What is Student Teaching Really Like? | Teacher Summer Series Ep 10

and I was completely taken back I wasn't prepared at all I had to ride out full lesson plans like four or five six seven page lesson plans I it says I don't know what I'm doing [Music] welcome back to my channel guys first of all this is the first video that I'm filming in my new like studio office a type area here in my townhouse I apologize if the audio isn't great there's a little bit of like an echo in here I'm still trying to figure it out my background also is not completely done yet but it will get there this was a highly requested video I've had tons of people asking me about my student teaching just what my experiences were like so I decided to make an entire video all about my student teaching story first of all my student teaching was broken into two parts I'll get more into that in just a second but what I'm going to do for each part is I'm going to talk about what I actually did during my student teaching I'm going to talk a little bit about my mentor teachers and then I'm going to talk about my feelings with the experience first of all the college that I went to was all very University and for education majors they complete like blah so there's a block B Block C watch and D block so a block and B Block are usually completed during your junior year of college however for me it was during my second year because I actually skipped a year in college a block and B Block are where you teach just one lesson per subject area so you would teach one math lesson one science lesson one social studies lesson and then one small group reading lesson during this slob who had a certain number of hours that you had to complete during the semester I would be completely honest I don't even remember how many hours it was I want to say it was like 30 hours but he would basically go for like a half a day a week and you would stay in the classroom you would observe how to help out the teacher and then teach those specific lessons then you entered what was called a C Block so for C Block I did that during the fall of my third-year college which was actually my last year of college and you had to complete 20 full days in the classroom you essentially went one of maybe two days a week and you went for the full day now ideally dream and you were supposed to be like almost student teaching like you would help out while you were there maybe co-teach with the teacher a little bit however my experience was a little bit different I don't weighted by c-block with a 3rd grade teacher and unfortunately at that time her son was having a lot of health issues she was out there very often at all I think out of the 20 days she was probably there for like half of them and the other half there were substitutes so honestly my speed block kind of ended up being a lot like my a blog and B blog I was really just sitting there and observing I wasn't really helping out with much when there was a substitute I was helping to lead the class during that time but I wasn't really getting a lot of hands-on experience with an actual mentor teacher how it is supposed to work is you complete those 20 days during C block with a mentor teacher and that is supposed to be the teacher that you would start your full-time internship which was our D block however because a person having health issues she was not going to be able to be my mentor teacher for my internship so I actually ended up going to a completely different class at the start of my seat Block B block was a full-time student teaching internship where you were in the classroom all day every day and you were supposed to complete 80 days so when you paired those 80 days during the block with your 20 days from C Block you had a total of 100 days now during that D block full-time student teaching internship you are expected to act just like the teacher so you were expected to get there when they arrived you were expected to leave when they left you were expected to go to all professional development all the extracurricular activities that they were attending you are literally just like another teacher in the classroom only aren't getting paid during the internship you also had to attend a seminar so that was one night a week it was for about two to three hours and you are in a class with other student teachers and it was led by two teachers who work full-time teachers but they also worked with the university to lead the seminar now seminar was kind of pain just because you're sitting there and you're thinking about all the millions of other things that you have to get done but I will say it was extremely helpful because you got a chance to kind of Bend and read with other student teachers who understood exactly what you were going through I remember the teachers that were leading my seminar they would let us talk about what was good that was going on what was challenging that was going on and it really just gave us an opportunity to kind of open up about the whole experience and be honest with what we were going through during our seminar we also had to complete assignment which honestly were kind of a big pain any waste of time because we had a million other things that we were trying to get done with our actual student teaching one of the things we had to do was create an online portfolio which in theory sounds great because it was a way to collect examples of lessons that you could use in an interview however it was a huge waste of time because I never touched mine after graduation the program that it was created through was called live tech and the least user-friendly program I've ever used we also had to complete something called focus lessons so we had having lesson completely focused on differentiation we had to have a lesson focus on technology integration and I think the last one was arts integration hi those were useful because they got you a lot of practice with developing lessons specifically for those things but realistically like that's not how you're ever going to plan in the actual classroom so it's not about the complete waste of time we also had to complete these teaching video reflections so basically we had to record ourselves teaching on three different occasions watch the videos back and reflect on it so if I think we did well I think we needed to improve on and in theory I love the idea of it