Did you feel stupid and incapable when you student taught?

Did I feel stupid and incapable when I studied?

Yes, sometimes. Sometimes I feel I should know more, be more apt at what I do than I am.

Of course, all the time. But then I get the courage to ask questions when I did not understand something, and now I’m able and capable to take on anything school throws at me.

@missjena – what exactly is “student taught”? Like present a project to other students? Or teach the teachers? Or am I way off?

I was very lucky because of my life experience and the subjects I taught. I had been a company controller so I was confident about leading and working with groups. I was working on a business ed credential so the 2 classes I taught were fairly routine.

The keyboarding class practically ran itself. The students practiced the previous days keys, then I introduced a couple of new keys, then the student did new drills while I walked around telling them to sit up straight. There would be tests about speed and accuracy but that left me plenty of time to deal with thr occsional smartass.

The kinds of kids who took the accounting class were generally better behaved because the goofs thought it was about advanced math.

I got a credential in Social Studies by trsting. There have been plenty of times when I questioned my sanity after a History.class.

@sevenfourteen While in teacher training the student teacher takes on the teaching of real classes under the mentorship of a credentialed. I student taught typing and accounting classes. For a 22 yo facing 35 Chemistry or English students for the 1st time can be daunting

I was not a student teacher as in someone going into teaching doing their “student teaching”. But I was a teaching assistant in grad school. This included filling in for the professor on occasion, leading lab sections (in various kinds of labs) all the time, wandering individual help in the labs, leading review sections, small group tutoring, and holding office hours. This was with college juniors and seniors in engineering.

I was nervous at first that someone would ask me a question that I didn’t know the answer to. I think everyone is nervous at first. You get over it. Once in a great while that did happen, but it was ok. I also had the sense of “oh, crap. I haven’t looked at this stuff in a long time.” But it’s amazing how fast things you don’t even remember the name of just start flowing out of you when you start looking at them again. It’s unsettling at first, but the feeling of “oh, yeah. I remember that!” is awesome. You can get hooked on it.

You will help people find the answers, and they will learn with your help. You will realize you know so much more than you thought you did. It gets really fun to continue to look at things in different ways and help that other person make the bridge between what they want to learn and what they know.

Oh, now I understand what student-taught classes are.

I’ve never done that, but I have friends who have. The thing is that you are not there to be the smartest guy in the room, or know everything. You are there to lead the class and sometimes you learn with the students. In occasion there are bound to be people present that know more than you. They can add to the class with help and added comments. They don’t want to lead the class, and they don’t need to. You are.

I imagine student teaching, just like beginning most jobs, can be stressful. My kids have really enjoyed their student teachers and in college (teaching assistants). I think this is the time to talk with other student teachers for support and work hard but be good to yourself. Know you will mess up some, but this is learning…be patient with yourself…mostly remember this feeling for your students…..Schools need good teachers who can relate to the students and encourage them to succeed. Kids have stress too and mess up and feel unsure…your experience can help you to encourage them in a way that maybe someone who has been away from this feeling for a while cannot….A teacher can make such a huge difference in a kids life good or bad so hang in there, be easy on yourself, indulge yourself during your free time with things you enjoy and hang in there, I wish you the best….

I, too, was a graduate teaching assistant, and I also felt stupid and incapable at first. However, I quickly found that confidence is often created from preparation. In fact, I never really understood statistics until I had to teach it, so I found that I benefited from my teaching at least as much as my students did.

I did not get that far in my asperations to become a teacher. I was a teacher’s aid in high school, on my way to going into the teaching program, but I discovered I didn’t have the stamina to be a teacher.

This question was mainly toward people who were learning to be elementary school teachers. I do appreciate the advice.

maybe my spelling would have kept me out – asperations = aspirations

@missjena: What exactly are you experiencing as a student teacher? Can you provide more details?

