Bad student teaching experience: why me?! (demand, activity, government, faculty)
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You're absolutely correct, lobo, in that I need to not make excuses and just take the bull by the horns in my situation. I commend you on your 21 years of teaching that is quite the accomplishment. And even moreso to be a mentor resource teacher to new teachers. You are correct in that maybe middle school students aren't a good fit for my personality. That may be true. I only spent less than 2 weeks with middle school students during my brief placement, so I don't know for sure if I would be a good fit. When I student taught high school students last semester I had a great time and felt like I got them and where they're at in life. I also felt that innate connection when I taught to community college students in their 20s. So you have a valid observation there with me maybe not connecting as well with middle school students. Developmentally they are so different at 7th grade than in 8th or 9th grade even.
And like I wrote in my post to Jasper etc., the more honest I am with myself, and with the MAT staff I meet with about why I made the mistakes I did with my communication etc., perhaps that will be enough to convince them to give me another chance to finish the 7 weeks left of student teaching. Thanks for your advice and input. I really do appreciate hearing from seasoned teachers who've been mentors. It helps me to put everything into better perspective.
Maybe you'd be a better fit teaching special Ed. Seems like you teach out of the box in maybe way that a gen Ed traditional teacher might find annoying, but would be fantastic in special ed. One tiidbit of info I left out of my earlier post was that I am a special ed teacher and mentored special ed teachersin the university program. When an intern teacher had to be moved, we found that if we could find the right fit, the teacher would thrive. Mind you, this didn't always work because some people were never really cut from the same cloth as most teachers and needed to make a career change, but most were truly passionate about it and once they found the right fit, they were successful.
Middle school teaching is not for the faint at heart. God bless those teachers who have a calling to teach this age. I for one could not do it. Teaching special ed may be something for you to consider, even if it means a few more classes. There are more openings and job security in special ed which makes principals less picky.
I enjoy teaching special ed and continue to learn new things every year. For example, in my first 17 years of teaching I only had one student with autism. Now in the 4 past years I've had several (4 students this year alone) who come with a whole new set of challenges that require me to learn, change, and grow as a teacher. That is something always tell my mentees. I don't know it all, and the day I think I do know it all is the day I need to think about retiring.
A teacher and book author who was a huge elementary literacy guru back in the mid-late 90s signed a book of mine and wrote, "When you get there, there is no "there" there. It is so very true. Good luck!
Maybe you'd be a better fit teaching special Ed. Seems like you teach out of the box in maybe way that a gen Ed traditional teacher might find annoying, but would be fantastic in special ed. One tiidbit of info I left out of my earlier post was that I am a special ed teacher and mentored special ed teachersin the university program. When an intern teacher had to be moved, we found that if we could find the right fit, the teacher would thrive. Mind you, this didn't always work because some people were never really cut from the same cloth as most teachers and needed to make a career change, but most were truly passionate about it and once they found the right fit, they were successful.
Middle school teaching is not for the faint at heart. God bless those teachers who have a calling to teach this age. I for one could not do it. Teaching special ed may be something for you to consider, even if it means a few more classes. There are more openings and job security in special ed which makes principals less picky.
I enjoy teaching special ed and continue to learn new things every year. For example, in my first 17 years of teaching I only had one student with autism. Now in the 4 past years I've had several (4 students this year alone) who come with a whole new set of challenges that require me to learn, change, and grow as a teacher. That is something always tell my mentees. I don't know it all, and the day I think I do know it all is the day I need to think about retiring.
A teacher and book author who was a huge elementary literacy guru back in the mid-late 90s signed a book of mine and wrote, "When you get there, there is no "there" there. It is so very true. Good luck!
Hi lobo!
You know, I thought about special education because I teach so out of the box. But what's kept me from going that direction is my low tolerance for stress. But maybe that kind of stress reaction would disappear once I was teaching special ed students. Yes it would be 2 more years of classes unfortunately, and I think I'm quite finished with my current university so I'd probably have to go somewhere else if I decided to do special ed. Then there's the MTLE tests; I'd have to take 4 more tests. I appreciate your insight to my situation. If the climate in my MAT program was more supportive of me I'd stay and pursue it. But it also would mean 2 more years of living well below my means and being in academic limbo and I'm just ready to move forward at this point. If I were younger, had a spouse to support me, I'm sure it would be a different situation if that makes any sense?
I like that quote about "there is no "there" there.
I did my student teaching in a school adjacent to SE DC. Very very very bad area. My advisor came once, once he found me, I had to escort him to his car. He never came back. He just kept saying, between prayers, "how could we have put you here?"
First day, I went to get in car, popo everywhere, the car beside mine had been stolen from teachers' parking lot.
For your average placement of student-teachers, no. At least not in my neck of TN. But I'm a mentor teacher for new hires, and we did go through training. I wasn't chosen to do this until I have had a good number of years of experience under my belt. Or I had something that the administration thought was there.