like I do think it's important to see yourself teaching so you can pick up on things that you may not actually notice yourself however her are we completely honest I ran out of time with my student teaching like I was so focused on what I had to do in the classroom that I forgot to record myself and kind of had to completely make up the reflections I know it was horrible but when I start to talk about my students teaching you guys might understand a little bit better why I had to do that not only did you have your mentor teachers who you actually worked with in the classroom but you also were assigned a supervisor and that supervisor is stay with you for your entire student teaching so you know when you change classrooms you kept the same supervisor and he or she had to come and observe you ten different times and give you evaluations I completed my internship in the spring semester of my last year of college so it was from January until May when I cried waited which is when most students teachers completed their internships you were able to switch see blocks and D block if you wanted to however I really didn't want to do it that way because C block is when you had your classroom management course and that's definitely something that I wanted to have before I started full-time student teaching in the classroom however one negative of doing my student teaching in the spring is that I did not get to see the beginning of the school year I had no idea about sending up a classroom and establishing those rules and procedures and I definitely was something that kind of came back to bite me when I actually started my first year of teaching I also didn't really get to see the very end of the school year because I graduated in May and once you graduated you were done with your internship so I didn't really see those last few weeks of school so with my college and our internship we had to complete it with two different grade levels so I personally started in fifth grade and then I went to first grade for the second half of my internship again the internship with a total of 100 days you completed 20 of them during your c-block which was the fall semester of my last year college and then I completed 80 full days of student teaching in the spring semester my last semester of college my college and I know most colleges are like this they have a really long winter break you get like half a December and then you get all of January and then your spring semester starts at like the very end of January or the beginning of February however during your internship you actually had to start back before all of the other college students started back because you had to start as soon as your students came back from their winter break which was usually the beginning of January the reason you had to start back so early is because if you waited for the college semester to start at the end of the month you were going to have a really hard time trying to fit in all 80 days before graduation and I actually knew some student teachers who had to continue with their internship after graduation and I don't think anyone really wants to do that so I turn it in a fifth-grade classroom it was actually right down the hall from where I completed my C Block in a third grade classroom it was the same school it was just a different grade level and a different teacher and it was a self-contained classroom so that means that teacher was teaching all of the subject areas of course at the very beginning when my students were coming back from winter break there were a bunch of students like I was supposed to start on a Monday there was snow through like Wednesday so I ended up spending that Thursday and Friday just kind of getting to know the class like I went in I met my mentor teacher and she had me just sit in the back and kind of observe so I get to know the students a little bit better and see how she was running her classroom then the very next week she had me jump in and start teaching full lessons which honestly was really intimidating because I love it ease into it I barely knew the class I didn't really know how to teach like I've only taught a couple of lessons in the past and it was just a lot to take on all at once she had me teach one subject area at a time and each week I would add a new subject area until about halfway through the internship I was teaching all of the subject areas at once that first full week of me teaching lessons I taught science and then the next week I added on social studies so I was teaching science and social studies then I add on math so taking all three and then I added on reading small group and a little bit of reading whole group but honestly I never got a love of experience teaching reading because that was my mentor teachers favorite subject to teach and she just never really let me take full control of it that first week where I was teaching science she didn't really make it clear to me that I was going to actually be teaching the lesson she just told me to look for an idea over the weekend we were learning about types of rocks and she told me to find like a lesson idea and just kind of bring it in to her well come Monday I you know sure a little print out that I had you know something going on and do it and I was completely taken back I wasn't prepared at all like I honestly just kind of found the idea I thought we were going to sit down and planned a lesson together no I was completely put on the spot I just had to wing it and go with it it ended up turning out okay but it honestly just wasn't a great way to start off my student teaching like it was really kind of deceiving for me I also didn't really get to experience co-teaching like she had me take over those subject areas and I would be up there teaching the whole thing most of times she was sitting in the bathroom she was on our computer we're just doing other things which I completely understand now because I know how busy teachers are and I understand that she had things to do but it also kind of was difficult because your student teaching is supposed to be co-teaching at least at my college you were supposed to co-teach with your mentor teacher and I honest never really got to do that in that experience once I know is kind of a blessing and a curse if that snow days during your internship talent toward your hundred days so even as school