Practicum, Day 1
Posted by aikicrae on January 9, 2010
I had my first day of my practicum on Thursday! My mentor teacher has five periods of 10th grade World Studies right now (and losing one of those to add a sociology class in February). It was a long day, but a great one. I had to get up at 5:30 am. In the summer, when the sun comes up early, I’m actually something of a morning person. In the dead of a Washington winter when the sun barely seems to come up at all, I’m not a morning person. So that was a little hard, but I met up with a colleague who is also doing a practicum there and we carpooled and even got there early.
It was actually my first full day in a high school in probably a decade. I graduated about eight years ago, but my junior and senior year of high school I was able to leave early because I had enough credits. The last time I probably had a full day of high school was when I was in 10th grade myself!
I’m really excited about being able to observe and work with my mentor teacher. He’s an alum from Evergreen’s MIT program, and seems to hold a lot of the same views and beliefs about education that I do. It’s also great because I get to watch how he reacts to the crazy things high school students do. And they do some crazy things!
For example, in one period, a student took the bathroom pass and disappeared for 5-10 minutes. When he re-entered the classroom, he was carrying two drinks fresh from Starbucks. Yes, he had taken the bathroom pass, left campus, gone to Starbucks, bought drinks for himself and a friend, and came back to class. I would never have even thought that my students might leave in the middle of class to go to Starbucks! But I thought my mentor teacher handled it well. He was standing by the door when the student came in, and fixed him with an incredulous look.
“I was only gone, like, five minutes” said the student
“You know what would make me feel better about this?” the teacher said.
“If I’d brought you one too?” the student asked. I, meanwhile, was trying hard to keep a straight face. It looked like my mentor teacher had the same struggle.
“No. If I see you working the rest of the period. And if you hand in your essay to me.” the teacher said.
The student had already gone and come back, so really, what could a teacher do in that situation? Punish him? You could, but I liked this approach of using the situation to get the student to actually work. And he did, rather diligently, for the rest of the period.
There were other entertaining instances throughout the day. Several students saw me when they walked in and asked “Do we have a sub?”. Their teacher, standing right next to them, replied “Umm, no. I’m right here.” I was also mistaken for my mentor teacher’s wife by some students, and as a parent of a student by another teacher (me, the parent of a teenager!). I suppose it’s better than being mistaken for a student, but really, don’t rush me.
There was, of course, one student who worked at getting a reaction from me and testing to see if he could push my buttons. He came up to me several times while I was writing my observations and said to me “I love you. I just want you to know that.” Then he would go sit down again. After a few rounds of this I gave him my best “We Both Know Exactly What You’re Doing So Why Don’t You Actually Get To Work” look, and he didn’t repeat it again.
It was a great day overall, and very exciting. It made me realize that one very valuable aspect to this practicum will be seeing how my mentor teacher reacts to students and the things that come up. Listening to the stories from second years at the potluck, and remembering from previous observations I’ve done and time I’ve spent in classrooms, I know that part of being a teacher is developing the fine art of reacting (or not) to students and incidents in the classroom.
I’m looking forward to learning a lot from my mentor teacher about this and many other aspects of teaching!
