8 weeks down, 8 more to go!

I am officially HALFWAY done with my student teaching experience! This marks the end of my special education placement and the start of my general education placement. Thank you to all who have kept up with my experience and have provided your advice and support! Keeping this blog has really helped me to reflect on my teaching and interactions with students and teachers.

Things I’ve learned:

Take everything one day at a time. As a teacher, I like to plan anything and everything I can. In this placement, there were so many things that were beyond my control that I couldn’t prepare/plan ahead for. Flexibility is a word that I heard often from all the teachers. Not only did I have to be flexible with my students, but I also had to work around my cooperating teacher, the general education teachers, and, believe it or not, the weather. So many different circumstances changed my plans, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

Communication is essential. Future student teachers: don’t be afraid to voice your concerns and expectations about your placement to your cooperating teacher and your supervisor. By the time I shared my concerns and comments to my cooperating teacher, it was too late to change anything. It’s YOUR experience, so do what you have to do to make it worthwhile. I was glad to have an open line of communication with my supervisor because she gave me tons of advice on how to deal with the different situations that I was going through.

“Not everyone will like you.” A student told me this. And it’s so true. I worked with hormonal 8^th graders, so one day the students loved me and another day they would all turn against me. I was fortunate enough to keep a few relationships throughout my placement, and I started to create new ones closer to the end of my experience. I did my best to get to know my students on a personal level, but each student had to put in the same effort in order for the relationship to grow. It’s hard to find the balance between being a friend and being a teacher. I think this was especially hard for me in this placement because I felt like I could relate to my students in different ways since we were so close in age. I’ve never had this issue while working with younger students because I think there was a large enough age gap for them to take me seriously.

Teaching special education is tough work. While taking classes at IU, I knew that teaching special education would be mentally and physically draining. But actually experiencing it and going through it every day really proved that. It’s challenging, but rewarding. Progress is slow, but once the students understand something, and it sticks, it’s all worthwhile. I mentioned in a previous post that after six weeks of working with my students on plotting coordinate points, they were able to plot on their own. It takes a lot of patience to wait for this kind of progress, but it’s a great feeling when it happens.

Each day is a new day. No matter how tough my days got, I knew that each day was a fresh start with my students. I had to keep a positive attitude every day, because that influenced the way my students looked at me. I couldn’t let problems from the previous day affect my interactions with my students the next day. I had some pretty tough days and went through some tough situations with my teacher and students, but I couldn’t let that get to me. Every day depended on my attitude; if I wanted it to be a good day, I had to be positive.

I know that a lot of my blogs have pointed out the challenges I’ve had in my placement. To future student teachers: I promise it’s not as bad as it may sound. I had little victories every day that helped to make up for the not-so-good times. My only advice is making sure to keep an open mind and having a positive attitude. A lot of this experience depends on the way you look at it and what you want to make of it.

Next up: 2^nd grade general education (I had my first day today, and it was awesome… but I’ll share everything in the next post! I promise my posts will start to be positive... I can feel it!)