Journal #4

Erika Oehlers

Fall 08

Student Teaching

Richard Hawley wrote a famous article called “Teaching as Failing” and opens it with this statement:

Whenever a teacher enters the classroom to engage students in the process of increasing their understanding of some subject, some process, some created thing, some event—that is, whenever a teacher enters the classroom to teach—he or she risks great failure and, regardless of his or her gifts, experiences that failure to a significant extent. (597)

This might sound dismal, but this concept is something that I reminded myself of almost every day during my student teaching experience. Every teacher, new or old, faces failure, whether it’s a student not passing, an unmotivated day for a class, or a lesson gone wrong. What I need to then do with this reality is to humbly accept my daily failures and use them as a place from which to grow.

The first week of student teaching was chaotic but exciting. I loved meeting the other teachers and students, and I was elated by how natural being a part of a high school felt. It very quickly occurred to me, however, how much growth I must undergo. I realized right away that classroom management was going to be difficult. I should have thought about the fact that the students were going to, without a doubt, push my limits. If I had sat down on one of the days before school started to examine some procedures and expectations for the class, I probably would have been able to transition into the role as classroom manager easier.

My cooperating teacher gave me the first mini-unit to teach. She gave me lessons two days in advance. The next unit, I was given the outlines and materials for the unit and planned out day-to-day activities myself. This was not quite the model for student teaching responsibility that the handbook lays out, but I’m glad to have jumped right into being the main instructor of the class, especially since I was only teaching one period at that time. I soon started teaching my unit, and by the end of teaching Julius Caesar, I had taken over teaching the three sections of AP English 12, leading daily discussions on Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. I did this for a little over two weeks.

Over the semester, I could notice my professional maturity. The area that I immediately struggled with was classroom management. This was one area that I felt I had little to know preparation for. I learned very soon that well-planned lessons and quick transitions were the backbone behind good classroom management, but even after I started putting more effort into filling up the whole period, I still could not keep the class on task. My cooperating teacher let me know that the class was a particularly difficult group, but I still felt like a failure. I was afraid to be stern, and I let too many inappropriate behaviors continue until structure was lost. I made strides by the end of the semester and was able to take a more authoritative position in the class, but I still wish I could go back and do that first couple of weeks all over again. I would have established and practiced daily procedures. I also would have set classroom expectations and held students accountable to them immediately.

After all of the lessons learned in terms of classroom management, time management, lesson planning, and everything else, I realized how much I rely on feedback in the work setting. But it is important for me, as a teacher, to be able to assess myself and measure the work I’ve done in terms of student learning, and make the necessary changes I need to make from those findings. In other words, I need to learn to trust myself. I need to recognize a failure and find possible ways to prevent it from happening again. For instance, if I noticed that I got distracted by a conversation with a student, I need to make sure that I stay on task and let the students know what kind of conversations are appropriate during instruction. In addition to just stating these expectations, I need to model them as well.

My time management has always been typical of a college student: staying up all night the night before a major assignment, getting distracted by heated political discussions, and getting absolutely nothing done all weekend until Sunday night. My name is Erika, and I’m a Procrastinator. But! There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I still have a lot of work to do here, but I’ve learned to set deadlines for myself, and to plan out rewards when I reach a benchmark in a project or lesson that I’m working on. It’s a skill that is taking me a long time to learn, but teaching is not a profession that allows for planning at the last minute. Planning for whole chunks of time benefits the teacher, the student, and the school.

What else do I wish I had done differently? I wish I would have asked more questions and found out exactly how much jurisdiction I had over the 10^th-grade class. I wish I would have thought about and decided upon some class procedures to begin from the first day. For instance, I tried using daily journals (which I coined “Daybooks) to begin each class and use for notes and bellwork, but I did not make any decisions on how I would assess the work they did in them. I wish I would have done more to build classroom community, such as introductory activities and getting-to-know-you games. I wish I wouldn’t have let the students take advantage of my being new to teaching. I wish I had had more confidence and authority. I wish I had created a better dialogue with my CT about where I could go with the class. I wish I would have planned my unit earlier. I wish I would have asked for more feedback about it.

There are so many things that I have learned the hard way. And I know there will be so many more failures to come. It will take years to get to the point where I want to be, but I’m looking forward to the failures, the successes, and the chances to try a different strategy. After all, failure, when accompanied by patience and optimism—i.e. the ability to keep getting back on that horse and continuing on the journey—is only another opportunity for success.