I am excited to be moving on to student teaching next semester. I am looking forward to having more time with students and being in the same classroom. I have to say that I look forward to community building activities the most. I think its awesome that we are able to start our student teaching experience in a brand new classroom, it places us in the same position as the students. We are both new to the classroom, and we are not walking into a room filled with forged relationships that have no clue about. I am also looking forward to teaching more regularly. I want to design and implement units and lessons.
As far as fears go, I'm afraid of time management and student engagement. I'm not afraid of student's reactions or reluctance, I'm more afraid that I will not be able to be an interesting teacher who creates fun and entertaining assignments. I guess that is more teacher creativity than student engagement. As far as time management is concerned, I was always afraid of not having enough time until last week when teaching and coming up with an extra 15 minutes. Scary stuff!! It really bothered me for a few days. I finally just accepted it, but I have to admit that I was panic stricken. What would we do for 15 minutes? In retrospect, I realized we could have started with the second day of our lesson, but because we had not appropriately planned it did not occur to us in the moment. I can say with absolutely certainty that I will never walk into a classroom with out a plan B, C and D.
I agree. I'm looking forward to being able to build more solid relationships with students. A couple of weeks really isn't enough time. You're still a sort of stranger.
ReplyDeleteAs for running short, that sounds tough. I tended to do the opposite, and was having to cut on the fly, because the clock keeps on ticking, whether you want it to or not.