The Student Teacher's Handbook

Carol R. Schwebel, David C. Schwebel, Bernice L. Schwebel, Susan L. Schwebel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781135645205
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Student Teacher's Handbook, Fourth Edition is a practical, user-friendly text that employs scientific research, sound advice, and student journal entries to encourage, sustain, and challenge the readers to function at their best during the crucial days of student teaching. Their needs--both professional and personal--during this stressful period guide the book's content. Student teachers' relationships--with students, cooperating teachers, and supervisors--are seen as being at the core of their teaching assignment. The authors draw on research in education and psychology that has practical application in the classroom and that helps student teachers cope with some of the tough problems connected with classroom management, including maintaining order and motivating students to learn. The book features:
*practical, step-by-step assistance in helping student teachers make the most of their experience;
*inclusion of the voices of many real student teachers who describe their difficulties and frustration--and how they overcome them;
*in-depth discussion of the ways in which student teachers can make best use of cooperating teachers and university supervisors;
*advice on making a smooth and successful transition from student teacher to teacher; and
*attention to cutting-edge issues, such as multicultural education, effective use of technology, psychologically-appropriate methods of discipline, parent involvement in children's education, relevant education law, and other issues that challenge teachers at all levels. New in the fourth edition:
*This popular text has been thoroughly updated and reorganized to eliminate repetition and make for a tighter narrative.
*Increased attention has been given to the uses of technology in the classroom and to the pressures of school- or state-wide testing.
*This edition includes additional journal entries from student teachers working at the middle and high school level, an expanded critical issues section, a refined description of problem-solving methods, and an updated discussion of multicultural education issues. This is an ideal text for the student teaching seminar at all levels of primary and secondary education, as well as a valuable resource for professors supervising student teachers and cooperating classroom teachers.

PART I
Beginnings

1
Introduction: On Being a Student Teacher

TOPICS

• Some Keys to Success
• The Student Teacher as Apprentice
• Concentrating on Your Needs
  Concerns
  Optimism
• How This Book Can Help You
• Journals: Student Teachers Share Their Experiences
• The Contents of This Book

Our aim in this book is to help you make the student-teaching experience a rich and successful one. When deciding what to include from the vast literature on education, teaching, and learning, we examined studies in which student teachers reported their concerns. We also reviewed journal entries of our own student teachers. And we drew on our own experiences as student teachers, teachers, cooperating teachers, and university supervisors.

SOME KEYS TO SUCCESS

Student teachers say they know they are taking on a responsible job. They feel the pressure of having to teach 20 to 30 students in elementary school or 100 or more students in middle and high school, to do it well, and especially to do it in the presence of the cooperating teacher and the college/university supervisor. They have to contend with the pressure.

Our experience suggests that the student teacher’s comfort on the job is a central key to success. By comfort, we mean that the individual is able to manage the inevitable worries and stresses and enjoy the challenges of preparing for and teaching his or her classes. We devote much attention to those worries and stresses not only to help you manage them, but also to help you gain maximum learning and fulfillment from your experience.

Other keys to success include planning, preparation, and problem solving, as well as understanding and accommodating the diverse students in your classes. In the pages that follow, we pay much attention to these important topics.

Another topic of vital importance to the student teacher is relationships. If student teaching had to be characterized by one word, relationships could well be it. As a student teacher, you will be developing relationships with a supervisor, a cooperating teacher, students, and, to a lesser degree, administrators, other teachers, parents, office workers, and custodians. Your success will depend on the quality of relationships you build, especially with your supervisor, cooperating teacher, and students.

THE STUDENT TEACHER AS APPRENTICE

In the field of education, the experience of student teaching is unique. That uniqueness is due in particular to the relationship you form with the cooperating teacher, truly an apprenticeship one. It is the only time in a teaching career that one is an apprentice under the close guidance of an experienced mentor.

