In all honesty, I do not know whether to celebrate or to cry about my final entry as a student teacher; this moment is bittersweet to say the least. When I began my experience as a student teacher, I was beyond terrified of taking over the classroom and becoming a teacher. I felt so incapable of being smart enough, relatable enough, and patient enough to reach my students and teach them what they needed to learn. However, after the last few months with my 8th graders, I feel ready and excited to start my first teaching job.
Throughout my teaching experience, my goals were to grow confidence, find passion in teaching, and connect with these students. Even though I expected confidence to be one of the most challenging of my goals, I feel as though I have achieved much more confidence. Within the last couple of weeks, I have been offered a teaching position with 6th grade English students in an academy, accepted the position, and completed the pre-boarding process. If you would have asked me even 6 months ago if I was excited to be a teacher, I most likely would have laughed or scoffed because I just felt so inadequate and unmotivated to continue in my degree. The last 4 years have been fun, challenging, and exhausting. I have made and lost friends, experienced my first breakup, learned more than I could ever want to know about English literature and the English language, stressed about public speaking for education classes, had Practicum with 8th graders in-person, fell in love and married my best friend during a pandemic, had Practicum with 12th graders online because of the pandemic, student taught face-to-face kids and online kids AT THE SAME TIME, and accepted my dream position working with at-risk students. If you had to ask me if I would do all this again, I do not know if I honestly would; there was a lot of hardship that I have experienced that I would dare not want to deal with again, but I am grateful for it because of everything I have learned about loving God first, loving myself in singleness, and loving my spouse more than myself. These extremely difficult 4 years have been filled with so many tears and so much laughter. These last few months of student teaching have been filled with so much anxiety and yet so much peace and confidence. I can’t explain it, but God re-ignited a passion within me that was planted in me long ago. The passion for teaching has probably been inside me longer than I realize. From playing school with my little sister and always wanting to be the teacher to working with kids abroad and in the States who craved to learn English and about life, the passion continued to grow more. As for connecting with these students, you would be surprised how much anyone could connect with teenagers amidst a pandemic, virtual learning, and concurrent learning. These kids have been through so much. My broken, shattered, and chaotic experiences are gifts from God that have equipped me to relate and connect with these students who are broken just like me. These kids have frustrated me a lot some days, especially with their lack of motivation, but that is just because I care so much about them succeeding in this class and in life. Teaching these students how to treat others, how to relate to one another, and other life skills have been a huge blessing in this experience. I do NOT walk out of this experience feeling like I have it all figured out. If I did, I am sure God would knock me down a few pegs during my first year as an educator in this upcoming Fall. I still struggle with questioning whether I am good enough, passionate enough, smart enough, or cool enough for these students - ANYTHING to tell myself that I am here for a reason. I will NEVER be a perfect teacher, but I care a lot about the kids that walk into my room. These kids have become my kids, which is exactly why I experience the frustration, disappointment, pride, and love for my students that parents do for their kids. As a result, when I think about my future as a teacher, I think about myself becoming like a mom to hundreds of kids; for this reason, I will forever look fondly on my memories in student teaching with my kids there, and I look forward to becoming the best home away from home for these kids that I can.
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Today, my cooperating teacher was out because she had some personal matters to take care of during the school day. Since the kids were virtual today, though, we did not need to get a substitute teacher for the class, and I could just teach the class from home. Whilst the co-teacher was there for part of the day, she was not there for an hour in the first class and an hour in the second class. As for the other hours she was in the classroom, she took some of the students into a breakout room while I stayed with the rest of the class in the main room on Zoom.