is canceled you still got to count that towards that eighty days for your full-time internship however we ended up having like ten snow days which was great because that was ten days that I got to stay home in my pajamas and didn't have to go and teach however a kind of Jeff Neil my experience like instead of a hundred full days of student teaching I really only had 90 I also ended up spending a lot more time in that fifth grade classroom than I did for the second part of my student teaching which was in first grade because I started back so early in January I was actually the first intern to start at that school because I did not want to worry about running out of time to meet all of my days I actually spent a good three months in that fifth grade class so I spent January February and March I was there all day every day full-time student teaching now for my mentor teacher she did have very high expectations which again was both a blessing and a curse when I say she had high expectations I mean I had to write out full lesson plans like four or five six seven page lesson plans in advance I had to email them to her and it was just a lot on my plate because honestly I was wanting to design a lot of the lessons like that's just part of who I am I wanted to be creative and I wanted to have lessons that I was excited to teach but that took a lot of time especially when I had to write out the full lesson plans just to show you guys what I mean when I say that I had to write full lesson plans this binder just has all of these science lessons that I taught during my teaching which was just one of the subject areas I put everything in page protectors and I've held on to it and I don't know how well you guys can see but I had to run out full lesson plans and then I was creating like all the worksheets and things that went with it and I was literally making everything from scratch which honestly was really hard our college did not have a specific lesson plan format that we had to use it honestly was up to our mentor teacher so my mentor teacher just kind of outlined as the elements that I needed to have in my left and and then I typed them all from there so I had to have the subject at the topic that dates the standards the student objectives materials the procedures and they had to be broken down my time and it was basically like a script of what I was going to say into during the lesson and then I had to list the assessment and any differentiation that I was going to provide and again once in the lessons and would take up like four or five pages by the time I was done then I have this huge binder and these are all social settings lessons and a little bit of math lesson so again I was working my butt off during my student teaching I was writing full lesson plans I was making all of the lesson ideas from scratch like I remember in science they were learning about selves and my students created an edible cell on like a graham cracker with frosting and they had candy that represented all the parts I wanted to do creative things but it really was very time-consuming honestly looking back at it I should probably go through these binders and take some of those ideas that I had and create them into TPT products because I put so much time in it they were really ugly because I didn't really know a lot about design back then but the actual idea that I had honestly I feel were pretty good again I was expected to arrive when the mentor teacher arrived and then leave when she left so my fleshly started at 9:15 it was one of the latest hard ones in the county I know that's really really late but we would arrive between 8:15 and 8:30 and then the school would end at 4:15 and we would usually leave somewhere between 4:30 and 5:00 o'clock which honestly that was very frustrating too because I am NOT a morning person like I do not want to get to school and have stuff to do I want to get to school sit for a couple minutes to relax and then start my day like I just do not function well in the mornings so it was kind of frustrating I had to get there early but I honestly was not productive in the morning so we just felt like a big waste of time same thing for the afternoon I would have to stay there with her but honestly I am more productive when I go home and I sit on the couch have my laptop and I get work done I really didn't have a lot that I could actually do as a school so it felt like a big waste of time we also had to attend the professional development courses so any kinds of professional development days that we had for the district we had to go to I actually had to go to a professional development course on math that was at our universities but it was for teachers my mentor teacher couldn't go so I had to go in her place and sit there and pick nose in the chair with her the next day which I understand like things come up but to me if she couldn't go I don't feel like I should have had to go either I will send my mentor teacher was really good at giving constructive criticism which I needed and I wanted because I wanted to get better meanwhile my supervisor was just really easygoing like she would give me highly effective for all of my observations and I'm like look I know that's not the case like I was student teacher I it as I don't know what I'm doing but I wanted to get better and I knew that constructive criticism to help me get there and my mentor teacher was the one who gave me that now for my feelings I will say I was extremely extremely stressed out for like the entire period of my students eating now at this time Billy and I had just started dating we met in December right before I started my teaching so our relationship was really new and fresh and it honestly took a really big toll on us because I was so stressed and so grumpy and I feel bad for him I really do looking back on it because I was just so stressed and I honestly took it out on him a lot so if you can stick with me through that like we're good for the rest of our lives I was like the classroom 4:30 to 5:00 o'clock and I would go home and I would work for hours I was literally working until midnight 1:00 2:00 a.m. and I'm sure that doesn't surprise you guys because you know that's kind of how I am now like I'm an overachiever it's just part of who I am I know it's not the healthiest thing I am working on it but it's just part of who I am