For many centuries, beginning at least during medieval times, young people were trained for work through practical experience. For skilled or professional occupations, learning took place through the relationship between masters and apprentices. The masters were experts in one of the arts, crafts, or trades of their time (a barrister or cobbler, a miller or stone mason), and the apprentices served as assistants for various lengths of time. Apprentices learned by observing the master; by engaging in the activities of the calling, first in small, then in larger ways; and finally, under the close scrutiny of the masters, by completing an entire product on their own.

In the process of learning to use the tools and materials of the occupation, the apprentices also acquired the special language of the field, adopted the habits and specialized garments, and absorbed the general mode of thought of fellow artisans. The apprentices became trained (acquired the knowledge and skills) and socialized (acquired the language and habits) in preparation for a lifetime’s work in the occupation. They also learned to do more than imitate their master: They were free to be creative within their specialty.

Your student-teaching experience will have almost exact counterparts to the medieval apprenticeship system. One of its purposes is to help you become socialized into the teaching profession: Through student teaching, you go beyond your textbooks. You observe and physically experience how real-life teachers behave in classrooms, in schools, and in their relationships with students, other teachers, administrators, and parents.

Also, as the apprentice, you will be working with an experienced teacher. Under his or her scrutiny, you will use the tools and materials of your trade. Guided by the cooperating teacher, you will move toward ever more challenging teaching experiences. When this time comes, you will probably find that although the courses and fieldwork that preceded student teaching helped prepare you for it, the teaching experience itself caps and gives fullest meaning to all your previous education.

CONCENTRATING ON YOUR NEEDS

The weeks of student teaching offer unusual learning opportunities, and you will want to gain the best possible results from your apprenticeship period. For this reason, you should devote extra attention to your needs during the weeks of student teaching. Specifically, focus your energy on developing a large variety of skills (e.g., communication, relationships, assessment) and on gaining confidence in leading a class of students. Because this process of professional growth can be physically and emotionally draining, it may be helpful to remind yourself of your reasons for choosing the teaching profession in the first place. Were you attracted by the way of life, by the opportunity to work with children or adolescents, by the time given to reading and study, by the doors it opens to serve other people, or by the work schedule? Recalling your goals will give you a clearer perspective on your priorities, enabling you to make decisions that best serve your interests.

The long hours involved in your commitment during student teaching may interfere somewhat with your personal life. If so, remind yourself of the limited time frame and the satisfaction you will have when the training is over. If you have a spouse or partner who expresses concern about your restricted time schedule, explain that the student-teaching assignment is short in duration but great in its long-term career significance.

Concerns

It is perfectly understandable that you should have some concerns. The student teacher’s position is a demanding one: A novice, still a student, enters a new setting to use newly acquired skills, under the watchful eye of experienced professionals. This is not easy. Yet, most students meet the challenge successfully.

Furthermore, teaching is a high-pressure occupation. At the elementary level, teachers share 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, 40 weeks a year with 20 to 30 children. At the middle school or junior high school level, teachers contend with more students and the students are facing major transitions: rapidly maturing minds and bodies, greater social assertiveness (they speak up more), and the rainbow of emotions expressed by individuals in the throes of peer pressure. At the high school level, teachers experience continual turnover of students during the course of the day. That means getting acquainted with 100 or more adolescents, all of whom are going through the personal and social changes of preadulthood. It also means managing a sizable number of classes of young people who are at their peak of activity and energy. Some of them will be intellectually curious and excited by what teachers offer. Others may be unwilling students, simply waiting for the chance to legally end their formal schooling. Some, although interested in class material, may be continually distracted by thoughts of after-school activities such as athletic contests, band rehearsals, or social gatherings. Still others, although willing students, are drained by parental demands for help in household duties, by the pressure of holding after-school jobs (sometimes to help their families financially and sometimes to earn personal money to purchase cars, clothes, and entertainment), or even by the demands of their own children.

