Get
to your placement school with a few minutes left in the period before yours. The
mentor teacher will inform you that she is leaving for the day and wonders if
you could take over the class. You feel an impending sense of doom, like those
heart-wrenching, stomach-clenching panic attack moments when you can’t remember
if you submitted an assignment or not and have to log on to check.
For
a second, you’ll wonder: “is this legal? What if something terrible happens and
I get sued?! Would my mentor teacher be in trouble? Should I tell someone about
this?” But don’t say any of this to your mentor teacher. Instead, say you’re
totally fine with taking over the class even though you’re totally scared. Tell
yourself not to freak out. Freak out anyway. Regain your composure and make
sure you have all of your lesson plans ready. This is, after all, the first
week of your teaching unit
Stick
to your lesson plan or change it up; try something different. Do whatever the
heck you want! There’s no one there to tell you you’re wrong. Yell at the kids
under the table during bellwork. That’s your own fault. You should have known
they couldn’t handle getting out of their seats for a value line. Keep looking
at the para there to help you in a what-the-heck-am-I-supposed-to-do way that
he either refuses to acknowledge or misses completely. He’ll just laugh and try
to talk to you about what you do on the weekends.
Try
to maintain classroom procedures. Say things like, “Your conversation level for
this activity should be 0” even though you know they’re going to talk as loudly
as they want anyway. Write a detention for the girl who was constantly out of
her seat, tapping, talking, and hopping on the floor like a frog. Calmly and
quietly go up to her and tell her why she is getting a detention, like this:
“(Student’s name), I am giving you a detention because you did not follow or
listen to directions”. She’ll get pissed, refuse to sign the detention slip,
scream “I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!!!!” and then storm out of the classroom. After
the bell rings, wait the required 10 minutes for the students to get out of the
building and then leave as quickly as you can. Cry all the way home because now
you’re not so sure you’re cut out for this job and are suddenly questioning
every decision you’ve ever made that brought you to this point.
Repeat
this procedure every Thursday for the next 6 weeks until the semester ends.
Eventually, the students will get better and will at least halfway listen to
your instructions. You’ll begin to feel more confident in yourself as a teacher
but there will always be a part of you that wonders, “Am I even good at this?”
But
honestly, does that feeling ever go away?
