So, I've completed Week 4 of my student teaching...thank the stars in the heavens!!!
The result so far: BYU-Idaho doesn't not prepare the Theatre/Speech Ed majors well enough for teaching...
This last week I took control of teaching both the Film Studies class and both Theatre I classes...let's just leave it at the fact that as a result, my cooperating teacher is taking back the Theatre I classes for a week...
I created lesson plans as I had been taught in my ONE practicum..and apparently lesson plans for reading comprehension don't prepare you in the least bit for teaching a beginning theatre class.
Hell is a good way to describe it. The students were bored, I was panicky because I had not planned for students getting bored so quickly and my cooperating teacher couldn't figure out why I was planning such inadequate lessons...
PLEASE don't get me wrong. I have a fantastic cooperating teacher and I love BYU-I. I just feel that the university doesn't require enough practicum experience for the Theatre Ed teachers. All of my other Ed classmates seemed to be in the classroom from pretty much their first year and, as a Theatre/Speech Ed major, we weren't required to even be in contact with the high school classroom until the semester before student teaching.
If I had had to take a teaching in the classroom practicum my second or third year at school, I would have changed my major in a heart beat. Some people simply cannot handle the classroom. I am one of those people.
Teaching is a calling. It takes a certain kind of person to do it so that it is beneficial to the student.
My cooperating teacher is one of these people. She is an amazing teacher who can create wonderful and meaningful lessons seemingly on the spot. I am grateful to have her as a cooperating teacher because she has been a major help to me in this student teaching process thus far.
I do feel bad though, as she is having to teach me how to teach as well as teach the students. I hope I am not too much of a burden on her. But the wonderful thing is that she is willing to do so. She is willing to help me.
I hope I don't let her down.
Two months left...eight weeks...62 days.
