Hindsight is 20/20

If I could go back and start my student teaching experience over, there are some things that I would like to do differently.

First and foremost, I would have liked more information about the school and the specific classroom in which I was going to be teaching. While I certainly had some general knowledge, I wish that there had been a better opportunity for me to gain a better perspective for what exactly I would be stepping into, especially since the classroom I was placed in was so unique.

Moreover, I wish I would have been better prepared in terms of dealing with being tired all the time. I knew student teaching would be exhausting, but I didn’t realize the extent to which it was until I was in the midst of the experience.

Staying organized was more difficult than I had imagined as well. I think I attribute a great deal of this to the type of classroom I was in, and the new grading system my cooperating teacher and I used, but I wish that I would have been able to come up with a better system from the get-go.

Photo I took in September 2015 of one of
the covered bridges in Oxford.

While I figured there would be bumps and surprises along the way, I wasn’t prepared for the problems I did have during student teaching that were unrelated to the actual act of teaching. From the car problems I had to deal with, to issues with technology for the edTPA, I wish I had been able to handle these more smoothly.

On all fronts, I learned a lot from student teaching, and I’m definitely glad that I went through the experience. But if I could go back and change a few things to make the transition easier, I would. Either way, student teaching is a bridge to cross, but the easier it is to cross in terms of the factors outside the classroom, the more enriching I think the experience can be. 

Towards the end of my experience when I finally had a better idea for how to manage the workload and stay organized, I noticed a shift in how I perceived the experience as a whole. It became even more fulfilling than it had been all along, which made it that much more fun.

Student teaching is hard. It’s a lot of work and it’s exhausting, but it is such a rewarding experience in the end.