Final reflection

Student teaching is in the books.

As in my midterm review, I was happy to see that my cooperating teacher, my university supervisor, and I were all on the same page. At the meeting, I was almost universally praised for both my content knowledge and for my disposition with students. With the Standards such a big piece of the puzzle at Lolo School, we all felt that I was able to account for myself well, and that I was basing my lessons in best practice methods that would help us get to where we needed to go. The conclusion was that all I need is experience to start filling out my pedagogical quiver, which both of them assured me is something that can only happen in time.

I mentioned at the end of the meeting that I had more questions now than I did before starting. My cooperating teacher assured me with a phrase we've used both among ourselves and with our students: "if you're not confused, you're doing it wrong."

I understand now that classroom management is really a piece of preventative maintenance, for the most part. But I'm unsure exactly what procedures I'm going to use in my own classroom in, hiring committees willing, a few short months. Part of it will be grade-level dependent, as what works in 7th grade probably won't work for seniors. And while I know, for example, of many ways to get the attention of a group of people, I'm unsure which one is going to work for me. I used my cooperating teacher's methods while in his room, but I'm not sure that that's authentically me. They both reassured me that this, too, will come with experience.

Some parts of education school simply don't jibe with my experience. I can make solid lesson plans, but I am less certain of what to do for the student who is missing two days a week, be it for a traveling baseball team or for more nefarious reasons. I can design lessons universally, but that doesn't help if the students with special needs are cordoned off to a separate classroom for direct instruction during my class period with them. I can design extra help sessions, but I can't teach them if the student's study hall time is spent on a mandated tier two intervention.

I also understand much more clearly now how much more we have to prepared to help our students with beyond our subject areas. During our study hall period, I had to help struggling 7th graders with algebra and Punnet Squares and in Montana Native history. That was easier. Knowing what to do when a self-harming student comes into one's room during lunch justifiably balling about her home life is harder. Stranger still is having to hold the clumsy girl's hand as we wait for the paramedics to come and make sure she hasn't broken anything important when she fell down a flight of stairs, or knowing how to keep her classmates from gawking as she's rolled out to the waiting ambulance. They teach very little of this in education school, and I was told by all those around me that it simply comes with experience.

I understand now how important it can be to approach students from a different angle. Sometimes this meant having a side conversation to see if something was going on at home, where I learned of divorce or incarceration or that a student is taking care of her younger siblings. Sometimes this meant going to the volleyball or baseball games, proving to the students that I'm interested in their personal development and not just their academics. Sometimes it meant eating lunch in the cafeteria and learning that the quirky kid is actually a world-class filmmaker at age 13. Sometimes it meant ribbing the lads over their fuzzy little mustaches while flaunting my own. All of these things actually happened, and each of them allowed me to connect with a student on a different level, building a personal respect that could be transferred to the classroom.

In the end, I feel like my greatest shortcoming during student teaching is simply not having two decades of this under my belt. But I also feel that in fifteen weeks of student teaching, I've experienced and learned much more than I did in two years of education school, and that each day will get a little easier, so that I'll be prepared when the unexpected happens.