Starting Student Teaching

I am going to start my student teaching next semester. Does anyone have any helpful advice? I am very excited about doing my student teaching, but I want to make sure that I do the best job possible. What should I expect? What should I watch out for? What should I do to make sure I get the most out of the experience?

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Permalink Reply by Tony Kuc on April 6, 2011 at 9:18pm

Hi Lauren

1. Get as much classroom teaching experience as you can (or are allowed to) so as to make the experience as realistic as possible. I've seen teachers who have had mimimal on-going classroom experience in their training go to water after the end of their first term of real teaching.

2. When not teaching , observe as many different experienced teachers across a range of year levels or subjects as you can. Learn from what you see

3. Be passionate about teaching - it rubs off

4. Enjoy the experience and if there are moments you are not enjoying it dont let the children/students know about it

5. Get involved - seeing you posted to Classroom 2.0 shows that you are looking about for places to find ideas, to get advice, to look for resources.

I think 5 pieces of advice is a good start.

cheers

tony

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Permalink Reply by Lauren Lennard on April 11, 2011 at 10:19am

Thank you very much for the helpful tips, I will definitely keep them all in mind when I am doing my student teaching. It is so great to get helpful advice from different people because it has really started to prepare me for what my teaching future holds. Thank you again!

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Permalink Reply by Hattie Delgado on April 18, 2011 at 9:37am

I too will be student teaching next semester and I get butterflies every time I think about it! Of course I am nervous but I am more excited about being in the classroom everyday! My younger sister is actually student teaching at another university and calls me everyday with advice and just to talk to me about her day. I know that I have been really helpful in listening to her worries about her classroom so the only piece of advice I can offer right now is always have a friend on hand to talk about your good days and bad.

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Permalink Reply by Erica Zaremba on April 18, 2011 at 7:54pm

When I was student teaching I learned lots about a proactive discipline when dealing with conflict. It is called Restitution. Here is the link, http://www.realrestitution.com/ . I suggested to read about it as much as you can. It puts the responsibility on the student through a series of leveled questions rather than saying, " What were you think? Why would you do that?"

Also, every principal wants to know that you are using a variety of instructional strategies, use this site to gather information of purposeful strategies to meet the needs of all learning types. Here is the link: http://education.alberta.ca/teachers/resources/cross/making-a-diffe... . Chapter 5 has a lot of good ideas!

Also, practice assessment for learning as much as you can. Collect as much assessment examples from teachers and other professionals as possible. Assessment is huge and making it meaningful for students and their parents is what is going to help build that relationship with them. They'll see that you care and they will really appreciate it.

Keep a strong contact with the parents. I would email the parents once a week to let them know the successes their child was facing throughout the week. I would also scanned and email assignments to show off work. Of course, when conflict arises it is best to call the parent. But start as soon as possible to contact the parent about all the good things that way when conflict arises the level of trust and appreciation is already established.

Hope this helps! Good Luck!

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Permalink Reply by Tony Kuc on April 18, 2011 at 9:56pm

Erica provides excellent advice - thanks for the link to the differentiated instruction booklet also. In terms of the practice of restitution, here in Australia it is known as Restorative Practices (sometimes as Restorative Justice) and it is also used extensively in New Zealand schools. Tony