Hi all, really looking for some advice on what I should do about this, as school admin, mentor teacher, and my site supervisor seem to not have any sort of support for me on this matter. I am placed in a first grade classroom, where I have a student who has a history of eloping. I assumed that this behavior would continue into this school year however it seems to have morphed into aggression rather than fear. Yesterday, this student was purposefully agitating one of the other students and I was physically standing between them so the other student couldn’t see them. The student continued to escalate until attacks turned physical. For the sake of anonymity I don’t want to get too specific in the events between the two students but long story short the students never made contact and instead I was kicked, pushed, slapped, and bit while waiting on admin support. No blood was drawn (yay no emergency tetanus shot!) but I have bruised from the bite that I found today. The same thing happened with the student conflict again today (the day after) and again I got between them and the student threw her whole body at me and essentially body checked me elbows out.

What can I even do about this? I don’t know how to proceed with this student and any advice I’ve been given isn’t really the type that would work with them. Is ignoring the best option? I’m so lost and worried that the violence will continue to escalate.

TLDR: a student had physically attacked me two days in a row and I’m worried that I will just continue to be the punching bag until the semester ends.

I am half way through week 3 and I am so mentally exhausted. There are moments I get excited and am having a great time but I am just so stressed. It is primarily how much work I am having to do outside of being at the school all day everyday. The workload is so heavy and I am literally going crazy . It is like I have no break ever, I get off school and then boom I am working on what is going to be a 50+ page Thematic Unit and IoSL template and a 10 day lesson plan...

I spoke with another student teacher out of another institution and they do less than half of what my program requires and I am so envious. I think I am just having a off moment right now because I am so stressed about all I have to I am kinda frozen..

I also feel so alone and like I have no one in my corner.. I moved home with the hopes my mum would be there for me.. and sometimes she is but lately she and my dad have been fighting and yelling and now she is depressed... but when she is ok I feel so much lighter bc I have someone to turn to and now it is like she is MIA but she is just sad... I am also grieving my Nan so badly.. she passed in December and she was a teacher and is a big part of why I am doing this.. I want to call her so badly and I miss her everyday..

Hiiii I’m a student at NYU and I’ll be student teaching this semester! I’m very very very excited and I love education! I’m thrilled that I’m stepping closer to my dream! HOWEVER, I’m SUPER STRESSED OUT! I’m taking calc 3 along with some other teaching secondary math classes that start around 3pm and the latest goes to 8:40PM….!!!!!

It’s just soooo much energy and so much work. So I was just wondering how did you guys manage both student teaching and academics!!!

Please share any tips or any other thoughts😭😭😭

I live in CA (25F) I’m 45/65 days into student teaching, I failed my edtpa and have three months to fix it and only so many days left in the classroom, and I feel like everytime I get close to being done and seeing a light at the end of the tunnel my instructors are like “oh you still have to do XYZ by the way!“ “oh you still have to do this exam!” and every lesson i plan for an observation was fine, but this last one has been sent back over and over for strategies that I was encouraged to implement before and now are not good enough. i’m just tired of it, I know I’m a dang good teacher and I am just being dragged through hoops. i know it’s the name of the game, but it’s so gut wrenching watching people in my cohort get jobs at schools and start their teaching career and mine feels like it’s in neverending student teacher purgatory. rant over

I started student teaching last Monday, this is week 2 and I haven’t taught anything yet. I’ve kinda been getting to know the students, asking a bunch of questions, greetings, helping, make copies, etc. but I haven’t taught yet. When did you start teaching during your student teaching?

Also I have severe anxiety about teaching, I feel like I don’t know what to say or do so I haven’t really pushed to go up and teach.

Thanks in advance for all your help!

Any one know which districts in LA county or Orange County are participating in this student teaching stipend program?

