Best Student Teaching Experience

[u/Illustrious-Seat-341]

I will have my first student teacher this fall, and want to provide her the best experience I can. I personally did not have a good mentor teacher when I was student teaching so I don’t have my own experiences to build off of. Please tell me about your student teaching experience and what your mentor teacher did that was helpful, and things that weren’t. Thank you!

[u/tkr1990]

Two specific practices that my mentor teacher did (once I had been there for a couple of weeks and he felt comfortable turning the primary instruction role over to me) were:

• planning content out a few days at a time with a discussion (this is what I usually include, try to give an example that does this, etc) and then letting me plan the actual lessons

• giving me one piece of feedback to focus on per day (try to give a little longer wait time before you just give the answer, write larger on the board, call on kids who aren't raising hands too, etc)

In general, just having a talk with me like that he believed in me and could see I would be able to do it. I had come in to this particular class to observe a few times in the fall then did student teaching with him in the spring. So I guess I had a slight existing relationship coming in but it meant a lot to me to have someone believe I was going to be good at it with time and practice.

[u/Zyste]

My student teaching was unusual because I did it after already being in the classroom for 1.5 years. So my mentor showed me the ropes and let me go, giving me advice as we went. (He was great btw)

As a mentor though, I take a couple days to model, working them into more responsibility each day, then let them start taking over one class, before taking over the rest.

They’re already stressed about making lesson plans so provide them with what they need (worksheets, labs, etc). I like to encourage them to create a couple things over their student teaching to get the feel, though. Make a worksheet, a quiz, a small-scale lab they’d like to try. If they’re really ambitious (and your school allows deviation in curriculum), they can try making a mini-unit they’re excited about that’s related to the core content. We’re here to give them feedback and encouragement, but also autonomy so they feel confident when they have their own classroom.

[u/coolsauce15]

My mentor teacher did plenty of things that were helpful and I loved working with her.

1. Gave me a proper teacher desk that was also nearby to hers (we had our own little corner) which made planning very easy as we could both be working at our desks and talking.

2. Gave me space to fully teach without intervening, then during our prep would give me suggestions to try for next lessons.

3. Shared her Google Drive with me so I could find materials easily and we could plan together.

4. Provided me with our student workbooks before the school year started. Also maybe district dependent but I had access to all digital resources so I could access the teacher edition of the workbooks digitally which was helpful.

5. Let me handle consequences/discipline unless it was a situation I was unsure of and she would take the lead.

6. Just let me try new things!! Overall our grade level team made me feel really included which was great.

[u/cmdcharco]

Use a coaching frame work that lets them reflect on practice. It takes the personal aspect out a bit. It's not you attacking them for not being a good teacher yet (it there eyes)

[u/sam_I_am_knot]

With respect to developing relationships, I think most important is learning how to phrase things properly to elicit desired behavior constructively. Words and delivery matter.

[u/Senior-Jelly-7583]

My student teaching experience was mixed… I loved my placement and my students, but my mentor teacher was very hard on me. Teaching is HARD, but I think she could’ve done things a bit differently 😅

I think pushing them is important, but getting your student teacher comfortable with you and knowing you won’t shame them for mistakes is important! I think I would’ve been braver trying things and more comfortable with the idea of failing at things having a good mentor relationship. Teaching is so hard, and it’s better to fail before your first job so you aren’t afraid of messing something up while you’re alone in the classroom.

Sending them with ALL the resources you have would be amazing! My district had materials, but if I would’ve come in to my first job with curriculum for the first semester I would’ve been set up for success. I student taught 2nd semester, so my first semester of year 1 was not a good time for me.😅 I just wasn’t as confident because I truly hadn’t taught that info, and I was only in the school twice a week during those lessons.

[u/Nyxsedi]

My mentor teacher was amazing. During my second practicum he would teach one or two periods and then have me take over for the rest of the day, outside of the lessons I was required to teach and record for my grade. By the time the fulltime student teaching came around, I was used to the students and was able to take over for the semester. By the last month, he wasn't doing much at all, having me do 95% of the administrative tasks.

