I started my student teaching this week and I was thrown right into the fire. I arrived bright and early Monday morning to find my cooperating teacher preparing a lesson plan for the day. She came down with bronchitis and wouldn’t be attending class all day, which left the teaching responsibilities firmly on my shoulders. Usually cooperating teachers ease student teachers into the classroom by letting them take a lesson here or there. We generally observe for at least the first week. I taught three hour-and-a-half blocks my first day on the job. I think it went pretty well. The substitute sat in the corner of the room and read while I did my thing. On day two, my cooperating teacher wasn’t back so I taught again. The experience was fun and exciting and overwhelming at the same time. While I am learning a great deal with little previous experience, I still need the time to prepare for the journey that lay ahead of me. The students have responded to me pretty well. I think most of them respect me, even though I am new and don’t know them yet. And most of them seem eager to learn. It’s hard to motivate 7th graders to be both respectful and eager, and I seem to be doing a pretty good job of it.
One thing that was appealing about teaching was that I would be my own boss. I have had less than ideal experiences with bosses since I joined the work force a few years back. I started at a newspaper in a high stress environment. At first, my boss was pleasant for he most part, but in time he turned into a disgruntled tyrant. Sure we had strict deadlines to meet, but there is a way to ask something of an employee while maintaining a level of professionalism and respect–he didn’t seem interested in maintaining either. He would yell and spit and curse and completely demean us on the job. Since he laid me off, he has been relieved of his position.
My last boss was in a tutoring lab at my graduate school. She was a friend of mine before I started working for her, which I felt would allow our work relationship to stay comfortable and peaceful. But the boss in her slowly took center stage and she became both demanding and difficult. Late in my two-year stint in the lab she began to ask that tasks be completed minutes before she needed them done. This did not make for a very productive work environment for either of us. Luckily, since I left the lab and started student teaching, we have gone back to our old friendship so no permanent damage was done.
Now I have a new boss, my cooperating teacher. I knew she was tough with the kids after observing some of her classes before I started my actual student teaching this week. Now I am finding that she, at times, is similarly tough with me. I have to constantly remind myself that she is only trying to best prepare me for the field, which I know she is; but I want her to think of me more as a colleague and less as a student, which I guess I am both. I can’t complain with my current situation because I truly feel that she has my best interest in mind. She does compliment me when I do a good job, and she is a far cry from my first boss so I have that to be thankful for.
