Why do we student teach?
From TC’s Cooperating Teacher Handbook:
The student teaching experience provides preservice teachers the space and opportunity to learn how to ask important questions about teaching and learning, come to know children and adolescents by observing and interacting with them consistently over time, apply newly acquired knowledge, theories, strategies and models in a variety of contexts within and across classrooms, and experiment with, design and adapt practice according to learners’ needs.
My cooperating teacher (a TFA alum) and I were talking about different routes into teaching and what my experiences student teaching have been. The conversation sparked when my cooperating teacher asked, “Isn’t student teaching supposed to be like a first year experience?” This was a very interesting question for me that I wasn’t sure how to answer. I’ve certainly been feeling like this semester has been a first year experience: I’m learning those important fall on your face then get up management lessons that many of my other teacher friends learned in their first year, I’m exhausted (and I’m only teaching a half load), and I’ve become 20x the teacher I began this semester as.
Last semester’s placement was very different though, and many of my other student teaching friends do not have as grueling of placements. Many people’s student teaching placements look much more like tutoring with occasional lessons thrown in. Your CT isn’t legally allowed to leave the room, even though some of the most valuable classroom management lessons might happen if they did.
Do you think the TC purpose statement has student teachers doing enough? Should student teaching just be a “space” to “ask questions” and “experiment”? Or should student teaching be closer to the residency experiences that many master’s programs and alt pathways are starting to incorporate?
Or should we just step in like the TFA peeps? Thoughts? What have you all been feeling as we approach the end of winter term?