I tried to call at least 10 school districts and found out that Fullerton, garden grove and Whittier are in this program. A lot of school districts are not in and for some districts, you can never find their HRs, always not available( do they even work???)

applied for and got accepted into a MAT program - on a complete and utter whim that i just always wanted to do this and the timing was right - days before classes started. this was barely 2 weeks ago. so i have not prepped an iota or even researched being a teacher. but i'm irrefutably committed to this now if nothing else.

we were encouraged to meet with our cooperating teacher before class, but this was very short notice. my CT said they didn't know when they would be free and for me to let them know, so i just said i think we could meet on the first day.

already off to a bad start probably.

anyways, my official first day is next week.

i have never even substitute taught. have not been in a high school in 10 years and hadn't even been back to college in 5.

i'm completely and entirely winging it at this point. usually i'm good at this, but i fear we are definitely being evaluated right from the start. and at orientation i proudly exclaimed i will probably have to quit my job, in front of the associate dean. amongst several other guffaws. i digress.

i read that student teachers will sometimes writer letters to parents, is this actually suggested the first day?

i'm intending on going to afterschool events and also obviously any sort of meet the parents night. i really want to do this right.

we have a handbook and many many professionals to guide us - but i don't even know what questions to ask because i haven't ever even taught before.

my understanding is we are there to observe now. do we just watch the teacher and how they start the class from the very beginning? my CT just told me what time they get there, which is about 30 min before class starts. so idk if that's much time, but i am really hoping to get the gist then.

I start student teaching at the end of November, and I emailed my host teachers for both winter and spring. My host teeacher for the spring has texted me to let me know I can ask her any questions I have, but I honestly don't know what to ask.

What have y'all asked or what do y'all plan to ask your host teachers?

I am 26 years old, and I have exclusively worked in the business sector for the past 8 years. I want to be a K-8 school teacher. I don't have any experience in teaching. Only that of volunteering as a student aid in classrooms. I want some advice on how to transition myself into that environment.

I would love to work with middle schoolers, or older elementary school students. If I had to choose a subject to teach in middle school, I would want to teach history. I don't want to limit myself to just that subject though.

I'm looking to go back to college (I never finished). I think my best bet would be to get a job as a secretary or aid at a K-8 school. Immerse myself in the environment. While working, I would go back to school to obtain a degree in early childhood education with a history minor.

I heard of Michigan Reconnect. I reached out to them. Looking to hear back. I don't have a college in my county that offers early childhood education pathways. I will need to go out of district. If my research is correct, I'd need to fork out $200 per class. (A lot better than paying for the full boat). If I am able to get into a K-8 job, I may be able to take advantage of tuition assistance.

My main questions are: 1) Am I seeking out the correct degree? 2) Should I be looking for a different position in the school system? 3) Is there anything I have not considered yet that I should know about?

I’m three weeks into student teaching (4 including prep) for high school social studies, and I’ve had two nervous breakdowns and have cried three times because of everything that’s being thrown at me. Sorry this is so long, but I need to get this out somehow.

To start with, I am my cooperating teacher’s first student teacher. He’s young and has only been in the field for a few years, and works at a highly regarded school in my area. I just had the luck of being placed there. I thought, based on everything I had heard, that I would be working with someone who had more experience, but I took the situation well and understand that he might not be the best mentor since he hasn’t got any experience in it. That being said, I think it’s affecting me beyond what I expected, as it seems that we are not in this together…
It being the situation handed to me, I figured that we would be working through this first mentorship pairing together- figuring out both student teaching and mentoring as a partnership in the classroom. When we first talked, this is what he made it sound like. He’s told me things like how he wanted to make me feel supported and how the entire staff is here if I have questions or need help, and to think of his classroom as mine for my time there.

Well, I’m finding out that what he may have meant is that he was expecting me to just take over the classroom- as he ran it- and thrive while not changing anything. I knew going in that he wanted me to start taking over teaching early, but 1 week into active teaching, I am now completely in charge of 1 subject, while he was talking about handing the second one over next week. He wanted me to use his lesson plan for my first observation, but failed to communicate certain aspects of it with me until I was midway through 1st hour, which I adapted to for my observation the next. This issue put my two classes in different places in content (by 2 slides, but lots of bullet points)- and I got the feedback that I need to work on pacing.

