ST5: Student Teaching is Over
- Jun 23, 2016
- 2 min read
Well, it’s been one month since I finished my student teaching at Safford K-8 and I’m finally ready to look back.
Bribery / Motivation
I’ve really taken to heart what Shana told me: though not all kids want to be in orchestra, all kids want to succeed. They know if they are doing well, and some kids need something to do well, and you are here to help them learn something and do it well. Not the most “music is the greatest thing ever” plug, but it’s what I needed to hear.
How to Avoid Road Rage
I am emotionally a hundred times stronger because of student teaching. It made me realize that some kids will just be mean to me, and even adults aren’t always better behaved. But in knowing that, it’s also easy to forgive them for it. It’s really quite astounding that a human being in the span of a few years can learn reading, writing, walking, talking, understanding, and it just seems like a million skills are needed to function in daily life. And yes, some people skip lessons here and there. Some people reach adulthood and never learned how to be kind, how to be respectful, how to create, how to... many things.
The Rest of My Life by Less Than Jake
In understanding children more, you can understand people more
How Has My Teaching Changed
I’m much more comfortable in making decisions and deciding what’s fair or unfair. I am always striving to talk as little as possible in the classroom, and striving more to demonstrate and use very concise words and actions. I prefer to teach among the students instead of over them. I am more comfortable using humor and snapping out of it when it’s instruction time. Overall though, I’d say I’m just a more refined and emotionally sturdier version of who I’ve always been.
What I Wish I Knew Beforehand
I would have paid good money to have learned classroom management and discipline procedures before student teaching. Talk is talk. Of everything I could have learned from a lecture and book, discipline is not one of them. Hands-on with a real, living classroom of children is the only way to experience it.
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