<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There is only one student teacher who will be named in this article and that would be me.\u00a0 It has been nearly fifty years since I was a student teacher but it seems like it only happened yesterday.\u00a0 I found myself mentoring a student teacher of my own a mere four years later and over the next three decades, eight or nine more would find themselves occupying my classroom for at least part of each day for a semester.\u00a0 Some of my colleagues would say things like, \u201cOh sure, you get to take a semester off and let them do all the work,\u201d but they were kidding . . . I think.\u00a0 Guiding a student teacher actually turns out to be more work than simply teaching your own classes.\u00a0 In many ways, it is as much a learning experience for the supervising teacher as it is for the student.\u00a0 I am not sure how long some of them stayed in the education game, but to the ones who stuck with it, I can only say, \u201cOh, I am sorry!\u201d\u00a0 No, now I am kidding.\u00a0 It was always exciting to hear one of my past charges was able to get a job in their chosen field.\u00a0 Student teaching is a necessary step before one gets the official seal of approval (aka:\u00a0 a license to teach) which allows one to get hired.\u00a0 Most found out, as I did, that waiting for your first class to show up on opening day is the starting point where you really begin to ride without the training wheels.\u00a0 On my first day on the job, I remember thinking, \u201cOkay, am I ready for this?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Before we get too far, let me point out the three things I always thought the universities could do to help their students.\u00a0 First, make student teaching a full year instead of a semester.\u00a0 The best way to learn how to manage a class is having the time to see how an entire year knits together.\u00a0 Secondly, assign \u2018practice teachers\u2019 a half day schedule.\u00a0 It would make more sense for them to be assigned a half day of classes and a mentor teacher to work with (not necessarily side by side, like team teaching, but certainly in the same content area).\u00a0 Proximity to a mentor can help a lot when one is trying to crack the code of how to manage a classroom.\u00a0 One of the first realizations a new teaching hire makes is the vast amount of time it takes to plan, execute, and evaluate lessons.\u00a0 Having a half day left to do all these tasks would give them a leg up when it comes to the quality of the instructional materials they would be presenting.\u00a0 Lastly, all student teachers should be paid the regular wage of a beginning educator.\u00a0 I have seen practice teachers try to hold down another job while paying to student teach.\u00a0 They have to pay the bills and make ends meet during this time but quality suffers when the student teacher is exhausted and broke.\u00a0 Student teaching needs to be more like an apprentish-ship.\u00a0 With that said, the economic reality of the school districts who help train and hire new teachers has kept anything like this from happening.\u00a0 Call it a pipe dream, but one of these days it might be worth a try.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Not all mentor teachers operate from the same playbook.\u00a0 We have all heard horror stories from some of our colleagues about their own student teaching experiences.\u00a0 Some tossed them the keys to the room on day one and said, \u201cI will be in the teacher\u2019s lounge if you need me.\u201d\u00a0 Others hovered at the back of the room and corrected any mistakes they observed, sometimes right in the middle of a class period.\u00a0 I always told new student teachers that neither of these scenarios would work for them or for me.\u00a0 Once they were comfortable and had a lesson plan blocked up (usually a month or so into the semester), I would leave them to run the show and not be looking over their shoulder.\u00a0 If a problem came up, they would have to deal with it and we would discuss the specifics later, not in front of the class.\u00a0 If there were specific problem students in a section, I would keep tabs on them but not intervene unless it was a major disruption.\u00a0 Once cornered about their behavior, even the most hard core disrupter can be shown the error of their ways.\u00a0 Final verdict from me was, \u201cThey will stay in the class but, student, you can be removed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My fourth year was a big change for me after teaching seventh grade Geography \/ Earth Science (and a study hall) for two years, and one section of eighth grade science (for one year).\u00a0 Principal Jim Ollila asked, \u201cHow would you feel about teaching History 7 for three hours and GES 7 the other three periods?\u201d\u00a0 He was pleased when I told him I have always liked the subject and had actually student taught 8th grade Social Studies.\u00a0 Once the fall arrived, he surprised me again by asking,\u00a0 \u201cWould you be willing to work with a student teacher for the History classes next semester?\u201d\u00a0 This student teacher was going to spend half a day with a high school math teacher but nobody there was interested in taking him on in the History Department.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On our first meeting, I told this young man I was looking forward to him showing me the ropes of teaching history.\u00a0 I say \u2018young man\u2019 as he was all of four years my junior.\u00a0 We had similar ideas on how to engage junior high students (include a lot of project work, maps, and audio\/visual materials) to keep it from being a \u2018lecture, worksheet, quiz\u2019 format.\u00a0 He was confident and had definite ideas on how he wanted to guide the class so it was a great experience for me as well as our students.