Of course, my students noticed that I was the only teacher present; in fact, one of my students pointed out that I could be a “real” teacher today. I laughed and asked what he meant because I have been a “real” teacher every day minus the first few days with this class and have managed all of the responsibilities including lesson planning, grading, and communication. This student then proceeded to mention that it was like I was genuinely a “real” teacher today due to the fact that “now you’re the only one so you have to make smart decisions without help”. This student’s statement simultaneously made me chuckle and think about what it honestly means to be a teacher on my own. Up to this point, I have had two other teachers constantly monitoring me and offering suggestions as needed. In other words, they were there to fall back on, but one day I would be alone in a classroom without someone else to make “smart decisions” with. It has been a challenge for me to feel confident enough in myself that I can be a teacher on my own next school year after I graduate this May, but today I had to prove to myself whether I could truly do this. Throughout the day, there were times when students were off task, dealing with technology issues, and downright ignoring me because they likely walked away from their computers. On the contrary, I dealt with each issue as it came, and God gave me the confidence level that I needed to make the choices I needed to. I am sure I will have more times when I doubt myself as an educator, but today I proved to myself that I can “make smart decisions without help”. “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.” ~ I Timothy 4:12
Communication with parents is one of the most terrifying things for a novel teacher and especially a student teacher. What if a parent asks a question I don’t know the answer to? What if I stumble over my words? What if they look down on me because I’m young? What if they get angry? These are all thoughts I am sure most new teachers have had at some point in their first years of teaching. For any new teachers out there, I am by no means an expert, but allow me to tell you something you may or may not already know: interacting with an angry parent is inevitable, but HOW you deal with an angry parent is not. In other words, conflict is going to happen whether you like it or not. I loathe conflict; some people avoid conflict because it is so petrifying to them. Dealing with parents is a different arena for me, too, because I am most afraid of learning how to speak my mind in a loving professional manner, without allowing parents to walk all over me or make false claims about me or my classroom. The reality is, at some point, teachers are going to face false claims against who they are as a person. Lucky for me, I guess I got that out of the way on the front end of my teaching career because of a recent interaction with a parent. One mom decided to reach out to my CT (cooperating teacher), my co-teacher, the AP (assistant principal), and the principal of my school to “report” my co-teacher, CT, and me for allegedly threatening children and calling them names. Now, I do not want to go into too much detail to protect the anonymity of all those involved, yet I also promised to be honest on this page (as much as I can be professionally anyway). Of course, none of these claims were actually true, and the mom seemed to be taking out her frustration on some of the best teachers in the school (my CT and co-teacher). Of all the teachers and student teachers to accuse, this mom attacked the teachers that the administration knew would never intend any harm toward students and who cared more than a lot of other teachers do. Not only this, but these two women are my mentors as teachers and watched me like a hawk (as they should), so they had my back as well. The situation was honestly so bizarre, and I have been running the situation through my head for multiple days now. My chronic migraines have also been acting up, and the stress from the situation is probably not helping my overall well-being. Despite the chaos of it all, I know I can rest in the fact that I am doing what God wants me to do, my teachers have my back, and now I see just how important it is to work at a school where the administration has your back too. Even though the human mind was not designed to multitask, teaching is a job that requires a lot of multitasking, especially teaching in a pandemic. Concurrent teaching, specifically, involves teaching students in the classroom simultaneously while teaching students virtually on Zoom. I had heard from multiple people that concurrent teaching is extremely difficult. Because of this belief, I was extremely nervous for the first day of concurrent teaching. Not only this, but I had not met any of my students in person yet. To be honest, concurrent teaching was much easier than I expected. Of course, there was a lot of technology to manage, and it’s extremely exhausting. However, it is not quite as difficult as I anticipated.
