Are you going to be student teaching in Fall 2018 or Spring 2019? If so, keep reading to discover some tips, tricks and even receive some motivation. If you enter this chapter of your life in a positive way Student Teaching might just be the best part of your college experience.
Here are a few tips to help you survive your experience with Student Teaching:
1. Before your semester begins make sure to reach out to your mentor (the school teacher you will be working with).
Reach out to your mentor in order to introduce yourself and figure out what will be personally expected of you by the teacher and also what you will be teaching the class during the first few weeks of school. It is always a good thing to seem eager and ready to jump in and help out where needed.
2. Set multiple alarms and drink a lot of coffee.
Setting multiple alarms is always really helpful because there’s a chance that you might end up sleeping through one of your alarms in the morning. Also, coffee is honestly what has gotten me through everything so far. If you do not like coffee try drinking hot chocolate or hot tea.
3. Try to jump in right away.
I know you might want to observe for the first day to figure out exactly how the classroom works and how your mentor handles situations but only observe for a little – I would not even advise to observe for a full school day (maybe only a period or two). It’s important that you jump in and help out as much as you can because that will show your mentor that you WANT to be there and are eager to learn from them. Also, make sure you go to every meeting with your mentor (so long as you are allowed) – attend IEP meetings, staff meetings, board meetings etc. You will be surprised how much you learn by sitting in on these meetings.
4. Treat the students, teachers and school personnel with respect.
If you want to be respected you must first give respect. Just because you are a “teacher” does not mean that the students automatically feel like they need to respect you. Most students need to be comfortable before they will really treat you with respect. A huge part of respect is to talk to the students like normal human beings – do not talk down to them or talk in a negative or sarcastic tone. Another way to respect your students is to get to know them. Learn your students’ names as quickly as you can and also try to figure out what motivates each student and what their interests are. Once you are able to figure out what motivates the students and you know what they are interested in, you can use their interests to create a lesson plan that the class would actually enjoy.
5. Recognize that this is a learning experience.
It is okay to fail at something. When your lesson plan does not go as planned or if you completely mess up a kahoot, own it. Be honest with yourself and your students. When students see that you make mistakes too, they recognize that you are human. You cannot go into Student Teaching thinking that you are going to be perfect at absolutely everything – you aren’t. In the beginning of Student Teaching you are not supposed to be perfect. One thing I quickly learned from Student Teaching is that, when planning a lesson, always plan too much because it keeps structure in the classroom.
Good luck Collegiettes and I hope that you conquer Student Teaching!
HCXO <3
*All images courtesy of Pinterest and Giphy.com