Part 1 of 5: How to Be a Co-Teacher!!

Yay!  I am so excited to be sharing this series with y'all!  My fabulous Student Teacher, Mrs. Cahill, and I started out on this adventure together nearly a year ago!  YIKES!  We had quite a journey and we're looking forward to sharing all we learned with you.  Without further ado... How to be a Co-Teacher, part 1 from Martina's perspective!  Check out her blog, The Hungry Teacher to see my perspective!

 

 

 

And in case that is too tiny for you to read {And it absolutely is but I can't make it any bigger-gah!}

 

Student teaching is one of the craziest and most beneficial things you will ever do before you become a teacher. It is so scary to think that you will be spending one whole semester or year with the same teacher. That one teacher will have a bigger influence on all teaching decisions you will make for the rest of your teaching career, than anyone else ever will. Some of us will learn how we will set up our classroom, or how we will set up our reader’s workshop, or how to finally implement a successful unit, or some of us learn things that we will NEVER do. But some of us are really lucky and we get to learn so much more than that. Well… I was one of the lucky ones.

I was terrified I would be placed with a mentor teacher who was forced or unwilling to have a student teacher or that they would be so hard on me that I would go running for the hills. Well…. I don’t know what I did in my former life, but I must have been really good, because I was given the best mentor teacher a girl could ask for.

I went to my student teaching school to meet the principal and he told me that he wanted to put me with the 5^th grade teacher, Kelly. I was terrified for a couple of reasons. First of all, fifth grade?! Second, this was becoming real. I was actually student teaching, I had a mentor teacher, and I would have to actually teach kids stuff. I was terrified. Looking back now, I have no idea why. The principal introduced me to Kelly, she squealed, and then gave me the biggest hug you could ever get from someone who you had known for 0.5 seconds. At that moment, I knew Kelly would have a big impact on me as a teacher, but I had no idea the impact she would have on my life.

I started my student teaching experience with Kelly during teacher in service the week before school. Kelly explained every single thing about her thinking. Like why she used her spelling program, how to make copies on construction paper (even when the copier clearly stated not to J), why she used the workshop model, why we have 107 (extremely cute and durable) binders, and so much more. There were two extremely amazing things about this. First of all, the girl had West Nile (seriously). And second, and the most profound thing of all, is that I never once just felt like a student teacher. I felt like her co-teacher from day one. I can’t imagine trying to explain all your thoughts to someone else in just your third year of teaching (not that you would know it was her third year of teaching) but Kelly did (did I mention she had West Nile? J….. But seriously….) She was a rock star and I was already learning more than I had ever learned about teaching.

Don’t get me wrong, there were times I thought she was crazy. Like how she kept telling me we had to make our room feel like home because we would be spending 50-60 hours a week in this room (what?! why?!) Or when she finally told me that she had West Nile after WEEKS of being utterly and completely exhausted (and after she had answered every, single, little, and ridiculous question I ever had.) Or when she told me I could have her class for four weeks instead of the required two weeks so that I could really get some good experience (is she nuts?!) and that she would leave me completely by myself for 2-3 of those weeks so I could get experience for when I’m a teacher on my own (ok, she is actually crazy.) Or when she started to tell me that I should start selling some of my teaching resources on Teachers Pay Teachers (What is she talking about? Is that even legal?) Or the craziest of them all…. “We should blog about our teaching experiences together” (what? blog? This girl is on a whole different level J). Yeah. All of these things sounded so completely crazy at the time, but that’s what Kelly does. She pushes me to do things that I never thought possible or that I am capable of doing. And again, she does this while still making me feel like we are two co-teaching coming up with these great ideas together.

For all you student and mentor teachers out there, I hope you form a co-teaching relationship like the one Kelly and I have because the outcome will be more than beneficial to you, your co-teacher, and your students.

Isn't she the absolute best?  Seriously.  We just learned so much from each other throughout our year together.  I just lover her.  Whew! {I didn't just tear up or anything reading that...}

 

Thank you so much for stopping by!  Be sure to visit later this week for some new blog posts about starting the school year and definitely stop by next Sunday for our second post about Starting the School Year as a student teacher!