Preservice teachers often enter their student teaching experience with a hefty dose of optimism. While this is never a bad thing, cooperating teachers are left with the task of either sheltering, or not, the student teachers from the ugliness that many teachers see on a daily basis.
The Job of a Cooperating Teacher
A cooperating teacher has a huge job and only a small fraction of that job is often detailed on paper. While the job includes observing the student teacher, conferencing about lesson plans, school policy and so on, it also includes preparing the new teachers for their first year solo in a classroom.
The student teaching experience is one of the more important experiences prior to accepting a full time teaching position. Few would argue that the education system does not need improvement and so the relationship between the cooperating teacher and the student teacher should also prepare the new teacher to effect changes in the education system.
How to Effect Change in the Education System
All too often teachers get caught up in complaining and discussing education reform with coworkers who are just as disenfranchised with how things are going. This becomes clear when listening to teachers complain in the lunch rooms about student behavior, or when overhearing whispered conversations in the hallways about frustrations with testing or the curriculum.
Instead of shielding student teachers from this reality, cooperating teachers need to plant seeds of change in the student teachers’ minds on how to effect change. While avoiding the lunch room and refusing to participate in frustrated conversations in the hallways might seem like a logical step, it is both impractical and ineffective. First, as the year goes on and frustration mounts, teachers will need a way to let out some of their frustrations. Second, these frustrations will never impact the system if they fall on the sympathetic ears of fellow teachers.
First, concerns and frustrations need to be thought through and understood not as complaints but as ideas for change. For example, instead of complaining about a particular curriculum, think instead of a way to improve the situation. Then, with a list of improvement ideas, schedule meetings with administration, the board of education or even the state legislators if possible.
Only with a focus on education reform and improvement will the influx of new teachers be able to have a great impact on the education system. It is during the student teaching experience that these seeds must be planted, when optimism collides with a taste of reality.
Jennifer Wagaman - Jennifer is a mother of 2 and has both public, private and administrative experience in the education field.
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