organizational skills

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Home : 2002 : January : 27

organizational skills
By Cathy-Dee

It really does sound like she is just a nervous beginner and chances are by the end of her 16 weeks she will be doing much better. I don't know how your student teaching experiences were, but for some it is very different
all of sudden being in front of a group of children and teaching them. Some student teachers just take a little longer to adapt to all these new experiences.
As far as not being prepared - i.e. not hole-punching, I was still doing this after teaching a few years. Over the years I have become much more organized and I know a well-planned day makes my life much easier and my teaching

much more effective. But even with all of this, there are other teachers who are still more organized than I am. And of course some less organized. My fellow grade level colleague loses things, she'll put down a book and it has taken us a week to find it. And she's almost ready for retirement.

I skip activities in my lessons as well, sometimes I just know my students are not ready for something, or the lesson is not running as smoothly as it should. And new teachers often over-plan. If she was still doing all these things after her 8 or 9th week with you, then I would be much more concerned.

Perhaps taking time at the beginning of each day to go over her plans with her and have a few questions ready. Do you have all the handouts ready and hole-punched? Do you have all the manipulatives you will need? I've looked over your lesson plan for this lesson, it looks like you have quite a few activities, do you plan to cover all of them today? This will help her to focus in on those issues of being prepared and also how to better use her time.

And she is probably terrified of making a mistake. You may not have told her that you are unhappy with how she is progressing, but I'm guessing that she is sensing it.

I think you can foster independence in lessons and remain in the room as well especially in these first few weeks. It was hard for me to not jump in when I saw things going wrong for my student teacher. But I knew that would just make her more nervous, disrupt the lesson and the students would see me as the teacher, not the student teacher. So I found a quiet place in the room, away from the students and during the lesson itself I stayed away (but in the room). Once the children were working I would come out to help students as well with their work, but if they had a question on what to do I directed them to her. The first couple of lessons were frustrating I'm sure for all of us. But over the weeks she became much more proficient and by the end of her student teaching was on her way to becoming a good teacher.

I guess my advice is to not put too high of expectations on your student teacher right now. I'm sure you have evaluations you will need to fill out, and I do think you should talk to her on a daily basis and let her know the few things she could of done to improve on her lesson. Now after telling her for example things would have gone better if her papers were hole-punched, and she continued to not have the handout's prepared. Then I would be much more concerned and would be more likely to warn her at that time that she needs to make more effort in improving these little things. But give her a chance and see what happens.