I was "dragged" into it, a student teacher who was "fail" with one teacher, the Principal asked me to help the girl out. Thus, my new career. It was all good. One student teacher was so NOT for SPED, she showed up in a fancy suit, and hose. Wow. In my classroom we worked! On the floor, we got messy, we did stuff. No fancy clothes. Definitely no hose. We wore jeans and tennis shoes. Often shorts and a tee shirt.
Oh, those were fun days.
I had a great job. And now, an even better one. Wish you the best. We all find our "place".
I have known many teachers who taught for a bit, and realized it was not a good job fit.
Hi marie5v, well in the case of student teaching and finishing my program, I have to be a little focused on me. What I want is to be given the opportunity to finish my student teaching. So yeah.
But when it comes to actual teaching, I'm very much a student-centered teacher. My MAT program taught us student-centered teaching strategies like cooperative learning where the focus is on engaging students in their own learning process, teaching students how to do self-reflection, self-assessment, assess each other's work and really analyze what they're learning, why they're learning, and how they're learning and giving that feedback to the teacher, as well as doing a lot of collaborative work where students work with each other and as a teacher learn how to share the power with students by letting students make some of the decisions about their learning and how they receive the information from the teacher. I also learned about differentiated learning, understanding by design, and many other different methods of how to do plan my lesson plans so that they ask an essential question that is relevant to students' learning needs and to their lives. That essential question could be a response to literature, to teach appreciation of literature, refresh or teach reading strategies, build students knowledge of figurative language vocabulary, and teach students how to interpret and analyze literature and then write a thoughtful analysis (whether its a response paragraph or a 3 paragraph essay to an expository essay). For my poetry unit, one of the essential questions that I put on the students assignment calendar (and asked them to write a paragraph response to, as a reflection piece for their own viewing) addressed responses to literature, "how does recognizing figurative language in poetry help you understand it better?" I paraphrased the essential question in my own words of course. But I used it as the lesson plan's theme for the analyzing poetry section of my poetry unit, to frame students' understanding. Does that make any sense?
So I'm very much about the students. Always have been. Always will be. But first I have to get through my program's last hurdle of the 7 weeks of student teaching and so I need to focus on what I can do differently to convince my program to give me another chance.
That is a huge bunch of empty academic jargon and rhetoric that is pretty meaningless without practical experience. That's why they have you do the student teaching. Because you think you know everything, but actually you don't know that much. I am pretty sure that is the essential problem. You don't receive information well. Even all that great sounding stuff that you learn in grad school is often not at all what is done in the local school district. There are many different ways of teaching many subjects, and you have to really look at the programs in the schools, which will not typically match up with what you learned, or at least not in the way you expect them to. Consider that you maybe don't know as much as you think you do. If you get another chance, try to pretend you know almost nothing but are trying really hard to learn. That's the attitude that is appropriate for a new teacher. Personally, I think that's really the case, but even if you don't you will need to learn to adopt that attitude or you will not succeed.
Hi marie5v, well in the case of student teaching and finishing my program, I have to be a little focused on me. What I want is to be given the opportunity to finish my student teaching. So yeah.
But when it comes to actual teaching, I'm very much a student-centered teacher. My MAT program taught us student-centered teaching strategies like cooperative learning where the focus is on engaging students in their own learning process, teaching students how to do self-reflection, self-assessment, assess each other's work and really analyze what they're learning, why they're learning, and how they're learning and giving that feedback to the teacher, as well as doing a lot of collaborative work where students work with each other and as a teacher learn how to share the power with students by letting students make some of the decisions about their learning and how they receive the information from the teacher. I also learned about differentiated learning, understanding by design, and many other different methods of how to do plan my lesson plans so that they ask an essential question that is relevant to students' learning needs and to their lives. That essential question could be a response to literature, to teach appreciation of literature, refresh or teach reading strategies, build students knowledge of figurative language vocabulary, and teach students how to interpret and analyze literature and then write a thoughtful analysis (whether its a response paragraph or a 3 paragraph essay to an expository essay). For my poetry unit, one of the essential questions that I put on the students assignment calendar (and asked them to write a paragraph response to, as a reflection piece for their own viewing) addressed responses to literature, "how does recognizing figurative language in poetry help you understand it better?" I paraphrased the essential question in my own words of course. But I used it as the lesson plan's theme for the analyzing poetry section of my poetry unit, to frame students' understanding. Does that make any sense?
So I'm very much about the students. Always have been. Always will be. But first I have to get through my program's last hurdle of the 7 weeks of student teaching and so I need to focus on what I can do differently to convince my program to give me another chance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marie5v
That is a huge bunch of empty academic jargon and rhetoric that is pretty meaningless without practical experience. That's why they have you do the student teaching. Because you think you know everything, but actually you don't know that much. I am pretty sure that is the essential problem. You don't receive information well. Even all that great sounding stuff that you learn in grad school is often not at all what is done in the local school district. There are many different ways of teaching many subjects, and you have to really look at the programs in the schools, which will not typically match up with what you learned, or at least not in the way you expect them to. Consider that you maybe don't know as much as you think you do. If you get another chance, try to pretend you know almost nothing but are trying really hard to learn. That's the attitude that is appropriate for a new teacher. Personally, I think that's really the case, but even if you don't you will need to learn to adopt that attitude or you will not succeed.
marie5v has a point here. After going through the education classes and writing about your philosophy of education, it is meaningless when you do your student teaching if you do not mimic for the most part what you cooperating teacher does and thinks. It is difficult as a 42 year old "to pretend you know almost nothing but are trying really hard to learn." The problem you have been dealt is many people when placed in a supervisory role, believe it is their job to change something about you or how you do your job. What purpose would this cooperating teacher serve if she could not fix something in your teaching style. If you get another chance, try hard to follow the advice that marie5v and others have given you.