When the kids finally arrived in the classroom, it was awkwardly silent. I’m not the kind of person who is typically uncomfortable with silence, but I could sense that the students were nervous, even though they claimed they weren’t nervous. I loved getting to have students in person and getting to know some of my students who were more talkative in person than they were on Zoom. This past week, my cooperating teacher (CT) went out of town on Thursday and Friday while I stayed to teach concurrently for my second week. The students are only in person on Thursdays and Fridays, and my CT just so happened to go out of town those days this week. With it only being my third and fourth day of concurrent officially, I was nervous to see how the dynamic would be without my CT there. Surprisingly, I had so much fun with the kids, and I felt myself relaxing a lot more. I’ve appreciated the relationships I’ve developed with my students and how some of the quietest kids are coming out of their shells. On Thursday, I had a student who was going to fail my class because he had missed weeks of school and his mom honestly didn’t care if he passed, so I had a heart to heart with him. I asked him to be honest with me about whether he wanted to pass not only my class, but also the 8th grade. He told me he did, and I told him I knew he did because when he came back to school he caught up on two weeks of work in a day. That showed me he wanted to do well. I also told him that I know P.E. stinks and I hated it too, but he needed to show up to gym class to pass. Since then, he’s now passing all his classes, ACING gym, and he told me on Thursday that my class is his favorite class and the best class in the school. On Friday, I learned from my co-teacher, when she took some of the class to one room and I had the other half, that the kids genuinely loved my class and me as a teacher. I was honestly surprised because I thought they went with my co-teacher because they didn’t like me. However, my co-teacher said they were sad to learn I wasn’t actually a teacher and would be leaving in April. We have a child with a rough past who also said it was his favorite class he has ever taken. Honestly, I felt so touched because I didn’t think I was that good of a teacher. At the end of the day, though, what matters is that my students feel like they’re learning and they get excited to come to class every week. I may feel like I’ve got a lot to learn still, and I do, but I am so excited to be a teacher. Last weekend, I spent hours planning the lessons for this week’s English 8 inclusion classes. On Saturday, I lost track of how long I had been planning, and it was almost midnight when I called it quits for the night. Sunday, Valentine’s Day, my husband and I committed to serving on the production team, and then the afternoon looked like more hours of lesson planning. Yes, we did celebrate, but it ended up being the weekend prior. The point is, I spent a LONG time planning the lessons for this week.
My CT (cooperating teacher) encourages me to wait to plan for the week until closer to each day and only planning a couple days at a time, but I have found that it helps my sanity to have everything planned at the beginning of the week, including resources, even if I have to adjust based on where the classes are at. With both of my classes being inclusion classes, these kids need to work at a slower pace, so it can be a challenge trying to work at their pace but keeping up with the pacing guide for the school. After we had school off for President’s Day on Monday, Tuesday finally arrived. When the class began, I had the students complete a comma rules #1-3 quiz on NoRedInk. My CT wanted the kids to take this assessment, but I did not have access to the actual quiz. As a result, when I was planning, I had no idea how long the quiz would take. With only having this class for a couple weeks now, I still have a difficult time wrapping my head around how much time they need to complete notes, assessments, assignments, etc. Working pace aside, I had students who did not even start the quiz 20 minutes into class. With teaching virtually, it can sometimes be frustrating with how few students actually participate in the class and complete their work. By the time we reached a stopping point on the quiz, only 30 minutes of this 1 hour 15 minute class remained. Because of this, my plans somewhat went awry, and I had to adjust during class. Collaborating with my CT, I asked her if she thought it would be wise to cut the video I had planned along with some other items, and I adjusted that class and the rest of the week accordingly. Whilst some teachers may get annoyed at the slower pace of the classes, I actually appreciate taking more time to teach my kids material. I will admit, however, that sometimes it can be frustrating how long it takes these students to type notes or type anything on their computers. The reality is, though, that a lot of these kids were probably not taught how to type using the “home row” like I was as a kid. Virtual teaching is challenging, but the life I have lived moving from state to state has more than prepared me for the day-to-day adjustments of teaching. Last week, I officially took over on Friday as the teacher for my 8th grade English class, and this week was my first week of doing everything as the teacher. I’m going to be honest - this last week I have had some of the hardest days I have ever had in a long time. Wednesday, I had what I would call an “Alexander” day. Have you ever heard of “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”? That was this Wednesday for me. How do I know this?