\u00a0 A gifted athlete, he was a welcome addition when the teachers squared off with the boys basketball team in our annual grudge match.\u00a0 The last I heard, he was teaching and coaching.\u00a0 For my part, that was the only year I spent teaching seventh grade history but I never knew if those skills would be dusted off again in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My second opportunity to supervise a student teacher game in 1981.\u00a0 I was now married and we had a young daughter.\u00a0 My teaching schedule was evenly split between the 7th and 8th grade science classes.\u00a0 The student teacher was actually an electrician who decided to get into education, but his primary interests were Phy Ed and Biology.\u00a0 I winced a bit to tell him, \u201cSure, you can do a six week lesson plan in Biology with the 8th grade science classes,\u201d even though my main focus had always been physical sciences.\u00a0 We invited him over for dinner a couple of times and he offered to fix a couple of electrical issues we were having.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t want to get paid for being \u2018Mr. Fixit\u2019, but we felt better about helping him.\u00a0 He had a family himself and the semester with no pay was hard on them.\u00a0 As with my previous History class, watching him create materials for an area I was not trained was interesting.\u00a0 I dug out some of his ideas thirty years later when I was assigned a JH Health class to fill out my schedule.\u00a0 Like my experience teaching seventh grade History, Health was a one-off class I was never asked to teach again but it was still a good experience.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0During the latter part of the 1980s, Brian Mattson from the Gogebic-Ontonagon Intermediate School District office in Bergland gave me an opportunity that transformed my entire teaching style.\u00a0 A renowned educator from California was going to be in Michigan to promote a new initiative he had developed and implemented out west called Activities Integrating Math and Science (AIMS for short).\u00a0 The original workshops were to be held in Grand Rapids and Flint if memory serves me correctly.\u00a0 I declined the offer to attend.\u00a0 To spend three days (two travel, one for the four hour workshop) didn\u2019t work for me.\u00a0 Other U.P. educators must have felt the same as they adjusted the plan and decided to offer another workshop session in Escanaba.\u00a0 Having told Brian, \u201cThanks, but no thanks.\u00a0 If they hold it anywhere in the U.P. I will go,\u201d\u00a0 there was no way I could turn him down again.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With concerns about lagging science achievement test scores across the state, the Michigan Department of Education was looking for ways to better engage students in Science.\u00a0 The AIMS concept was simple – give kids hands-on activities to excite them about the subject.\u00a0 Much of my generation were taught by instructors who\u00a0 simply told us how things worked.\u00a0 It took this one four hour workshop and I was all in.\u00a0 I am not saying I had done a bad job up to then, but new educators tended to \u2018teach as they were taught\u2019.\u00a0 The AIMS activities were designed to give teachers with minimal science background ways to teach \u2018real science\u2019 to their students.\u00a0 Teachers with a background in the subject matter found these activities to be sound, information wise.\u00a0 These activity based lessons were more exciting for students and teachers than endless hours of\u00a0 lecturing.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The second phase of this state-wide program was a three year run of local workshops.\u00a0 Brian asked me if I would like to be part of a two person workshop team that would present AIMS workshops in Hancock.\u00a0 The plan was to have three workshops per year for three years and I was more than happy to be in on the ground floor.\u00a0 I thought, \u201cIf I learned so much in one workshop, think how much I can take away planning nine more over three years!\u201d\u00a0 A few weeks later, Brian called me back and said, \u201cWe have so many teachers signed up, we need to run the same set of workshops in Bergland.\u00a0 Well, that and the teachers from the Western U.P. are in a different time zone than Hancock and are not thrilled with having to travel there.\u00a0 Would you be willing to run the Bergland sessions on your own?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cSign me up!\u201d came out of my mouth without me thinking about the \u2018on your own\u2019 part.\u00a0 Apparently, the Bergland workshops were the only sessions that were run in the state without\u00a0 tag-team presenters.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Setting up three full day workshops was a job in itself.\u00a0 As I suspected, I was able to identify a lot of activities to use in my own classes and admitted as much to the participants at the first session.\u00a0 To squeeze the maximum amount of hands-on work in as possible, I set up a series of activities and had the teachers rotate through them in pairs.\u00a0 There is no better way to show teachers how much fun teaching these kinds of science activities can be than to have them actually do them.\u00a0 \u201cDoing is believing,\u201d is how I put it.\u00a0 There were some bumps in the road but the first year went pretty well considering I had never run teacher training workshops myself.\u00a0 I told Brian, \u201cHey, I am already looking forward to next year but I will only do them under one condition.\u00a0 I need a partner.\u201d\u00a0 Brian thought this was a great idea and starting with year two, we became the \u2018Ken and Chuck\u2019 show.\u00a0 From that point on, anytime I had a student teacher, they also became part of our traveling science workshop team.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Once the initial three year run was up, we were asked to continue running workshops during the summers and during the school year.