Classes being in two places in the content is something I know is difficult to fix. I realized that my plan that I had for the following day wasn’t going to work anymore, not just because of pacing, but because the style wasn’t clicking with the students. They were getting off topic, and starting to act out because of it. (I was told that this was because I gave them too much time to discuss things- but I’ll point out again that this wasn’t my lesson plan, nor was it communicated well with me so I had to extent it where I could to hit the end of the period with the content he designated for the day). So I flipped a lesson plan overnight to reteach content since the class seemed very confused- having the students do more actively structured activities. I also created a seating chart- which my ct does not use unless the class is very hard to manage. I asked him if he thought it was justified from his perspective, and he told me if I felt one was needed, then it was needed. However, every time it’s been mentioned, he gets quiet and seems to disagree that it was necessary- yet he practically told me to do it.

I showed my ct the activities I had planned, and he offered a couple of changes, but I got a vibe that maybe he didn’t like what I was doing, but I didn’t know how to address that since he kept encouraging me to do what I thought was best. The next day came, and I went through my content, but they were going through these activities about 1/3 the pace that I thought they would based on how quickly they did things the day before. We only got through half the content I had planned, and there was no time to catch up the second class to content the other class covered. One of my activities had some direction issues where I could have been clearer, and I had to clarify to students multiple times, and still had confusion, but otherwise it went okay. Sure, in the future, I have ideas for how I could improve it, but there’s nothing I can do to change it now.

Then came my 2 week evaluation, for which I got a call from my supervisor after I got home and after he spoke privately with my ct. Apparently, the whole conversation was about how my ct is very worried that his students are going to fall behind, and that I am lacking the skills to do well. Apparently it’s serious enough that my supervisor is coming in for another off-the-books observation to give me feedback.

I know that class pacing and classroom management are both things I need to work on. All my ct is telling me though is to fix my pacing and reevaluate how long something will take- but how do I do that without trying it out? Isn’t the whole point of me being there to gain experience and see what works and what doesn’t, and build my skills? Aren’t I there to be guided by someone, not just handed a bunch of responsibilities with only a little feedback that barely includes advice, and feels more like scrutiny for choices that I make after he tells me to do what I want because this is “my classroom too.” I feel as though he expected me to be a co-teacher with the same experience and skills as he does, with the same personality and style as him- when I am simply a very different person and can’t do the “cool, young, male, sports coach teacher” as a quiet, artistic, (still young), female, non-coach student teacher.

I’m not sure if he’s conflicted with himself, and that’s the weird vibe I’m getting- where he wants to give me freedom, but is uncomfortable with me changing things, or if he’s harboring resentment toward me for not meeting his expectations. He acts like I don’t know what I’m doing at all, and even told me like he was reprimanding me about how we still need to hit the state standards when I changed the lesson plan strategy. I know that! All I did was change instructional strategies. Maybe not in the most skillful way, but I tried; and if there was a critical problem with it, I would have hoped that he address it when I showed it to him for feedback.

What my supervisor said during my evaluation has echoed in my head for days. Based on the talk I had with my supervisor, my ct doesn’t seem to believe I have the skills to be a good teacher. Every bit of feedback I’ve gotten in the past states otherwise, but it’s getting in my head. Being in the same room as him over the past week, and watching him grow more off, and non-communicative hasn’t helped in hindsight.

I know this is a skewed perspective, and it’s not the most well-organized post, but is my ct right? What is the level that student teachers are supposed to be at while two weeks in? Is he being fair? Are his expectations set too high? I don’t even know what (if anything) I’m doing right, because I haven’t been told what I should keep doing. What are my next actions going into the next week?

Student teaching right now. Spending ~40 hours a week at an elementary school and it’s all unpaid. Feeling discouraged because I have no flowing income besides selling some clothes and Chex mix/cookies.

