I am done student teaching in the States.
Since March, I've returned from Belize, taken two PRAXIS tests, and completed an eight-week student teaching placement in a Duluth middle school. From the fact that I'm only now posting about my last student teaching experience, you can deduce that it was a taxing experience. I've never been so busy in my life! Day after day, I would return from school at 4:30 pm, deal with life for an hour or two, work on grading or lesson planning until I passed out at my desk at 9:30 or 10:00, sleep until 4:00 am, work on grading and lesson planning some more, and then head to school at 6:50. Insanity, but I fully expect to put in similar hours during my first year of full-time teaching.
At the Duluth middle school, I worked with three cooperating teachers, split between three classrooms and three grades. I spent 1-2 hours in each classroom, so my day looked somewhat like this:
Advisory: 7th grade
1st period: 7th grade Regular English
2nd period: Prep hour
3rd period: 6th grade Reading
Lunch
4th period: 6th grade Language Arts
5th period: Lunch supervising or prep
6th period: 8th grade Regular English
7th period: 8th grade Regular English
I was all over the school. I had to learn the classroom systems of three teachers, instead of the usual one or two, and I had to learn these systems in 8 weeks' time - a difficult obstacle. Managing the classrooms was tough, as I expected. I feel that I got better at it, but I still feel like I have a long way to go. It's tough, being a student teacher. As a student teacher, you know enough about pedagogy and best practices that you can identify the most effective teachers and, even more important, you can identify what makes that teacher great. However, you can't do it. It was a bit disheartening to leave my apartment for school each day, knowing I'd frequently have my shortcomings mirrored to me. It's not something I'm used to. Learning for me has, by luck and perhaps by design, always been fairly painless for me. I understand new things quickly. Teaching is so complex, though - I don't think it's possible to learn how to do it quickly and painlessly. Just another reason to like it, I suppose. Teaching has been delightfully humbling to me.
