Having a Student Teacher

So one of the biggest things affecting my work life right now is having a student teacher. I've never had a student teacher before so I was pretty nervous about it. I've seen pretty good student teachers come through our department over the years, but I've also seen some downright awful student teachers and the stories told about them are quite horrendous. Well, I'm glad to say my student teacher is amazing! She works really hard and has a lot of good ideas. I think the process of explaining to her how and why I do things has made me a much more thoughtful teacher. When you are trying to defend why you do a certain thing in the classroom, but you can't think of a very good reason, then it makes you think about improving what you do or eliminating it altogether. I've always known I needed to be harder on my honors students and she's helping me improve in that area. Also having all this time of doing nothing except supervising her (which is a piece of cake) has given me time to really revamp my nonfiction unit. I think the nonfiction unit is going to be pretty awesome when November rolls around! Watch out students, logical fallacies are coming your way! If I can always get an awesome student teacher, sign me up to be a cooperating teacher every time! And hears a weird upshot of having a student teacher...my students LOVE me...they think she's mean (she's not) and can't wait for me be back in the classroom. Maybe they'll be better behaved when I get back in there? Or if their not I can threaten to get another student teacher next semester...ha! Here's to all the student teachers out there!