I have always done well in college and in school. I have a high GPA and I am on the Deans list; however, when I student teach I am struggling with things I feel that I shouldnt be. I have spoke to several teachers and they explain its normal but I think they are just saying that to be polite. I notice that when I am teaching something, for example, math when I am going over their hw and I didnt get a chance to look at it before if a student doesnt understand how we got the answer I have to take several minutes to figure out the problem. I feel that I should just know how. I am teaching gifted fourth grade but I havent seena lot of this curriculum since I have been in fourth grade. Even when it comes to marking their grammar, I am having difficulty and I dont understand why. I am an English major and I forgot the rules of grammar. It feels like when I am correcting their work I have to read their sentences a thousand times and think ” ok hhmm somethings wrong with this sentence but I dont know what”. I oftern worry how am I going to teach my own class if I dont feel confidant in teaching? I have always wanted to be a teacher since I was 5. It is truly my passion but I feel a lot of stress because my professors make it seem like rarely someone is a good enough teacher. They make me feel like its almost impossible to be a good teacher. I am constantly analyzing everything and my brain feels overwhelmed a lot of the time. I dont understand it.

@missjena Don’t get me started about education professors. It’s been 20 years but I still think they were mostly full of crap. Our seminar professor had an agenda that did not include our major interest-classroom management. I don’t know about elementary but in secondary school it is about 60% classroom management 40% subject matter.

I got my credentials in business education by coursework and social studies by testing. I student taught keyboarding and accounting. I was hired on a Friday to start on Monday-World History, ESL US History and Civics. I was given no texts, no standards, no curriculum. The trick is to be confident, don’t let them see you sweat. Work very hard to get your semester/year sketched out and lesson plans firmed up several weeks out. Practice your performance so you won’t always be second guessing yourself. While you are teaching stay in the moment. When you are grading you don’t have to be perfect, look for common errors and go back and reteach those topics. The kids are not looking to make sure you caught everything. Grade in small chunks not marathon sessions, I can’t write easily so I always have my computer open at work and at home and every time I have a few minutes I grade a few papers. Other teachers carry a binder and do the same thing. When you go blank pue the papers down and do something else for a bit. Relax.

@missjena I have several thoughts.

1. Please don’t give up! It sounds like what you are going through is totally normal.

2. It’s too bad your professors are not more supportive of what it is like to be a new teacher. I’m sure you are already aware, though, that it IS actually impossible to be a perfect teacher. Of course, it’s very possible to be an excellent teacher. But in your first year, you will be excellent at very little. (Sorry to break it to you!) Every year you will become more and more excellent at more and more things. If you really care about your work, you will probably never feel like you are “done” improving, because you will always want to tweak something, improve something, try something new. Letting go of your perfectionism, especially at the beginning, is the only way to stay in teaching. I speak from experience!

3. Learning each grade level’s curriculum is really hard. The fact that you have not seen the fourth grade curriculum before means that of course it will be a struggle to teach it. And even when you yourself can write a correct sentence with proper grammar, it is an entirely different skill to teach a student to do so. It involves understanding where that student is starting, where his/her confusions lie, what the steps are to achieving mastery, and the instructional techniques to get the student there. There is no way that you will “just know how” to teach a student something that is new to you. Even now, in my fifth year of teaching, I still struggle to figure out the best way to answer student questions, address misunderstandings, and break down new material into the logical components of mastery. Teaching is really hard. (But that’s also why we love it, right?)

4. Let the students help you. When you try to explain something and fail, ask the student what is still unclear. Tweak your explanation and try again. See what the student can do this time that s/he couldn’t do before. Keep this process going until the student is closer to understanding than before. After you have done this dozens of times, the explanations will start to come more naturally as you anticipate student misunderstandings and address them before they arise. But at the beginning, you have to build up your repertoire. It takes time. Be patient with yourself.

5. The fact that you are thinking about all of these things and taking your student teaching experience so seriously means that you care. Which means that you already have so much of what it takes to teach children well.

6. It will get easier. It will never be easy. But it will get easier. Really!

@Sarah you made me feel so much better. Thank you so much for that. It’s going to be hard to let go of me being a perfectionist but your right to stop bc if I don’t I’ll burn out. You gave me great advice. Do you also find it difficult to mark and correct their grammar? I notice I’ll reread a sentence and although I know it sounds incorrect Im not always sure how to fix it…. It’s hard to explain what I mean but hopefully fellow teachers understand this feeling