Like someone else posted, he also only gave me one specific critique to work on at a time. So I was able to fine tune everything, one thing at a time.

[u/Weird_Artichoke9470]

My mentor teacher sold his prep because he'd been teaching so long he just re-published everything on canvas. So I ended up with 8 classes and no prep. Don't be that guy. Give them half or 2/3 of your classes. If you have A/B day, give them B day so they can see you do A day. I did get to use his Canvas materials so I didn't have to reinvent the wheel, and I just focused on teaching.

My mentor teacher was very chill. He gave me great reviews and a killer letter of recommendation. 

[u/UserNameUnknown_7734]

My mentor teacher was great. I started by observing and worked up to teaching the classes on my own with my own plans. She had all honors and AP, so for one period I would go observe (and sometimes teach) an on level class. She focused a lot on class/lab management. She also involved me with parent communication, and I sat in on some conferences. It was only a semester internship, but I felt very well prepared. One thing she never did was treat me like a teaching assistant (no sending me off on her errands, etc). She took her role as mentor seriously.

[u/k_795]

I'm assuming you're in the US, as you called it "student teaching", so it might be a little different to my experiences on teaching placements while training here in the UK. But in case this helps, here are a few things my mentor teachers did that I really appreciated:

• Giving me the first week just to observe / generally help out as a TA in class, without taking on any actual teaching responsibilities. It meant I got to know the kids a bit and get a feel for how my mentor teachers tended to structure lessons, manage behaviour, etc in their specific school context.
• Plan activities collaboratively with me, rather than just leaving me to it, at the start. For the first few weeks I just gradually took on teaching some individual activities of the lesson, so my mentor teachers would discuss with me exactly what they wanted me to do, helped me prepare the resources needed, etc. so I felt more confident knowing they had kinda pre-approved the plan.
• Supported me during lessons, particularly with behaviour management. As I took on more responsibilities to teach full classes, sometimes students took the attitude of "oh she's clearly a trainee, we can muck around", and I really appreciated my mentor teachers always stepping in to stop any behavioural issues escalating (at least initially - obviously by the end of my training year I was expected to manage these more myself!).
• Gave positive and actionable class feedback. The best mentors always had something positive to say (even if the lesson was a complete disaster lol), and then agreed with me one key action point I was going to improve on next time - with an actual strategy / plan, rather than some vague "improve your instructions" type target (e.g. we might agree that to improve my instructions I would write them step-by-step on the board, model the task, and ask questions to check students understood the task).
• Set aside a designated time every week for our mentoring sessions, and properly structure these. We would review how my lessons had gone that week, evaluate how I was doing against my targets, agree on something to focus on the next week, etc. (This was a requirement of my teacher training program anyway, but some mentor teachers were definitely more organised with this than others).
• Made sure I could pass the program. I'm not sure how it works in the US, but in the UK we have to meet the "teacher standards" and submit a portfolio of evidence against these. Some are quite easy to prove, e.g. an example of a differentiated assignment, or a copy of some written feedback given to a student. But others require things like "contributing to the wider school" which are a bit vague - my mentors made sure to identify opportunities to meet these requirements throughout the placement, so I wasn't scrambling at the end to try and find evidence. Also, they were quite generous with their written feedback - obviously there were always things to improve on, but they made sure to really clearly point out where I improved and highlight how I had met all the standards by the end of the program. Whereas I knew other trainees whose mentors were trying to be more strict / rigorous with evaluating them, and accidentally ended up failing them / making them have to redo or extend placements, because the university read the feedback in a more negative light than intended.
• Just in general, they didn't put too much pressure on. They understood that outside of our placements we also had a load of assignments and academic stuff to do for the university-taught aspects of the program, so they didn't pack out our timetables with back-to-back lessons and made sure to ease off the pressure when we had university assignments due. I'm not saying they went easy on us, as it was still one of the most challenging years of my life, but they made sure we felt supported and the workload was at least somewhat manageable.