as a person I've mentioned this before but I am either zero or 100 with things so I'm going to do something I'm going to do it possibly can and that was with my student teaching as well I wanted to be the best student teacher that I could possibly be and unfortunately that meant putting in hours and hours every single night also at this time and looking back on it it was a horrible idea I do not recommend anyone ever tries it I decided I was going to run every single day for a year because again guys I'm zero or 100 missing I had to run a minimum of one mile but on my long run days I was running up to like 15 to 18 miles because I was married on training I had run two marathons that past fall and then I had another marathon in April so I was spending so much time going on long runs and there were times where I would do my student teaching work until like 11 o'clock at night I'd have to go out and quickly go for a run and then come back in and continue working and it just added to my stress even more but also running was like my escape from all of my work that was my way relaxing so I do think it was good that I had that but I was definitely like obsessive with it and it was a horrible idea again I don't recommend you try it I ended up in a boot for like months because I entered by like some bad but this is what my life was like I also had this horrible horrible experience and I'm literally getting angry just thinking about it so during my student teaching I was saving all of my documents to a flash drive I had one flash drive did not make anything up and I was just saving everything to that well on a Sunday night and it was late it was like almost midnight I had gone to my University's library to print stuff because we got 300 prints per week as students and my mentor teacher didn't have a lot of copies so she would make me go to the library and print stuff off which was totally fine I didn't mind doing it so I went in the library again it was late on a Sunday night I had already prepped all of my lesson plans and at that time it was science social studies and math that I was teaching I had them all ready to go on my flash drive for the entire next week which was a lot of work it literally took my whole weekend to get that all done so I had a flash drive ago plugged in and at that time the CPU unit was down on the floor I rolled my chair and without thinking about it my chair hit the flash drive and broke it off and I lost everything I was so upset I just remember calling Billy because it's a time for Best Buy and I thought you can feel healthy and I would just sabe like in the library everyone's very naughty but I was so stressed out I just lost everything and I was like now I have to review it because it's Sunday night and honestly my mentor teacher was really hard on me so like she wouldn't accept me just saying like hey I don't have this done like I had to have it work site up like my entire college career moral of the story is back up your documents do not sing them all to one flash drive and not have copies anywhere else so overall as stressful as it was I am happy that my mentor teacher was so hard on me and that I had to write these full lesson plans because it did give me a lot of practice for writing like in-depth lesson sense and it honestly made it much easier for me in my own classroom to write those lesson plans in less time it honestly became second nature for me to think about how that integrates technology how does it differentiate how to accommodate because I had to do it every single day in every lesson plan but I will say that I felt very taken advantage of I guess it's the best way to put it by my mentor teacher I felt like so much as the responsibility was put on me and it wasn't really like I said it wasn't co-teaching and it wasn't really helping me grow as a teacher it felt like I was just kind of like her lackeys and had to do all the work even when I left at that class and I went to the first grade class which I then was responsible for teaching for lessons for she was still contacting me and trying to get me to provide lesson plans for her she offered to pay me which is great but I didn't have the time for that and honestly I just felt so much pressure for her because I didn't want to let her down and like I needed her for a letter of recommendation but it just felt like a lot which if I could go back I definitely would have been more honest with her with how I was feeling I am NOT a person who likes confrontation and I honestly keep a lot of things to myself so if I could go back I definitely would have addressed her with that and let her know how I was feeling and if that didn't help at all I should have gone to one of my teachers with my seminar or some of with the University and ask for help because honestly I should have had to feel like that during my student teaching but I even love you fifth grade and I wasn't really expecting to I honestly went into it knowing I was second grade and I loved fifth grade a lot more than I thought I was I was able to bond really well with a lot of the girls they understood my sarcasm which is really important because that's part of who I am as a teacher and they were just a lot more like mature and independent and I honestly really enjoyed that I will say that I have so much respect for teachers that teach higher grade level so like 4th grade 5th grade middle school and high school because the content is just so like in depth the planning honestly takes so much more time than it does for primary grades I am going to talk a little bit about the gifts that I got from my mentor teacher in the class and then what I made to my mentor teachers just in case you are going into your sink Eugene and you might be curious I will say that I was extremely blessed because even though my mentor teacher was so hard on me and it was so stressful she did really come through with the gift that she ended up getting to me she had all the students in the class contribute a couple of dollars and then she pulled all the money together and got me a Keurig which I'm extremely grateful for is actually the courage that I had in my classroom that you guys saw which honestly I don't use as often as I should my goal is to fix that next year then for the class I took each one of my students names and I made it into a cross deck poem so I came up with an