Adventures in Student Teaching Week 7

What, you say. I haven’t taught this week. Right you are, but there is still a reflection due and in all honesty I have thought a lot about teaching this past week and what I need to do.

The week before I started my student teaching my cooperating teaching and I sat down to talk about a few things. It was during this talk that she gave me a bit of advice that I have mulled over ever since: You are the most important person in the classroom. It boils down to if I am not happy or enjoying the lesson neither will the students. The last two weeks or so, I haven’t been happy.

It isn’t that I don’t enjoy student teaching, I love it. I wish I could teach all day long and look forward to the day when it will be my full time job. The problem is I feel overwhelmed. I know that I have touched on how difficult it is to work full time and teach, when I add that with everything else that I need to do in my life I feel like I need 36 hours in each day, just so I can get a few hours of sleep. I had to fly across the country to get away from everything and relax for a few days, I’ve never had to do that before.

I’ve always been the overachiever, someone who can take on multiple tasks and fulfill them, I’ve just never had to keep it up for this long before. This isn’t meant to be whining, whining won’t help in this situation, but I am currently at a loss on how to resolve the situation.

Maybe if things were a little easier in the classroom, they are getting better and I think the situation will continue to improve as I become more confident in my abilities and the students grow even more accustomed to their new teacher. I still have to figure out what works for me in a classroom management strategy, but the good thing is I am constantly ruling out what doesn’t work so that means I must be zeroing in on the right thing.

I wish I knew the answers after a week of pondering how to change things in the classroom, unfortunately I still don’t. So until then I will take one day at a time and work out how to make sure I am happy in my current assignment.