Student Teaching

I've always wanted a student teacher, but now that I have one I'm not so sure.  She is an amazing dancer, but its hard to give up classes to someone else.  Plus, my students are not like other students... they only like hip hop and must be tricked into other styles of dance.  This is a skill that has taken me several years to learn and for a student teacher to learn in a short 10 weeks, almost impossible.

I left her alone on Friday to see if not having me in the room would help the students respond better to her and not continually come to me.  I came in to pick up some CDs for the assembly and noticed some kids sitting out, but the rest seemed to be doing great.  When I asked her how it went, she cried.  I felt so sad.  I tried reminding her that 90% of the kids were having a great time, but sometimes we only see those kids sitting down with bad attitudes.

In teaching we tend to focus on the 10% that hate school, hate you, hate the other kids, and we give them all of our attention.  While the 90% of the kids are great and ready to learn, just waiting for us to notice them.  It was kind of an eye opener for me.  I have a lecture all ready for those students, because they better not make life hard for this cute teacher or I'll make life hard for them.  My students have told me that I have a look of death that is really scary.  SWEET!  I've been working on it for awhile and now it is working for me.  My sweet little student teacher does not have a look of death or a mean bone in her body... we'll have to work on that.  :)

When I was a senior in high school I had a student teacher in dance.  She gave me an A- and I talked to her several times about it, I argued that I was an A dancer and she had no right to give me an A-.  She never came back.  My teacher told me it wasn't my fault and that she just wasn't cut out to be a teacher, but I've always felt guilty about it (especially when I saw her on campus at BYU that next year).  I want my student teacher to have a positive wonderful experience... not be punished for my mistakes...