After a few months of freedom, numerous sunburns, and the occasional road trip, a new school year is underway. With feelings of nervousness and excitement, I'm ready for a great semester as a pre-student teacher!
I am placed in a Sophomore Honors English class at Outstanding High School with Mrs. Bradley, my Cooperating Teacher. There are 21 students in the class with diverse backgrounds and abilities. So far, this group is well-behaved and extremely shy (but it’s only the first full week of school). I am excited to work with this group and get to know them better.
Mrs. Bradley has already asked me to begin teaching. “Do you want to teach a unit over Native American literature?” she asked me Thursday morning. I could not, of course, turn down an offer to gain more teaching experience. “Sure!” I answered enthusiastically. With her guidance and borrowed materials, I have already begun planning some lessons for the next few weeks. I know Mrs. Bradley expects a lot of me during the semester, but it will be worth it.
After the first week of class, I would like to share some goals I hope to meet throughout semester.
1. Lesson Planning. There are many ways I aspire to work on this goal. First, I’d like to create some great lessons/assignments that I can use now and in the future. I will have my own classroom in just under a year and would love to have some materials ready. Additionally, I hope to learn how to more effectively time my lessons. After talking to Mrs. Bradley, I realized that I plan too much time for certain activities and not enough for others. I’d like to work out the bugs and eventually become an expert timer.
2. Classroom Management. As I mentioned, this class has not presented any behavior issues so far. However, I still hope to improve my classroom management skills. I am anxious to learn how Mrs. Bradley deals with students who misbehave. Even if the students continue their good behavior, I’d like to at least discuss with her some ways of handling misbehavior and possibly form my own strategies.
3. Connecting with Students. This far into my Teacher Preparation, I feel like I haven’t spent enough time with a particular class to gage their learning strengths and weaknesses. Luckily, Outstanding High School is on a bell schedule that allows every class to meet daily. I hope to learn more about their different styles of learning and effective ways to reach individual students. I am excited for my students to feel more comfortable with me and eventually treat me as they do any other teacher.
There you have it! Those are my goals for the semester. What goals do you have for pre-student teaching and how do you plan to accomplish them, fellow pre-student teachers? I plan to note each week how I am doing with meeting my goals and what I can do to change/improve. I am also going to ask Mrs. Bradley for feedback as often possible.
With that, good luck to all pre-student teachers this semester! Please check back for more exciting adventures about my experiences at Outstanding High School.
*All names (including names of places) are changed to pseudonyms.