As if all of that were not enough to make teaching a high-pressured career, during a typical school year, teachers can be confronted with problems that ordinarily are in the province of psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, speech and language specialists, occupational and physical therapists, and the juvenile justice department of the police or legal systems.

Many student teachers wonder whether they will be prepared to deal with all the issues and questions they will encounter in their subject fields (What if students ask about my political views during a discussion of presidential elections? What if a child of Haitian parents repeatedly questions my pronunciation and knowledge of French idioms?). They also ask these questions: Will I be able to manage the class? Will I be able to plan and conduct high-quality lessons? As you prepare for and begin student teaching, you may have occasional frightening thoughts about the class getting completely out of hand. You may worry that you will become preoccupied with special problem cases, including the obviously disturbed child. Having these questions and concerns is perfectly normal. You are moving forward into what, for you, is uncharted territory.

Then there are the worries related to the unique role of the apprentice: You work in the proverbial goldfish bowl, under the observant eyes of the cooperating teacher and college supervisor. You know you will learn much from their observations, but will you ever get used to their presence?

Optimism

Hopefully, your answer to all these questions is a resounding “yes.” Hopefully, you have an optimistic outlook on life, and you expect that, come what may in the form of problems, you will confront them as best you can. If you cannot resolve them at first, you will not blame yourself, lose self-esteem, or become depressed.

In his influential book Learned Optimism, Seligman (1991) wrote that optimists are not fazed by problems or setbacks. Unlike pessimists, who think their misfortune will last a long time and is their own fault, optimists perceive setbacks as temporary and as challenges to try harder and succeed. The difference between the two habits of thought has substantial effects: Many studies show that optimists perform better in school and college, on the job, and at play. In fact, they tend to surpass predictions based on aptitude tests. Even their physical health is better. Being optimistic in outlook, or acquiring that outlook through methods spelled out by Seligman, can be advantageous for student teaching and, in fact, for the rest of your life. As an optimist, you will probably regard the diversity of knowledge and skills required in teaching as a great attraction. You will also find that the daily challenges and bits of the unpredictable that arise from time to time add spice to your working life.

HOW THIS BOOK CAN HELP YOU

We could go on telling you about the enjoyment and growth you will experience in your profession. Instead, we have highlighted the demands and pressures of the job because those are most likely foremost in your mind. We believe that right now you want help in solving problems you are likely to face and in acquiring skills you do not yet possess. We have written this book with that in mind.

The problems student teachers encounter have myriad causes. Some student teachers create dilemmas for themselves, unintentionally of course. These may be the result of inexperience-driven misjudgments or anxiety-driven misstatements. Some are the problems inherent in the day-to-day life of teaching. Others are peculiar to the special circumstances of being a student teacher, such as feeling inadequate as a result of comparing one’s own work to that of the experienced cooperating teacher.

In this book we confront each of these problems in turn. We show how they relate to the life of the student teacher and we provide you with the tools, the knowledge, and the problem-solving strategies we think will help you contend with difficulties.

In writing this book we had one primary objective: to present material that will help you make your student-teaching experience optimally rewarding. In doing this, we have been guided by an orientation of realism. As you complete your student teaching, your thoughts will be on effectively meeting the day-to-day demands of your job and also on securing a teaching position for next year. We concentrate on those concerns. In doing so, we are straightforward about what you can do to prevent problems and how you can deal with those that cannot be circumvented. To accomplish this, we draw on theory and research and our very practical experience as teachers and supervisors.

As you use this book we encourage you to consider the ways each idea or thought presented bears on your life in the classroom at the present time. Although we expect that what we have written will be useful to you next year and perhaps beyond, our aim is to help you make your life as a student teacher easier and more successful today and tomorrow.

A final point: One of the most important objectives of education—yours and each of your student’s—is to reach the point of being an independent thinker. Those free to think about and solve problems for themselves have enormous control over their own destiny. You can make much progress toward such independence during your apprenticeship. We believe this book can help you do that.