adjective that describes that student for each letter of their name I make them into bookmarks i laminated them also gave them a little bag with like candy I think it was dressed up as an owl I don't even remember what it said but honestly they all really really loved the bookmarks and I'd loved getting to sit down and think about each student individually to complete them and then for my mentor teacher she was obsessed with her bhisma's so I got her a Turkish mug I filled it with gift cards for places that I noticed that she had eaten a lot Lisa's like subway she would also go to McDonald's in the morning so I got all kinds of gift cards and then I also filled it with her favorite candy which was called a chunky bar and they were really hard to find so I found some of those and put them in there for her as well now that's going to do the second half of my student teaching I accept switching and going to a first grade class it's either the end of March or beginning of April I don't remember exactly but it was actually at a different school because the first flaw was at with an intermediate school so it was third grade fourth grade and fifth grade and then the other school and I was out with primary school it also has help contained so we were teaching all the subject areas my first day for that part of my student teaching was actually a professional development day which was really brilliant I can't even lie it was all of the first grade teachers from different schools in the county meeting so they could all plan together so I got to know my mentor teacher without having the class there I got to know the other grade level teachers from that school and I also got to know the other student interns who are going to be in the same grade level with me honestly I am so thankful that I got to bond so closely with those other girls interning because we all needed a support system and we all understood exactly what we were going through because we were in the same school same grade level and it we were just able to collaborate for the rest of the semester together which I'm so thankful for similar to my first experience I actually started with teaching science so because we have that planning day all the mentor teachers let all the interns kind of collaborate together we had to plan some science lessons on deserts so actually ends up creating this interactive PowerPoint we created a foldable we had some read-alouds to go with it and it was great that we all have to plan together because it made it feel so much easier and then we got to divvy up the workload and we didn't have as much to do one thing I just love about first grade is that the curriculum was a lot more interconnected I guess is the best way to put it where all of the different subject areas overlaps so we were working on deserts in science and we also were reading about deserts and it just all connected together so next year I got comfortable teaching science for a week or two she had me start taking over math and I actually started by taking over the morning math meeting which I loved the way she had it set up because she had it all in a PowerPoint and she actually just sent me the PowerPoint so all I had to do was change the numbers every day and I loved her system for and it's actually the same system that I still used today then she had me start teaching reading whole group and I also took over some of the reading small groups and we were doing like guided reading and she actually had a group of first graders who were doing like a book club because they were reading at like a fourth grade reading level I also got to experience quite a few field trips which I love because I did not get to go on any with a fifth grade class and that's something where if you haven't done it before during your sanity gene when you actually get into the classroom it's super intimidating so I loved that I got to go on with those it also showed me how absolutely exhausted teachers are the end of the field trip I remember finishing a day at the zoo for field trip and I was more softened I've ever been at the end of a marathon I also loved that during this part of my experience I got to co-teach because my mentor teacher was absolutely amazing like I have never met another teachers like her she was my teacher goals she still is my teacher goals she had actually been a Teacher of the Year a couple of years prior and you could completely understand why I called her teach and I was like yes like that is exactly who I want to be she reminded me a lot of Mister Pilon I just loved her personality that she put into teaching she was so engaging and honestly so many of things that I do in my classroom today come from her I love that we would sit down and we would plan together she would listen to my ideas she would give me her own and it honestly was exactly what co-teaching is supposed to be like and I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to have her as my mentor a teacher because she was a godsend because we would planted together I was spending so much less time at home developing these lesson plans I didn't have to give her type lesson plans we would just sit down she would open up her life example which it was one of those where it has the entire week on two pages and it has like a tiny box for each subject and she was just jot down the generalizing of what we were doing it that was it like I didn't have to type up the lesson plan it was absolutely amazing she also was super I don't want to say easy going because that makes it sound like she didn't care she definitely did care but she understood that I was a student teacher like I wasn't a full time teacher yet I wasn't getting paid to be there I honestly was paying to be there because I was paying for college and she just understood that things sometimes come up I remember there was one time where I was sick and you know I would come and just fare through it because of my previous mentor a teacher I had to have some plans if I wasn't going to come that day and I was not about that life so I would just come and be miserable I came one day sick and she sent me home she was like that like you don't need to be here you need to go home and you need to rest and I just appreciate it that so much she also was super flexible about letting me leave for interview towards the end when I was getting close to