From the moment I first rushed to my car in the morning and proceeded to dump my cup of cranberry juice all over my car, keys, phone, breakfast, and lunch, I knew this was going to be a rough day. It didn’t help that I started my morning moving much slower than usual because there is something about virtual teaching that is just mentally and emotionally EXHAUSTING. From the kids being overwhelmed by the amount of work and the teachers not being able to change that much because of the tight pacing schedule with the pandemic, my kids and I are just tired. No joke, I went to bed one night at 9pm and slept until around 8am, since we did not start school until later that morning, and my body just crashed. Anyway, my morning only got crazier when I got to my school and my CT (cooperating teacher) asked for my lesson for the next day. My CT advised me the week prior to only plan through Wednesday because plans change constantly and to wait until Wednesday to plan for Thursday and Friday, so you can understand my confusion and internal panic when she asked about the lessons for the next day. After the fact, I realized the panic she probably felt was because our co-teacher was getting observed the next day and wanted to have more input on the lesson plan than was originally communicated. As the day went on, I only felt like a bigger failure as a teacher when I realized that I assigned way too much work in the amount of class time. I could tell from the moment I said, “If you don’t get this done” and “if you don’t finish this other assignment or this one, then you can just finish it for homework tonight”. Yikes. EPIC fail on my part. I gave these kids way too much work for one day, and I could tell by the silent treatment they were giving me. Not only did I frantically plan the rest of the week’s lesson on a piece of notebook paper, but I also felt like I failed my students for the day. Some people would argue that because I care so much about not failing my students that it is what makes me a good teacher. I am absolutely not a good teacher, but I do care. I am an imperfect human being who is trying to balance still being a fulltime college student to now being a fulltime teacher and a newlywed. Wednesday night, I ended up staying up until 11:30pm lesson planning for the next day because I had class after school at my university, and then I had dinner before I got to working. The next day, I had students wondering why their late work wasn’t graded yet and why I hadn’t responded to their messages; it was in that moment that I had a choice. I could lash out at my students and tell them to chill, or I could be real with my students. I decided to be real with my students and let them know that I am human too. I let them know something along the lines that I am also a student who ended up planning the lesson for Thursday late the night before, so I had to choose what I did. I would get to their assignments, but I had to prioritize what needed to get done while also making sure I got enough sleep to teach them the next day. I could go on and on about the other events that plagued my “Alexander” day - like the fact that our class got Zoom bombed TWICE, which essentially means we were dealing with hackers or maybe other students from the school getting into our class, impersonating students, and disrupting the class with inappropriate chats and annotations. Since then, we have had to put a lot of restrictions on the Zoom, and this makes it difficult for students to be able to do breakout rooms and such. What matters, though, is that there is some sense of safety back in the classroom again, despite me having to kick out impersonators every day this week now. There are not enough words in the English language to describe how truly exhausting and just HARD this week has been. At the end of the day, I still wouldn’t trade this job for the world. I may be paying my university to do student teaching, but I still call it my job. Sometimes this job drains me on every possible level, but that does not stop me from reaching out to students and messaging each student who gave me class feedback to get more of their suggestions to improve our classroom. In reality, this isn’t my classroom, and it isn’t my CT’s; this classroom belongs to the teachers AND the students. It is challenging to make the classroom fun while keeping up with the pace of this COVID school year, but I am going to do whatever it takes to help my students become better learners and better people. Since the transition into virtual learning, our district has decided to switch from A-day and B-day scheduling to every day classes but in a single term. In other words, students and teachers now have one semester to teach and learn a year’s worth of content; however, instead of having class every other day, students have class every day. Because of this novel concept brought to us by the COVID-19 pandemic, I just got a brand new class of students and had to experience my first goodbyes as a student teacher.