JOURNALS: STUDENT TEACHERS SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCES

To help you more fully understand and learn to cope with the real problems of student teaching, we have incorporated excerpts of many student teachers’ journal entries. Some were written in the white heat of emotion, perhaps at the beginning of the student teachers’ assignments when they were feeling frustrated, inept, or powerless. Other entries were written while student teachers were burning with anger over a sense of having been treated unfairly or close to panic about their difficulties in controlling the class. Still other entries were authored at moments of warm satisfaction about seeing progress in their students’ work and in their own skill to effectively teach and manage a class.

The journal entries were written by student teachers to serve as aids to themselves. Although most of the entries were shared with supervisors, they were not graded. Instead, the supervisors wanted the journals to provide their students with the opportunity to:

1. Recall, review and reflect on the day’s events.
2. Experience release from the emotions of the day.
3. Work at solving problems that they face.
4. Cope with relationship issues, with students or others.
5. Share thoughts and feelings with their supervisor.
6. Recognize and record their growth as professionals.
7. Look to their future as fully accredited teachers.

Many dozens of journals were collected during several different academic years. Seven states in the Eastern and Midwestern parts of the United States are represented. The journals were written by men and women of diverse racial and ethnic groups who came from families of upper middle, middle- and workingclass backgrounds. Although the journal authors ranged in age from 20 to 35, most were in their early 20s. Their assignments were at the preschool, elementary, junior (middle school), and senior high school levels and their schools were located in urban (including inner city), suburban, and rural settings. They student taught at both public and private schools.

The instructions given to students writing the journals quoted in this book were essentially those proposed for your use in chapter 2. They were asked to reflect on their classroom experiences each day and to write about them freely. They were to review events that went well and those that did not and to try to explain why the events turned out as they did. They were encouraged to express their feelings about the day and the people involved. They did, sometimes tearfully, sometimes joyfully, and sometimes with passionate anger. Their openness has made their documents valuable to themselves and to others.

The anonymity of the authors of the journals has been carefully safeguarded. Names of student teachers, cooperating teachers, college supervisors, and students are pseudonyms. The school names have also been changed, and no localities are identified.

Besides the journals, we have drawn material from personal interviews with student teachers in several regions of the country. As with the journals, pseudonyms are used and the interview excerpts are marked by a date.

THE CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK

Part I of this book is devoted to beginnings, by which we mean the beginnings of your student-teaching experience. We place great stress on this early stage (and even the weeks before it) to help you prepare for early successes.

Two themes that are repeated often are developed at great length in chapter 2: (a) The most effective way to deal with anxieties about new experiences is by preparing for them, and (b) the best way to avoid teaching problems is by thoughtful preparation for the work to be performed. One of the features of chapter 2 is the elaboration of a problem-solving method you will find useful in your student-teaching period, and later as a fully accredited teacher.

Part II is devoted to the crucial relationships of the student teacher. Your success depends on quality relationships with your students, cooperating teacher, and college supervisor. In chapters 3, 4, and 5, we indicate how to go about building constructive relationships with each and how to cope with the kinds of problems that inevitably arise. Chapter 6 is about building relationships with parents, the school principal, and others important to school life.

Part III focuses on diversity and expectations, curriculum, and classroom management. Linkage of these topics is deliberate; the content and presentation of lessons plays a central role in shaping students’ classroom behavior. In other words, what and how you teach can foster student involvement and discourage disruptive behavior just as easily as it can fail to hold learners’ attention and, in this and other ways, lead to classroom disruption. The problems of classroom management and control are discussed in great detail because from countless conversations with student teachers, we expect these issues loom large in your mind.

Part IV addresses some of the student teacher’s special concerns. These include concerns of “today,” by which we mean those prevalent during student-teaching days, a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Part I: Beginnings
• Part II: Relationships
• Part III: What and How We Teach
• Part IV: Today and Tomorrow
• References