When a student teacher is watching......

Now children, who here likes trains?

Tomorrow will be kinda spooky for me.  11 years into my teaching, I have finally decided to have a student teacher from the local university in my room, completing her 3rd year practical experience.  In short... I got a praccy. 


I'm thinking of documenting the 4 week journey here and seeing where it leads.  Laura's interactions with the kids will be the key to this process going well.

For the weekend before her prac officially begins, I've asked her to put together a little notebook with photos of the kids from the class on each page.  I want her to learn as much as she can about each kid in the first few days.  What they like, how they learn, how they respond to praise, direction, tone. 

I tries to keeps it real.  Sometimes its a risk and that's ok.

Tomorrow, Laura will see a spelling program unlike anything I'd seen before last year.  She'll see inquiry maths (if we have enough calculators and the kids are up for it).  She'll see kids writing journals while others complete grammar tasks.  She'll see contract learning.  She'll hear me read a chapter of The Enchanted Wood.  She'll see me calmly and internally freak out about reports while keeping it cool in front of the kids.  She'll see just how busy a day can get when there are 25 faces staring at you with, "What's next, Chief?" written all over them.


At the end of the day, I want to play time bingo with Mandarin.  This will be a long shot.  If it works, it'll be pretty rad.  If it flops, that'll be ok too.  All part of trying to keep it real.

I'll bet I learn a bunch from the experience about my own teaching.  If not, then I'll blame my praccy.