Fifth Post

Student Teachers Chatboard
http://teachers.net/mentors/student_teaching/posts.html

Topic: How to Prepare for Student Teaching
Dates Spanning: 10/29/08- 11/05/08

Responses to the Question I Posted:
Last week I started my own thread in the Student Teachers Chatboard and asked for suggestions on how to prepare for student teaching. I received three responses- one being Steve’s response which was already discussed in my last blog post. As opposed to Steve’s response (which more or less left me in the same state of mind that I was in prior to my post), the other two responses were quite helpful and encouraging!

One person, “New Teacher,” gave very thorough suggestions about how to begin and continue following through in a teaching career. The information he/she provided was quite detailed and obviously written based on experience. Even though this person calls himself/herself “New Teacher,” I can tell from this response alone that he/she has been paying attention and is becoming knowledgeable in the field of education quickly. He/she proposed more than common sense suggestions (i.e. “get enough sleep”); “New Teacher” offered ideas that I probably wouldn’t think to do prior to starting student teaching (and my first teaching job). For example, he/she suggested learning as much as I can about the school I will be in ahead of time- such as school demographics, the school’s mission statement, information about the principal and staff, the school’s overall goals, grade level goals, discipline policy, homework policy, rewards/incentives, etc. He/she also advised to learn as much as I can about classroom management ahead of time so that my student teaching time does not become all about getting the class under control- as it should be about teaching lessons and assessing progress. “New Teacher” highly recommended the book Setting Limits in the Classroom to brush up on classroom management procedures.

The other useful response came from “Cybrary Man.” He was nice enough to link me to his website which has a Student Teaching page! I explored many of the educational sites that “Cybrary Man” compiled on his website. He has links for all grade levels and subject areas to help student teachers/teachers prepare but I mainly reviewed the student teacher links. Most of the information on these particular student teacher websites is valuable and I noticed that there are some main tips that most sites provide. Some of these tips include: being on time, planning ahead, being flexible, befriending the office staff, being professional with fellow teachers, etc.

(I thanked all of the people who took time out of their day to respond to my post.)

Useful Information for My Teaching Future:
All in all, I learned that there is no way to be over-prepared for student teaching- or teaching in general! It is becoming clearer by the day that there is a lot involved in being a great teacher- but one major aspect of being a great teacher is to know and accept that teaching is a continual process. I’m always going to have to improve upon something; I’m always going to have to change this, tweak that- and generally grow as a person!