Honestly, I did not expect to connect so well with these kids in just two short works, let alone via Zoom, but you would be surprised how much students will open up over Zoom with an almost complete stranger. With this Term 1 group of students, I found students who shared a love for music, laughter, and learning. Whenever we as humans deal with the loss of a loved one or simply the loss of a relationship, our go-to phrase is that “we didn’t have enough time”. I definitely wish I got more time with my Term 1 students because the relationships that flourished in just two short weeks could have blossomed even more over the course of the year, but sometimes we are only a part of other people’s lives for a brief season. These kids, our kids, got to experience a home away from home and forget about whatever was going on at home, all while sitting in their actual residences. I say residences because not every child has a home within their house and feels like it is a safe place; that is a sad reality that comes with the territory of teaching. My last week with these kids was so incredible because I had the opportunity to teach them their SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) lessons all week, which my university refers to as morning meetings. I taught my kids how to inspire others by showing them you care, active listening first (setting the example and listening first if you want to be listened to), encouraging others, and sharing our gifts and talents with others. My kids communicated to me through my “Getting to Know You” Google Form that they wanted to learn valuable life lessons, and I feel like this was a special way to accomplish this and end our time together. By the end of each class on Friday, I felt like I could cry if I truly let myself, but I felt at peace knowing that my kids gained these life skills that they could take beyond the classroom. Maybe one day I will run into them at their jobs, and I will get to see the fruits of my labor. Even if I do not have that opportunity, I know this last week made my students think about their actions and helped them realize that teachers struggle too through my shared experiences. We are all human, and my job is to step alongside my students and push us to become better humans together. How do I even begin to write about my first “official” day of student teaching? For many teacher education students, the first day looks like picking out your outfit, worrying about standing in front of 20+ sets of eyes, and navigating through a new school. For me, however, my first day looked like logging onto Zoom, learning how to connect with students without knowing their voices, and awkwardly laughing at your own jokes when everyone’s mics are off. Even though my first day was not a student teacher’s typical first day, if you can even say there is such a thing as a typical first day, I never want to forget what I learned on my first day.
At the beginning of class, prior to my official introduction, I had students complete a Google form I made called “Getting to Know You”. In this form, I asked students questions about after school activities, their learning styles, and who they lived with at home. Not only this, but I allowed students the opportunity to answer some other questions and tell me anything they felt like I ought to know. Some students gave comical answers because they felt like I ought to know that they are “funny”, “cool”, or “chill”, whereas others were more guarded about their answers. The guarded students still revealed a lot about themselves through what they did not share, yet they still shared a bit about their home life. I even had some students surprisingly share some pretty heavy and personal information with me. One thing I learned yesterday about the culture at my school is that there are a lot of students who only have one parent, live with just grandparents, or only have guardians. That was heavy to learn because as I am going into my second day I am seeing how this impacts them as individuals. It is evident to me that a lot of students are struggling with learning virtually since they have a difficult time focusing and managing their time. It was surprising to me to learn how many students in the 8th grade actually had a desire to learn those skills and other adult-like skills such as how to use credit and debit cards. Moving into day 2, my heart only breaks more for a lot of these students. Being a teacher and a student teacher through a pandemic is challenging, but being a student has to be even more challenging. I had a girl today, for instance, who shared with me some of her struggles through the pandemic and prior to the pandemic. She is dealing with some personal mental health issues that she wants to work through, yet she feels so alone. Over the course of chatting with her, she told me that I was the only teacher she has felt like she could talk to since coming to this school. I am not even a teacher yet, and still I have students who already look up to me as a teacher. I know teaching is nowhere near a glamorous job, but being able to be there for these students, these kids, and helping them through their lives more than just their education reminds me of why I became a teacher and just how important it is for me to be a teacher now more than ever. |
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AuthorKelsey Hayes is a student teacher finishing up her Senior year at Regent University. Through this blog, Kelsey Hayes will share the raw, honest truth about teaching and how both its joys and challenges motivate her to continue pursuing teaching. Archives
April 2021
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