The final week-end of student teaching

Well, it's finally here, 15 weeks of student teaching has come to an end. The time flew by so fast during these weeks, it feels like just yesterday I was nervous for my first day of teaching and stepping into the classroom. This by far has been one of the best experiences during my college career. Yes, it was stressful and tiring and a ton of work but looking back at it I would do it all over again. I fell in love with teaching and being with my students even in this short 15 weeks, and I can’t wait until I can be in my own classroom and do it all over again but for real this time. 

 

 

So, here’s a bunch of random recaps from my whole experience: 

 

1. Wow I really got the full experience while student teaching

·      In my past blogs if you’ve read them, you might have learned how I spent my whole first week of student teaching, by myself. My CT had covid and could not come into school, so I was teaching all of her classes starting right off day one. Oh man was I nervous and scared out of my mind, but I made it through and actually ended up enjoying that week! And I’m leaving the way that I started, teaching by myself, since Ms. Marsh has OSHA recertification my whole entire last week of teaching. My first week boosted my confidence in the end knowing that no matter what happened I would be able to handle a class and a full load by myself. This really carried me through my whole experience knowing that I can do this. 

·      Dover experienced a lot of traumatic experiences while I was student teaching. in one week, we lost a student, a student’s 2 family members, and another student’s mother.  This was a very sad learning experience given the circumstances, but I learned how to help students through their grieving as a teacher. I learned what a school’s response is to these experiences and how to run classes on the day that the news is released to the students. While I hope that students and I never have to experience this again, I know that I will at least be a little bit more prepared for losses like these

 

2. creating relationships

·      One of the reasons why I loved student teaching so much is because of the students. Actually, they are probably the number one reason why I love it. They are just amazing and I’m so glad that I got to create a relationship with them as their teacher. I will never forget some of their stories, and how they acted in class, and funny moments. These are the parts of student teaching that I will miss the most. These students really welcomed me when I came to dover the very first day, and they continued to welcome me throughout the semester. I really couldn’t have asked for better students then them, and I will truly miss them. 

·      I learned that you need to take time to create these relationships because it really does make your classes run smoother. Also, it's important for the students to know that you are human and have a life outside of school and that you don’t know everything! I always tried to be honest with them if I didn’t know something and we looked it up. And they don’t care if you don’t know something it shows that your human and they appreciate not being lied to. 

 

3. Having an amazing CT-aka Ms. Marsh 

·      I can’t express how important this relationship is to have, and I’m so thankful that we had a great relationship all the way through student teaching. I’m happy to say that we never fought once or got into disagreements, even though I’m sure I made her mad sometimes (like not putting the expo markers back in colored order). Ms.Marsh was my rock through this whole process, she taught me so many things content wise and just how to be a teacher, she invested time in me, she listened to concerns/complaining, and provided feedback. Throughout the whole process there was never a time that I was scared to say “I don’t know how to do this can you teach me”. That’s because she always made it clear that this was a learning experience and I’m not going to know everything and that teachers are constantly learning. Overall Ms.Marsh was wonderful teacher to learn from and I could go to her with anything and she will be there. 

 

4. Ag mechanics

·      This was the class that I knew I had to teach before going into student teaching, this is where my content knowledge lacks. I’m so glad that I got to teach this class all the way through student teaching. I got to gain skills in woodworking, welding, metal working, and electrical wiring. Somethings I learn is that a shop class hates being in the classroom, oh my gosh do they complain when we aren’t going to the shop! But I’m glad for that because all of them love working on their projects. I also learned that projects take so much longer to complete, I still have not figured out why but a project that should have taken a week takes about 3 weeks. It's crazy and I don’t understand it but they all end up with pretty good projects in the end. For me this really showed learning by doing, because they learned so much better by actually getting to build things and use the equipment instead of just hearing about it. 

·      By the end of this class, I actually enjoyed teaching Ag mech all the way through. This also gave me confidence that I can teach an Ag mech class by myself it just requires some learning ahead of time on my part. Which I found fun, I was able to practice welding in the mornings before school and I found myself excited to teach about it and go in early to practice. I found a lot of joy working in the shop and seeing the students work on their projects and end up with a product that they love. 

5. Animal science

·      This class surprised me so much throughout the semester, and is currently one of my favorite classes to teach. The love for animal science really started when I was teaching reproduction, this is such a fun unit for a class. All of my lecture days ended up going long because they were filled with conversation and questions about reproduction, and yes, all appropriate conversation.  I think this unit really fascinated the students because they don’t know a lot about reproduction since Dover does not have a health class. One of my favorite memories from this class was our pregnant pig uterus dissection. Not all students are super into dissection, but everyone actually dissected during this lab and had fun pulling out their own fetal pig from the uterus. I will never forget some of the boys faces during this lab and during the whole reproductive unit, priceless. 

6. plant science

·      Most people know I’m a big plant person so I loved teaching plant science. I learned that you have to make this hands on for the students to get involved and interested. This was the class that I preformed the most labs and the students really took over the learning. I also found that planting in the greenhouse can calm a class down it's therapeutic for them and me as well. Overall, this was a great class to teach and try new labs and activities in. 

 

7. FFA 

·      I loved going to all the different FFA events such as CDE’s, LDE’s, and conferences. I got a chance to help Ms. Marsh run the floriculture CDE event. Then I also got to completely run the landscape CDE event by myself at spring Ag skills Day. this was a great opportunity for me to see what goes into running a CDE event and to have Marsh show me how the content is created and how to run it the day of. My favorite memory of FFA was attending SLLC with my students, it was such a fun week and they came back with a ton of take a ways. 

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10 out 10 would do again! I learned so much and can’t wait to continue teaching.