I’ve been hosting a college student in my class periodically this year, and she is headed towards her student-teaching internship next year. Hopefully, she’ll be placed at West Hall and there will be a place for her to work in Hall County, if not at West Hall. The reason I say this is not that I’ve seen her magically light up a room with her knowledge and ability to reach kids, although her university supervisor did comment on how much of a rapport she had built with the students in my class even though she isn’t in the room every day. The reason I say is that she and I engaged in a lengthy, in-depth conversation about the two audiences that I and her other English teacher serve. A brief confession before moving on: she got the above compliment after she had taught a lesson she had been given intentionally because I didn’t want to teach it. The topic was boring, but necessary to cover, and I felt she might be able to breathe some real life into it.
A month or so later, she taught in another classroom at West Hall and by all accounts completely bombed. The lesson was less conversational and more of an exchange of artillery, the classroom having become a battlefield in which the kids were out to test her and show her who would win. After the teacher whose classroom she was in and I talked about it, and then after she and I talked about it, we started talking about the differences between student populations in the two rooms.
My students, the ones with whom she had built a real rapport, and who were willing to put up with the boring lesson topic from her, were the honors 9th graders, some of whom were participants in West Hall’s Innovation Institute program; the students in the battleground room were not the honors kids, and I think they might have been in a co-taught classroom. The co-teachers are both amazing teachers who possess an incredible ability to patiently pull stunningly impressive things from their students. I’ve seen the co-teacher do it in the classroom that we shared for the previous 3 years, and I’ve seen the English teacher do it with students that I couldn’t reach.
This led the student-teacher and me to a discussion about the differences between the two populations. I would argue that the two student populations might need slightly different things from their teachers in terms of instructional techniques and emotional response, but both groups need challenge, opportunities to fail at higher-than-normal levels of thinking, and the method of instruction that is specific to them. The student-teacher and I discussed the other English teacher’s claim that the student-teacher needed to get the kids to like her and her response to that. Initially, she scoffed at the idea but, the more we talked about it, the more she came to see the importance of that. The honors kids that I have don’t need to like me, and they don’t necessarily need to know that I like them, even though I want them to like me and I really do like all of them. But in the co-taught classroom, the relationship is the single most important aspect of teaching because, in my experience, they trust teachers less than normal due to past negative experiences.
The genius of the two teachers the student-teacher is observing, I think, is recognizing their audience. The other English teacher is a master of building relationships with students and using that to understand what’s going on with them, where they are academically AND emotionally, and using that information to push them both to accomplishments they hadn’t seen as possible and levels of engagement with literature that they hadn’t viewed as desirable before attending her class. For me, I think I’m good at tailoring what other teachers do to my audience and I hope I’m able to prepare them for future English classes and life. I don’t know how good a job I’m doing at those two jobs, but I’ve been asked to return to work 6 years in a row.
The unwritten part of this discussion, I think, and something I’ll explore in a near-future post, is the paramount role of the co-teacher in this discussion.
A month or so later, she taught in another classroom at West Hall and by all accounts completely bombed. The lesson was less conversational and more of an exchange of artillery, the classroom having become a battlefield in which the kids were out to test her and show her who would win. After the teacher whose classroom she was in and I talked about it, and then after she and I talked about it, we started talking about the differences between student populations in the two rooms.
My students, the ones with whom she had built a real rapport, and who were willing to put up with the boring lesson topic from her, were the honors 9th graders, some of whom were participants in West Hall’s Innovation Institute program; the students in the battleground room were not the honors kids, and I think they might have been in a co-taught classroom. The co-teachers are both amazing teachers who possess an incredible ability to patiently pull stunningly impressive things from their students. I’ve seen the co-teacher do it in the classroom that we shared for the previous 3 years, and I’ve seen the English teacher do it with students that I couldn’t reach.
This led the student-teacher and me to a discussion about the differences between the two populations. I would argue that the two student populations might need slightly different things from their teachers in terms of instructional techniques and emotional response, but both groups need challenge, opportunities to fail at higher-than-normal levels of thinking, and the method of instruction that is specific to them. The student-teacher and I discussed the other English teacher’s claim that the student-teacher needed to get the kids to like her and her response to that. Initially, she scoffed at the idea but, the more we talked about it, the more she came to see the importance of that. The honors kids that I have don’t need to like me, and they don’t necessarily need to know that I like them, even though I want them to like me and I really do like all of them. But in the co-taught classroom, the relationship is the single most important aspect of teaching because, in my experience, they trust teachers less than normal due to past negative experiences.
The genius of the two teachers the student-teacher is observing, I think, is recognizing their audience. The other English teacher is a master of building relationships with students and using that to understand what’s going on with them, where they are academically AND emotionally, and using that information to push them both to accomplishments they hadn’t seen as possible and levels of engagement with literature that they hadn’t viewed as desirable before attending her class. For me, I think I’m good at tailoring what other teachers do to my audience and I hope I’m able to prepare them for future English classes and life. I don’t know how good a job I’m doing at those two jobs, but I’ve been asked to return to work 6 years in a row.
The unwritten part of this discussion, I think, and something I’ll explore in a near-future post, is the paramount role of the co-teacher in this discussion.