At times, my job is so amazing that it gives me goose bumps. One of those times is when I am able to witness that magical moment when a student teacher realizes she can teach. I wrote about this last year when one of my student teachers was so overcome by the moment that she stopped, smiled, and told the students how good they were being while I observed her. I think this happens to all successful student teachers; that moment when they finally know they can teach; but we're not often there to witness it. So the next best thing is to hear about it which I did this week from my colleague Prof. Valerie Bang-Jensen who is supervising Laken Ferreira in her student teaching experience. Valerie sent me, with Laken's permission, this wonderful excerpt from Laken's journal.
"As I was setting up in the morning I was surprised by how much I missed the class after not seeing them for 4 days. The students flooded in and had lots of stories to tell me about their snow day and the weekend. I hadn’t really realized how much my students valued routine and consistency. Our morning meeting and mother echo time was by far the best hour that I have ever taught. Everything went so smoothly. I counted down to morning meeting and made sure all students were a part of morning meeting by having the students who came in late do their nametags for the sticker box. During morning meeting I had a moment. Dani told me that Professor Whiteford spoke with her last semester about a moment that all student teachers have when they realize that they can teach and are a teacher. Instead of calling on students individually to share, I had everyone turn to an elbow partner to talk to about what they were looking forward to today. After about 45 seconds I brought everyone back by counting down from 5 and was amazed by how attentive everyone was. Within 3 seconds everyone was turned to me with his or her eyes on me and mouths shut. As I stared back at my 20 students present that day, I had the moment Dani described" (Laken Ferreira 2013).
Isn't that wonderful; you can just feel the joy of teaching; that sense of 'yes, I really can do this'. Well done, Laken.
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