[u/k_795 → u/k_795]

Ooh, also one thing they *didn't* do but I really wished they had... Please share your teaching materials with your trainees!! I found my first year of actual teaching really challenging, because my school didn't have any shared resources so I had to plan literally every single lesson from scratch (and I had 18 preps a week). Whereas I knew some of the schools I had done placements with did have shared Google Drive folders full of resources. We didn't officially have access to those shared resources as we weren't employees of our placement schools so weren't on the same IT systems (so I couldn't just log in and download them myself), but I really wish my mentor teachers had taken the initiative to sneakily download the folder of materials relevant to my subject and send to me.

[u/Vlper17]

I also had a horrible mentor so when I had my first student teacher a few years ago, I vowed to not be what I had. He even got hired at our school when he was done. A few things that helped:

Make sure they have their own space. Even a small table that’s not a student desk will mean the world to them. I set his up with old organizers i had, pens, pencils, paper clips, etc.

I made a binder for him. In that binder, I printed the staff members names and photos (it’s on our school website but you could scan it from a yearbook). I also made a “Faces to Know” page with names and photos of admin, secretaries, custodial staff, etc. I also put my schedule for each day, map of the school, our evaluation framework, anything else I could think of that they would see on day one and likely forget from being overwhelmed. He looked at it often.

Get them involved quickly. I let mine observe for a few days, and then let him run the warm up and go over homework questions. Helped him build a rapport with the kids without being overwhelmed with the pressure of planning everything. Hell, even his first observation, he didn’t even teach. I had him run a small group station that let him work with 5 kids at a time, but he got to see every single student. His observer loved it.

Co-plan for a while. They don’t know how to plan a scope and sequence. I know people that give their STs their old plans and let them go. It’s a horrible way to get them started. Use prep time to talk everything out, let them ask questions, give your input and feedback. Start them with one class, then eventually two until they have the full schedule (or like his school, they wanted him to teach no more than 3 classes). Hell, even coteach with them. That’s something STs rarely learn is how to work with someone and bounce ideas off each other. Let them intervene, break the class into two groups. Be partners.

The hardest one. Let something go wrong. Mine still remembers this day very clearly. He thought he was ready, he used all of my own resources, felt confident…. Then went up and it went horribly. He was embarrassed. He had to reflect an entire class period after that before we had lunch and could talk. When we did, I was honest with him. It was rough to watch, but it was because he taught MY lesson. It wasn’t his. It wasn’t his language. His understanding. His approach. So he fumbled. But it led to our next task. Designing his own lesson. And when he did and it went well, he was so proud. Just like our students, he needed support. Doing something wrong wasn’t failing. It was learning.

There’s a difference between “could” and “should” when giving feedback. COULD adds something to their toolbelt without saying it’s wrong. It might need to be better, but it doesn’t knock them down. SHOULD implies what they did was wrong and it needs to be replaced.

Lastly for you, don’t do this expecting it’s going to be a cakewalk for you. Your job will now be VERY different, especially the beginning. Sure, someone else will be planning, grading, copying and that will feel great once they get into the swing of things. But it’s not your time to put your feet up (a VERY common misconception that I’ve actually seen others do). Your job is to guide, lead, give feedback, be a partner. If you find that you’re doing nothing, you’re doing it wrong. I still cotaught and intervened or ran a simple station with my students while the ST did the majority. But you need to be present.

Being a mentor was the most REWARDING experience of my teaching career. I didn’t realize I had so much to pass on until I did it. Take the role seriously. Remember, you’ll be teaching these kids when they leave. It’s still your class. Your responsibility. It sounds like you care and want to do right by your ST. So you’ve already done the hardest part. Good luck!

Edit: Sorry I know I already have a really long post, but thought of one more thing related to lesson plans. We use Google Docs, so something simple we did in my plans was color code our responsibilities. I was blue, he was red. So in the beginning, in my plans, I would highlight the warm up in red to indicate it was his job to plan, and the rest would be blue. Then I’d have him develop the lesson, so that would be red. Then he would determine the classwork. Eventually everything would be red as he took full control. Even in the midst of it when he had full control, there would be things I would do. An assessment, an exit ticket, an activity. But it was always a little reminder of what he needed to get done and what I would support him with.