graduate and I was starting to get like opportunities for job she would let me leave and go to my interviews and again I was just so appreciative for that flexibility that you guys had probably heard me use the expression hotness a million times of my videos it's just kind of become my expression she is actually the one that I got that problems that she used it all the time their classroom she called her kids hot fences all the time and I just I don't know is one of those things that really stuck with me so again so much of what I do as a teacher now comes from my experience with her we actually did a unit on rainforest and she transformed the entire room into a rainforest with butcher paper and she made vines and it was just amazing and that's one of the things that really inspired me to want to do classroom transformations with my own class she also taught me about QR codes which I had no experience with whatsoever she showed me how easy they were she helped me plan this entire lesson for my technology integration focus lesson where the students would skin 2 QR codes the first one we give them some kind of information on the rainforest or video or pictures whatever and then there was getting second QR code and it would give them a problem that went with the first video so one of them I remember we made vines and they were different lengths and so the first video was all about vines in the rainforest and then the second QR code gave them a problem where they had to measure the vines and at the time they were doing some ginger measurements that they had to measure it with like you have excuse I could go on forever but she was just so creative in her lessons and like I felt like I fit in with her classroom so well she also taught me about creating like individual behavior incentives for specific kids who needed it there was this one girl who was super clingy to me and every time we tried to like separate her she would throw this big tantrum so we brainstorm together and we came up with this super simple system like we literally took a plastic cup we taped it down to her desk and we have these like poker chips like they weren't poker chips but these little chips and every time she was doing good like being away from me and being focused on her work we put a chip in when she started to have a sit we would take a chip out and once she got to I think it was ten chips she got to have lunch lunch with the two of us and it was just perfect like it required no money whatsoever the prai's didn't even require money and it just gave me so many like easy ideas that I could use in my own classroom towards the end of my internship she also let me go and sit in on other first grade classes and just observe which I thought was amazing because during your student teaching if you're in one class or even if you're in - you're not getting exposed to a lot of different teaching styles which I honestly feel is so important when you're interested in teaching because you need ideas and you're still trying to figure out who you are at your own teacher after my feelings I honestly ended up loving first grade again more than I thought that I would when I first met the class and saw the kids I honestly was really intimidated because they were just so tiny like I was used to working with these fifth graders who were bigger than I was so I saw the first graders I didn't know how it's going to feel about it but I ended up loving it I love how loving they were like they'd come and sit you're laughing they'd give you a hug and I loved that like I didn't know how I was going to feel about it I ended up loving it plus planning nothing wasn't much easier just because the content wasn't as in-depth but it was more fun because I feel like with the younger kids you can just do more things and they will play into it because they are so so innocent and I love that a perfect gift at the end for the students I ended up making them each a picture and I think it's called like a Wordle I'll maybe insert like a picture up here or something but basically you go on a website you take a list of words so I took a list of words that describe that particular student and then it can make it into a variety of pictures so I take the picture that's good that student I pick to call it up at that student printed them all out and I put them in like picture frames from the dollar store it was very simple but again I love sitting down thinking of each of the students and just making them a very personalized gift as for the gift for my mentor teacher I had noticed she had a treasure box but it wasn't anything fancy it was just in like a classic stir like bin so I ended up going to Michael's and I got what their what in treasure boxes and then I cam painted it all and put her name on it even though she was super creative for the gift that the students gave me she had them each bring in I don't know if she had to bring in the items or she had to bring in the money but she ended up getting me a bunch of school supplies from Dollar Tree and she had them all individually wrapped so I guess if there was this huge bag of all of these little gifts and unwrapped them and the kids were so excited to see me unwrap them and I mean I got glue sticks I got pencils I got border I've had a bunch of things that I actually was so grateful for my first year of teaching it literally was the perfect gift for a student teacher at the end I actually ended up going over my hundred days but even once we hit those hundred we were not allowed to just like stop coming we had to come all the way up until the day before our graduation and you feel that my school had a really good program for preparing teachers you actually get in the classroom your first semester in college you take these foundation courses you go in just for like an hour to a week it's not very much and then you simply in a total like 20 hours during the semester but I get you in there early so you can figure out very quickly if teaching is something for you or not because I think a lot of people think they want to be teachers and then when they actually get into it they realize that they don't so I love that my university got you in there early and then you were in classrooms continuously until you graduated however I don't think that student teaching actually prepares you for the classroom it's definitely necessary