Student Teaching - Week #4

by Kathryn Williams - Taft High School

The Teaching Week

WOW: This week my teacher began giving me a little bit more responsibility and independence.  She keeps busy preparing for the classes I am not teaching and allows me to prepare mostly on my own for the lessons I am teaching.  It was a lot of work to be mostly in charge of three periods, but it was very rewarding.  I enjoy being in front of the classroom, and I especially enjoy it when she steps out of the classroom for a little bit.  One time when she did this the students freaked out and were asking me where she was going and when she would be back.  However, in general it did not faze them to have her leave and have me be the only one in the classroom.  I like that they trust me in from of the room!

POW: This week was my first observation by my Chicago Semester supervisor, Carole.  Don’t worry, things went really well, but I was really surprised by how nervous my CT got in anticipation of the visit.  I showed up to school on Thursday and my CT was asking me a million questions about the lesson I had planned, even though we had gone over everything the afternoon before.  We had made all necessary copies and gone over how we would organize the lesson prior to Thursday morning, yet she kept asking me what to expect with Carole’s visit, if I had everything I needed for the lesson, and if I was nervous.  This was totally unexpected for me, so it almost made me a little bit nervous about the visit, but I reminded myself that there really was no reason for me to be nervous.  I thought this might be important for all of you future student teachers to know, because it was something most of us experienced, but none of us expected. 

The Rest of the Week

This week we went to see the musical “Working” at the Broadway Playhouse.  It is created from interviews Studs Terkel did with regular working people about their work.  It was beautifully done and I loved seeing an inside perspective of how people view their own work and justify to themselves what they do for a living.  It has been adapted from the original to be more up-to-date with today’s workers, but I believe the lines they used in the play are all quotes from the interviews.  I love the sociological perspective it gave on working.  Plus the music was great!