Dear summer 2017
Madison,
You will be going on
quite a journey this next year. Right
now you are anxiously wondering what your first day will be like at your
placement school and how you will get along with your mentor teachers as well
as your students. You are wondering how
you will teach the content when you get to teach and if you will be as good as
your mentors.
Here is what you should
do:
Ask as many questions
as possible. You should not feel like an
inconvenience in your mentors’ classrooms because they decided to become a mentor
in order to help you. You are still
learning and training to be a teacher and they know this.
Reflect back on how you
taught that day. It is okay to change how
you taught something from earlier in the day.
Do not feel like you are letting down first and fourth hours because
they are resilient, smart groups who can bounce back from a mistake in a
lesson. Reflecting on how you are
teaching will make you a better teacher and will make the lesson quality better
for the students.
Plan out what questions
you want to ask your students the night before.
Trust me when I tell you it is difficult to come up with thought-provoking
questions on the spot. Take time the
night before when tweaking a lesson to formulate higher-level thinking
questions. Comprehension questions can
come to you during the class period.
Now I know what your
thinking, what do I wish that I did differently?
I wish that I did not
procrastinate working on lesson plans during the time I taught. I would end up waking up three hours earlier
than I wanted to in order to complete lessons for the day. This would leave me anxious that I did not
plan effective lessons. Learn from
me. Plan out blocks of time during the
week where you plan out lessons.
Actually work on your lessons during the weekends when you tell people
that is what you are doing.
I wish that I was able
to go to TEAM time with my mentor teachers.
Both of them will tell you not to worry that you are not going and that
plan time with them is more important but fight for the opportunity to attend a
TEAM meeting at least once a week. It
will be beneficial for you to get the experience before you are hired somewhere
and they expect you to know how to be an effective team player.
I wish that I tried out
more lessons. I was worried that
students would be too confused if I tried out different techniques. Remember what I said about students being resilient? So not be afraid to try something new. If you are nervous about it that is
okay! Talk to your mentor teacher and
ask her about your idea. She may be more
open to the idea than you thought.
The classes that accompany
your internship will play an important role in having a beneficial year. There will be plenty of opportunities for all
interns to share ideas and that will help you with ideas for your own
lessons. Each intern is having a
different experience at their placement and their situations and how they
handled it may help you with your situations.
The books you will read for the course will also help you think of ways
you can help your students learn language arts in a fun way.
The changes you will
want to make to help yourself in your classes is again: STOP PROCRASTINATING. This is your major stressor and you need to
plan out when you will do them. You
think that there are many assignments in class when really there is not that
much. You just think this because you
are taking twice the class load.
I hope your year is a
great one. Yes, it is challenging. You will realize that you have never been
this stressed out before in your life. You
may question if this profession is really for you multiple times. You may break down because a substitute
questions your classroom management skills.
You may find out that you build great connections with students. You may realize that you do not want you
student teaching year to end. Remember
to enjoy all of the experiences.
Good luck!
End of internship Madison
