrel self esteem. Self-esteem that was so low that it was easier to blow off a test and fail because you didn't try, than to try and fail anyway. And if they've decided that they can't do it, they become horrible behavior problems. One of those kids repeated Latin 1, failed it again, and was upset that I wouldn't let him into Latin 1b. And I had had this kid in exploratory. I had already had him for 3 years. He had serious ADHD, extremely low self-esteem, and even though I worked hard to help him along, he just kept giving up on himself.
The class my student teacher had included 3-5 kids just like him, all feeding off each other, etc.
And maybe my own inability to have established a classroom management system that really worked BEFORE she arrived did set her up for failure in some ways. (But I didn't know I had problems with classroom management before that year!) But she also didn't try to understand the real problems with those students, esp those kids with low self-esteem. Or at least, that's what I thought. I could be wrong. I could be way, way off.
So does anyone have a GOOD student teaching experience? Well, they must. After all, even my student teacher did say she had a great experience at the school she went to. AND I AM GLAD SHE DID. I'M GLAD SHE KNEW SHE HAD TO FIND SOMEONE SHE CONNECTED WITH. I'm not so anal that I believe I should be everyone's cup of tea. I know I'm not. I fully realize that.
And what do we get from this rant? Maybe a better awareness of how difficult this aspect of teacher training is, how emotionally charged it is, how frustrating, how critical, etc. This is one of those things many people hate, many people want to skip, etc.
But as I sit with Scrubs and Greys Anatomy playing in the background, I am reminded that internships for doctors can be equally emotional and frustrating (of course if not more so!). But doctors understand that there is a pecking order, that there is a certain way you do things or you do jump when someone says jump because it is life or death. Teaching is a personal profession with so much at stake: you are training a future teacher AND risking your own students. The only person with nothing at stake is the supervising professor, frankly.
Is there a better alternative to student teaching? A necessary evil? Maybe just a lot more shadowing and mini-teaches without the stress of longterm teaching?
Well, I dunno... but if you are having, have had, or suspect you are about to have a horrible student teaching experience, you are not alone! And it doesn't mean the world has come to the end....
no subject
Well, at least I had small class sizes and kids whose parents would smite them if they didn't work. My sister-in-law's student teaching was so awful she had to switch to a different school.
And yeah, there's a ton of ways I'd do it differently if I were God. Having new/student teachers responsible for everything, just like 20-year veterans, is a recipe for burnout. Having the theory and practice phases of teacher education so separated is simply stupid. Give people fewer classes, give mentors release time so they can actually mentor, support and train the mentors while you're at it, let new & student teachers have time set aside in the schedule when they can talk to each other, let them have more time set aside for seminars where they read and discuss theory as it actually applies to what they're doing...
Finding the money to pay for this, of course, is someone else's problem ;). Though I encountered someone actually doing something like this recently -- http://www.edutopia.org/building-a-better-teacher, scroll down to the bit about Emporia State. And apparently only 7.2% of their graduates have quit teaching after 3 years -- so maybe that's how you pay for it, by not having to continually conduct job searches...
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