Musings on the observation of a student teacher, one semester later...

[starya]

So today I had the opportunity to sub for a high school math class that had a student teacher. This, of course, lead to some thoughtful musings as someone who was recently a student teacher, and had a few mixed experiences when a sub was in the classroom as opposed to my co-op.

Comments

[starya]

Oh Gettysburg Department of Education. I feel they did a wonderful job making sure we all had ideals, but didn't really prepare us to work with those ideals in reality.

I can see how classroom management is a never-ending concern for even the most experienced teachers, especially with new classes and students every year. I'd like to believe there is an assertive method that can work almost all of the time, but I certainly haven't figured it out yet. Especially since it is unnatural for me to be authoritarian. While subbing has been good for more disciplined classroom management it still feels terribly out of character for me. My awkward, fumbling attempts at control during student teaching, despite the disasters, fit my personality much more.

Bleh. Sorry if that's a little strange sounding. Still recovering from the interview.

You teach in inclusion classrooms, right? I really enjoyed that experience during student teaching, despite the meetings and paperwork. Does your district have an inclusion policy, or do they have certain teachers or certain classes that are inclusion-based?

[peneli]

"I feel they did a wonderful job making sure we all had ideals, but didn't really prepare us to work with those ideals in reality." This. On the other hand, um, I think giving us a grounding reality would probably lead to a lot more people dropping ed., so, not a surprise.

Being authoritarian is lame. Stupid kids making it necessary. I think we're coming from a similar place on that one.

Four of my six sections are inclusion this year, in the past it's been three. (I now teach both the World and US inclusion, which used to each have 3 sections but with teacher cuts/larger classes they've been squashed to 2 each.) We have an inclusion policy--most places do these days, with updated IDEA laws and all. So I have a special ed coteacher, who is a lovely person and tries my crazy new ideas (and comes up with her own) and we take turns "being mean" as neither of us likes doing it, heh. Of course, if you get a shitty coteacher or bad support from your district, inclusion can be hell.

Still, I like it enough that I smile and shake my head when people in my department ask how I'm "holding up" with all those inclusion classes.