Jay Boughter

December 7, 2014
EDEL 483 Secondary Supervised Teaching Internship
Student Teaching Reflection
I decided to become a teacher because I like kids and I want to help them achieve and become
successful in all aspects as a student and in life in general. As a post baccalaureate student in Education
at Nevada State College (NSC), I completed ten education classes as part of the education curriculum.
I enjoyed most of my education classes, I enjoyed all of my instructors and these classes helped
tremendously to prepare me for reaching my goal of one day becoming an effective teacher.
This last Fall 2014 semester I completed my student teaching assignment at Basic High School
teaching Geoscience classes to predominantly 10th and 11th graders with some 12th graders added.
Initially, I was overwhelmed learning the many tasks and procedures required by teachers on any given
day. It became evident to me there is no such thing as Down Time for teachers. It is non-stop, go,
go, go, all day long. There is always something that can be done during any perceived down time or
stopping point in the daily process of teaching. This is what effective teachers do: Plan, organize,
design lessons, teach lesson, assess student achievement, grade assignments, record grades,
communicate with families, reflect on everything, etc.
I felt I was as prepared as I could be for my student teaching assignment, in terms of what I
learned in my education classes, in lieu of actually teaching. I felt confident about my content
knowledge and my ability to help others. So, I thought things would be fine once I started my student
teaching assignment, i.e. actually teaching students in the classroom. Then, reality hit me in the form
of high school students. The students tested me in many ways. I believe this may be the result of the
students accepting the cooperating teacher as their Real teacher and authority figure. The students
appeared to treat me as a non-authority figure and someone they didnt need to listen or pay attention
to. So, initially it was rough going for me. I was able to teach and present the required content to the
classes, but the students were not always cooperative and focused on learning. It was a struggle for me
to re-direct their focus and get them to behave and be quiet enough for effective teaching and learning
to occur.

Then, with time, I noticed that some students were responding to me in an instructional sense
and a behavioral sense. I learned that it takes time to nurture the relationship with the students for them
to understand you and to be comfortable around you before they trust you and accept you. I learned
that implementing an authoritative approach combined with sound classroom management techniques
alone was not enough to keep things manageable in the classroom. It takes time for the students to
understand that you actually care about them and are there to help them. It takes time for them to trust
you and for them to allow you to be their teacher.
My student teaching assignment was a great and rewarding experience for me. I enjoyed it
tremendously. But the biggest thing I learned from the experience was that a teacher can never give up
on any student, ever. Even when they may behave terribly or when it appears they dont seem to care
about anything, especially working on their own learning, you as a teacher can never stop trying to
reach them and to get through to them and to help them, ever. Press on. Do the right thing always,
which is to help them learn, to achieve academic success, and to grow as students and young adults.