BTW, I do believe that most of the today's teaching strategies are "academic jargon and rhetoric." Collaborative work, student-centered teaching strategies, differentiated learning and self-reflection are all strategies that have resulted in students graduating from high school with low reading abilities, poor writing skill, the inability to do basic math and a lack of understanding of subjects like science, history and civics. But I digress...
I wasn't originally planning to weigh in on this thread, but after reading through it, I cannot resist. Save the self-reflection, self-assessment, collaborative learning, differentiated learning, backward design jargon for writing your application essay on why you want to teach. All these programs, styles, lingo come and go. It sounds like you came on like gang busters. Being older than your supervising teacher means that you have to go out of your way to show that you acknowledge that she is the leader and you are the follower. You need to blend in with her style. After all, you are going to leave the class in a few weeks and she is left having to continue teaching using her tone, not yours. If she uses a low-key approach, then you must do the same. If you have a naturally loud voice and she is soft-spoken, go out of your way to tone yours down a bit. Something tells me that if a stranger had walked into the class, the stranger would have assumed that you were the teacher and the teacher was the student teacher. When you have your own class, you can do things your own way, but not as a student teacher. Middle school students are not like community college students and are not all that into "analyzing why they are learning" and "making decisions about their learning." I also sense that you have no children of your own and I think if you did, you might have a different perception.
I wasn't originally planning to weigh in on this thread, but after reading through it, I cannot resist. Save the self-reflection, self-assessment, collaborative learning, differentiated learning, backward design jargon for writing your application essay on why you want to teach. All these programs, styles, lingo come and go. It sounds like you came on like gang busters. Being older than your supervising teacher means that you have to go out of your way to show that you acknowledge that she is the leader and you are the follower. You need to blend in with her style. After all, you are going to leave the class in a few weeks and she is left having to continue teaching using her tone, not yours. If she uses a low-key approach, then you must do the same. If you have a naturally loud voice and she is soft-spoken, go out of your way to tone yours down a bit. Something tells me that if a stranger had walked into the class, the stranger would have assumed that you were the teacher and the teacher was the student teacher. When you have your own class, you can do things your own way, but not as a student teacher. Middle school students are not like community college students and are not all that into "analyzing why they are learning" and "making decisions about their learning." I also sense that you have no children of your own and I think if you did, you might have a different perception.
Excellent points and I agree with the last sentence! I do disagree with the statement in bold. The majority of students, especially community college students are not that into "analyzing why they are learning," and "making decisions about their learning." Most students want to know what they are going to be tested on. It doesn't matter if it is middle school or graduate school, the question is always, "Will this be on the test?" Some of these education theories just complicate things for the students and wait until you get the calls from the middle school parents on why their child's grade has dropped from a 97 to a 92 with the student teacher.
Excellent points and I agree with the last sentence! I do disagree with the statement in bold. The majority of students, especially community college students are not that into "analyzing why they are learning," and "making decisions about their learning." Most students want to know what they are going to be tested on. It doesn't matter if it is middle school or graduate school, the question is always, "Will this be on the test?" Some of these education theories just complicate things for the students and wait until you get the calls from the middle school parents on why their child's grade has dropped from a 97 to a 92 with the student teacher.
I agree with everything you said 100 percent!
It reminds me of when my SIL who was raised in Asia, got her Ph.D. and got her first job teaching "101" type of required classes as an adjunct. She had all these great plans and had all this extra "stuff" for her students to do, all these "optional" assignments for her students for further enrichment. She was greatly disappointed when she saw that her students showed up to her class, had no interest in the subject or any of the extra enrichment that she worked so hard on. I tried to explain to her that most of these students are only taking her class because they need it for graduation. They will never use the material and have no interest in it. They just want to get it over with as painlessly as possible. She could not understand because she came from a background where you learn anything and everything just for the sake of learning.
I quoted the OP about "analyzing why they are learning," and "making decisions about their learning because I cannot see any 12-14 year olds being this introspective. My point was that hopefully, community college students (OP's former teaching area) would have more maturity than middle schoolers to have more self-motivation than adolscents for some of their courses, at least the less theoretical ones in their major; but yeah, for the most part, the primary concern is what will be on the test and the grades. I agree that the educational theories do just complicate things and rarely have much relevance to day-to-day teaching. The cyclical changes in pedagogical approaches and styles make money for the publishers and give the adminstrators in the back office in charge of purchasing new materials and "spreading the new message" something to do.
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