\u00a0 The summer workshops took us to Iron Mountain \/ Kingsford and Ironwood.\u00a0 School year programs were scheduled in Houghton, Bergland, White Pine, Ewen, and Ontonagon.\u00a0 Our first sessions in Iron Mountain coincided with the Dickinson\/Iron ISD introducing a Starlab Portable Planetarium as a resource.\u00a0 Brian listened to our excited description of the Starlab program, and before we knew it, he had purchased one for our end of the Upper Peninsula.\u00a0 The Ken and Chuck show added \u2018Starlab trainers for the western U.P.\u2019 to our resume.\u00a0 I always maintain that the 25 years I spent running the AIMS and Starlab\u00a0 workshops was my informal PhD program in how to teach hands-on science.\u00a0 Including my student teachers to help run the sessions helped their understanding of the \u2018how and why\u2019 these kinds of activities were so effective.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One particular student teacher was able to parlay assisting with our hands-on activity workshop in Ironwood into a summer job.\u00a0 The Ironwood Area Schools liked the program enough they decided to run a summer academy focused on this kind of science teaching.\u00a0 He talked himself into a job for the summer after his spring student teaching stint.\u00a0 I ran into him later and asked, \u201cWell, how did it go?\u00a0 Do you have your foot in the door to get hired full time?\u201d\u00a0 He smiled and said, \u201cAh, not really.\u201d\u00a0 He explained they had taken a trip to Wisconsin for a day of outdoor education that included horseback riding.\u00a0 When it was time for the bus to depart, one of the students had not returned to the staging area.\u00a0 The organizers there said this was a longer trail and sometimes the horses decided to take their time.\u00a0 The location was not that far from Ironwood so they told him, \u201cTake the students back on the bus and come back with your car.\u00a0 By the time you get back, they will finally be here.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This sounded reasonable to the former student teacher and all ended well – at least until he arrived back at the school with the \u2018lost\u2019 student.\u00a0 The superintendent of schools himself was waiting and informed him the proper thing would have been to wait until all the students returned, even if it made them all late getting back to school.\u00a0 The teacher on the hot seat disagreed (and I agreed with his course of action).\u00a0 That pretty much sealed the deal future employment wise.\u00a0 Happily, I can report a school in Green Bay had no reservations hiring him even after he explained what had happened during his summer job.\u00a0 In fact, we tried to recruit him for our own district but by the time I tracked him down, he was committed to Green Bay.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There was a period of time when the \u2018Ken and Chuck Show\u2019 organized two weeks of activities for the elementary classes in Ontonagon.\u00a0 The occasion was the annual nation-wide observation of Science Week.\u00a0 Our student teachers were again put to work.\u00a0 We would divide up the classes and rotate through a series of hands-on science activities that culminated in a massive launch of helium balloons.\u00a0 We needed a way to get the elementary teachers involved in running hands-on science in their classes so we literally took the workshop to them for several years in a row.\u00a0 Gathering all the materials and organizing the schedule took a lot of time and it was always great to turn over some of the activities to a student teacher.\u00a0 The only drawback?\u00a0 We also needed to make sure we had sufficient class work for our own classes during the two weeks we were engaged at the elementary building.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The idea of launching hundreds of helium balloons started off as a weather project.\u00a0 Each student would fill out a return postcard that was attached to their balloon.\u00a0 The card asked anyone who found it to fill out their location and mail it back to us.\u00a0 In our remote area, the returns were spotty but at least a couple made it to the central U.P., northern Wisconsin, and in one case, the southern shore of Lake Michigan near Traverse City.\u00a0 Ecological concerns eventually overrode the \u2018good science\u2019 aspect of this activity, but it was still a lot of fun while it lasted.\u00a0 I remember one student teacher wondering why we didn\u2019t launch balloons every week if it was so much fun.\u00a0 After filling 500 balloons and delivering them to the classrooms, we gathered outside and watched them all take to the sky at once.\u00a0 By the time the last balloons disappeared from sight, the same student teacher said, \u201cI see why you don\u2019t do it more often.\u00a0 That was a lot of work!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There are more student teaching stories to tell so we will need to come back for Part 2 at a later date.\u00a0 Anybody who has gone through the experience will have their own war stories about that fun and frolic time known as \u2018student teaching\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video – Of course there are songs about teachers . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There is only one student teacher who will be named in this article and that would be me.\u00a0 It has been nearly fifty years since I was a student teacher but it seems like it only happened yesterday.\u00a0 I found myself mentoring a student teacher of my own a mere four years later and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3136"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3139,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136\/revisions\/3139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}