Step 23: "The Takeover"

I vividly remember a phone conversation I had just about this time last year with a then TEP student who told me that she was about to begin her 2 week instructional "takeover" of her student teaching placement. Frankly, I was in awe. The idea of fully planning for and teaching a class for two whole weeks sounded like a mammoth task that I could not imagine taking on.

Well, I'm here tonight to tell you that my 2 weeks are done! Actually, I finished my "takeover" last week before spring break ... and to be perfectly honest, I have just needed a bit of time to process the experience before writing about it.

Initially, I have to admit, the first week of my “takeover” felt pretty anticlimactic. Now, with some distance, I believe I felt this way for a couple of reasons: 1) I did gradually build up my responsibilities in the classroom, so when the "takeover" began I was not doing anything that I had never done before that week - I just did more of each thing; but also because 2) the reality of a “takeover” is not exactly as I once feared it might be. Teaching “full-time” does not exactly mean taking on the daunting responsibility of completely filling every minute of the school day for 10 days; instead, I have learned how teachers build off of existing curricular materials, facilitate independent learning time, and make other skillful, but less active plans that do not require the teacher to be “on the spot” all the time. Furthermore, we were far from alone in preparing what and how to teach during that time. For one thing, we all had material that we needed to cover based on the school’s curriculum scope and sequence. In my case, for example, I began my 2 weeks right at the beginning of the students’ unit on fractions, so naturally I led them through the math book’s lessons much like my classroom mentor would have had she been teaching them during that unit. We also had a great deal of input and support from our seminar instructors, who oversaw the development of our “Integrated Unit”, which acts as our Term IV project (see previous posts for information on Term I, II, and III projects). This unit is meant to give us experience with longer-term planning, and teaching interdisciplinary units in a full class setting. You can explore mine here, by navigating to the Term IV page. As you can see, we have come a long way from planning single subject, small group lessons and yet I really can say that we have built up to this in small enough steps that this task that originally seemed like a mountain became a really surmountable climb!

The opportunity to really be in the teacher role consistently for two weeks straight gave me a great chance to reflect on where I am now, what I’m proud of, and what I still need to work on. A few of my current takeaways include:

·       I have definitely become more comfortable overall standing up in front of the class for a lesson. I have been noticing that I approach each lesson less like a “performance” and more just as a part of my ongoing interactions with my students. I think that this shift has helped me to be more aware of students’ reactions, because I am not just delivering material to them, and to remain more flexible.

·       Speaking of behavior management, think that I am becoming increasingly comfortable with moments of discipline and had a few instances this week when I was particularly happy with the way that I was able to react not out of anger or snap judgment, but instead with firmness but also inquiry into root causes and larger meanings of student misbehavior. That said, one thing that I need to continue working on is establishing and following up on consequences, for while I am comfortable having corrective conversations with students, I don’t really know what to do as the “next step” when I begin to have the same conversations over and over again.

·       Finally, I have definitely noticed a difference in the way I am able to react to small and large “bumps” in my lessons and school days overall. I remember that as recently as in the fall, when I scrambled a set of directions, or had a challenging conversation with a student, I left school feeling the huge weight of my mistake. While I definitely believe I need to take responsibility for my mistakes, I also think that it represents progress for me to now be able shrug off small things such that I can focus on bigger issues.

Thanks for coming along on this journey with me - and please feel free to reach out with any questions or comments you might have if you are thinking about joining next year's TEP cohort! My email is RSarnoff@gse.upenn.edu.