How to Take Over the Classroom for a Day (genre reflection 2)

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?