because they say great like stepping-stone into real teaching but no matter how great your student teaching program is it's still going to be completely different when you're in the classroom by yourself and you don't have a mentor teacher they are guiding you some of the expectations on me weren't really aligned with like actual teaching like those intricate lesson plans that I had to type I never actually did that when I was in the classroom on my own so it honestly didn't prepare me because it wasn't how I was really going to plan when the time came I do think student teaching really helped me come out of my shell because I mentioned you guys I am a huge introvert and as much as I love kids I was really intimidated to stand up there and teach lessons but all of the practice that I got really really helped me and it made me a lot more comfortable with actually teaching I do think student teaching is really hard because the classroom isn't actually yours and no matter how wonderful your mentor teacher is and no matter how much they make you feel at home in the classroom you still to a degree realize that it's not actually yours and that can be really hard when you don't have full complete trol I did end up keeping pretty much all the resources that I created degree Medici that you guys can see from my binders but honestly I have never really touched them since then so I do think it's important to keep all of the resources but at the same time looking back on it I kind of wish I hadn't spent as much time developing the worksheets and everything because I didn't end up using them again after now I'm going to give just a couple of pieces of advice to students teachers things that I learned from my student teaching that I think might be helpful to you if you are going into your student teaching number one I do think it's important to sit down and set clear expectations with your mentor teachers it's important that they know what to expect from you but it's also important that you know what you can expect from them one of the things I loved that my second mentor teacher actually did was give me a binder on the very first day that I met her and that binder had a list of all of her classroom rules and procedures how she does things and had a list of things that she expect from me in terms of planning and all of that and it also had a list of things that I can expect from her and it just was the perfect way to outline at all and it really made it that much easier for the both of us number two is don't be afraid to ask questions during your safe teaching there is no such thing as a silly question it is all new to you it's okay to not know things but I promise you are so much better to ask and get an answer or at least get some help rather than trying to assume things or figure it out on your own which most likely isn't going to turn out well number three is five other student teachers to connect with student teaching is hard it's stressful you have a lot on your plate and again everything is new to you find other student teachers that you can vent with or you can ask for help or you guys can collaborate and plan together it will make your life so much easier number four is to have fun and again I know that's difficult because you're stressed and you're under pressure and you have a lot on your plate and you don't feel like you know what you're doing but I promise you your student teaching is the most fun time during your undergraduate program I promise you and I know it's hard to believe because when I was doing my student teaching I remember thinking it will be so much easier when I have the classroom all to myself it's not and I know that can be hard to believe but when you're student teaching you don't have as many possibilities as you will in the actual classroom there are going to be things that you have to do as a real teacher that you had no idea your mentor teachers who are even doing so when you are student teaching and you have that extra time use it to create good lesson plans and creative lesson plans so you can get some ideas for when you are actually teaching plus you want to develop a really good lesson so then you can show up in interviews at the end of your student teaching so make sure you guys do have fun because you guys get to be the fun ones you aren't the one with all of the responsibilities and you don't have to be like the big disciplinary one because that's all in your mentor teacher however use your time constructively make sure you're putting in a lot of time in a lot of effort because it will be worth it in the end so that is my student teaching story I'm sure there are some things that I'm left out so if there's anything that was confusing or you have any questions for me please leave a comment down below and I will do my best to get back to you if you can enjoy this video please go ahead and give it a thumbs up and help it to be able to reach more teachers and it helps out my channel don't forget to subscribe to me if you haven't already so you don't miss any future videos my next video going live will be this Thursday at 7 a.m. as always thank you for watching I love you all so much and I'll catch you in the next one thank you so much for watching all the way to the end and for supporting my youtube channel if you want to check out any my older videos you can you can see links right down here if you want to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any future videos you can use the link right up here so the links to all of my social media sites my teachers the future store and my Amazon store are down in the description box for you and I will catch you guys in the next one [Music]

Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 90,317

Rating: 4.9077368 out of 5

Keywords: teacher, classroom, vlog, 2nd grade, teacherspayteachers, teachers pay teachers, tpt, pocketful of primary, tips for new teachers, tips for teachers, new teacher tips, teacher tips, classroom vlog, vlogger, teacher vlog, teacher vlogger, classroom tour, a day in the life of a teacher, a week in the life of a teacher, student teaching, student teaching story, student teaching experience, student internship, teaching internship, student internship story, education major, internship

Id: Y-PsdK02U1s

Length: 37min 24sec (2244 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 11 2017