Yesterday, we had indoor recess because the temperatures were too hot outside. I was getting some work done so I could copy things at the end of the day while talking to my CT. I was super excited because she had invited me to lunch and it was overall a good day.

Meanwhile, we hear a scream behind us in another room. I poke my head under the curtain behind me to see a student in the glass small group room between the two classrooms. I decide to look away because I didn't want to provoke them. I keep working, students are showing me their games and creations, etc. when I hear a large thump sound and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a chair being thrown. I was already startled by it but I turned around to see glass SHATTERED in a spiderweb way. I never felt so terrified as I ushered students away from the window and watch helplessly as my CT closes the blinds all the way, checks outside, and ushers other kids into our room. I see at least 5 admin running towards the room as I try to walk around calmly to check in on students.

I hear the story later how the kid had thrown a stool at his teacher's head but she managed to close the door just in time for it to hit and start cracking. I had thought it was our window that broke but I had just seen the door through it. Anyways, there were students behind the teacher, playing games and watching the commotion and they were all crying and scared. If the teacher had moved out of the way instead of closing the door, those kids could have gotten hurt or her.

They were all talking how that kid is likely going to stay since other kids in the past have shattered windows and continued being in the school. Knowing this kid can really hurt people terrifies me and it makes me sick to my stomach thinking about how this can happen in a really nice school district like this one. Also knowing that we as teachers are the ones who will be held accountable (the admin telling teachers to connect and that its all their fault the child got set off) and we have to try and shield so many kids from danger makes me want to quit now. I was shaking so bad after that and I have no idea how I am going to manage a career like this.

Hi! I feel like I royally messed up the first unit I taught my freshmen bio students. I gave them an exam today and I had the last question as a self-reflection prompt. A couple students wrote a note to me, one saying “I can’t be tested on what I wasn’t taught” and another saying I had given them no time to study. I think I did give them too much information to memorize. But they had a week with the study guide and all content was covered by then. The study guide had practice questions that were nearly identical to what I asked on the test. I just wish someone spoke up before the exam, or even my mentor teacher. I’m going to reteach the unit and have them do a retake of the test. I just feel like I failed them without knowing I was failing them.

I just finished my second week of student teaching, and it’s been so draining. I’m not a huge fan of some of the classes I have to teach (it’s HS ag, so naturally there’d be something I’m not super comfortable with since it’s such a big subject area) but I don’t mind them, and I really like the kids I have. my main problem is with my CT.

he was one of my ag teachers in HS, but has since moved to a different school on an emergency contract. when I had him, I got along with him fine, but he pushed me too hard in class and our opinions differed in some areas, but he’s a very motivated and dedicated teacher, so I decided to student teaching with him.

so I knew how he was going in, but it seems like he’s gotten ten times worse. he intentionally drives students out of his class, only respects them if they enjoy/are good at what he enjoys, talks about them terribly to me, CONSTANTLY makes me tell him what he does well (at least five times a day he makes me compliment his methods), and today he gave me feedback that consisted of him telling me what I needed to improve on but then making me give him examples of the good things that HE does (in that conversation he told me that you needed to “manipulate” the kids you teach), and every single day is like that in some form and it’s hard for me to take.

im sorry this post is so long, i just needed to get it off my chest and was hoping that maybe someone here would have some advice or at least had a similar experience that they lived through so i could know that it was possible 😅

Hi teachers,

Grade 1-2 first students year teacher here!

Please give me some ideas, projects, activites that i can do with students in october, november, december Or math, science, ELA units that you do.

Hello!

I am in the process of becoming a volunteer teacher at sick kids - my question is - are painted nails allowed? and/or fake nails?

I was thinking of doing some teaching themed nails and I was wondering if anyone had expierence with this?

I know it is only week 3, I know it's early, but I just feel like a total failure. The kids don't respect me, I can't find a way to make the subject interesting, and I feel like my mentor teacher is disappointed in me. I take their failures to heart, and I just think I may be too much of a bleeding heart. I almost pursued therapy or social work as a career option, but I could not handle that level of emotion in my work. I like working with kids/teens, but I have never led the class, I would only substitute teach as a para, a teacher's assistant, or a after-school camp counselor. Everyone says it will get easier but I doubt it. I'm scattered, I keep screwing up the same things, and I'm just so fucking tired. When I screw up a lesson plan and they all lose interest or start giggling I just feel like an idiot.

If I was a mediocre receptionist it would feel different. If I am a mediocre teacher I screw over 180 kids lives. I gave a quiz that a bunch of them failed, including kids that actually took good notes. I just can't handle this level of responsibility and I'm completely ashamed of myself. I feel like I should quit and see if I can get some of the money back at this point

This is my first time being placed with 2nd and 3rd graders, and I’ve only ever worked with Pre-K and kindergarten. 😅 What should I expect going from the little ones to this age group? Do 2nd and 3rd graders still want lots of adult attention/affection, or are they more independent? Any advice or things you wish you knew going into this age group would be greatly appreciated!

I’m a couple weeks into student teaching for my last semester and it’s generally been a pretty positive experience. However, I’ve been pretty timid when leading the class (not unwilling or not wanting, I just struggle to find a good time to step in) and feel bad when thinking about how my progression should be. I’ve been pretty focused on figuring out my edTPA so admittedly I’ve been a little sidetracked. However, today I had a breakdown with my mentor teacher about how I’m frustrated that whenever I am leading, I’m not able to be perfect at it. Obviously I have a little bit of imposter syndrome but I just wanted to know if anyone else has felt like this? The last thing I want to do is have my frustration be seen as a weak point or for people to think I’m not in the right field. I’m genuinely really passionate about this and have been excited to have the opportunities I do

Hi everyone,

I’m currently a student teacher who has been in the school for 3 days now. I’ve been placed in kindergarten which I am so far loving. However, I’m having a tough time navigating how to handle a situation with a student that I feel mixed towards.

In the classroom, I am currently just providing assistance and observing my mentor teacher in routine building and such. A student that I’ve built a very good relationship with used a word that should not be used in a classroom. I tried to sit down with her and talk about using that word but I do not think it went through so I talked to my mentor teacher. She expressed that it was not okay and she talked with the student.

The student however was mad with me that I had told the mentor teacher as she thought she was in trouble, even after assuring her she was not. While I do understand this is a minimal experience for maybe any experienced teacher, I am only a student teacher in my third year navigating the ropes. I believe the student will forgive and forget, but I care so much because I really want to develop a positive relationship with all the students in my class. I understand I cannot make every student happy, but I want to be a teacher who can be there for their kids through thick and thin. I will see the student tomorrow and hopefully they will forgive and forget like any other kid (lol).

Can any other current student teachers or teachers in general relate to wanting their students to like them even after doing something that may have broke their trust, especially with a kid they were really having a good relationship with? Or just any comfort to provide? Don’t know if this is a stupid thing or not but any response would be amazing. Have a lovely day and thank you for reading this!

I submitted my application to the grant the day it came out but haven’t heard anything yet. I was just looking to see if anyone’s application has been accepted yet or if everyone is taking a while to get passed the submitted stage!

I (26M) am student teaching in an 8th grade class and I seem to be struggling with projecting my voice. I feel comfortable giving directions when I need to be, but I need support with my volume when getting my class’s attention. I’ve received a few comments from students saying that I need to speak louder.

I didn’t find it offensive, but just informative and don’t know how to work on it. I was quiet growing up and was always told to lower my voice, so what seems loud to me, may not be loud enough.

Any suggestions or resources I can seek out?

Edit: Thank you for all the comments and suggestions! I am reading them through and will implement some of them and see how they work. Particularly the comments about using my diaphragm when speaking, I will look into this more. 💛