Saying Goodbye to My First Placement

In some ways, I am excited and ready to move on to a new school. I am looking forward to observing a new teaching approach, classroom management style, learning about available resources and to meeting new students. In other ways though, I have established relationships, set a routine, know all of the supplies and their location, and have become very comfortable working in this middle school environment. In most ways, I don't want to leave at all. I would love a job in an environment like this, one that is so focused on education and that has high expectations for students no matter what the subject.

I didn't know what to expect before I started my first placement experience. I was nervous because I didn't know exactly how much responsibility I would be given as the student teacher. I already felt jet lagged and burnt out from returning just a day before the start date from Okinawa, Japan. It was there that I worked 10 hour days every day of the work week for two and a half months with children as a camp counselor, and traveled every minute during weekends, leaving little time for rest. I didn't know how I would even begin to function enough to lead a classroom. But I did. And I was given a lot, A LOT of responsibility through out my entire experience from week 2 on. I am happy to say that I feel that I successfully rose to the occasion and completely forgot about the burnt out and jet lagged feeling.

Something that I dealt with quite a bit during my experience that I did not expect was parents. I'm not talking about Parent Night and Parent Teacher Conferences, I expected that sort of thing. What I didn't expect were parents who are defensive from the get go, who obviously just want to find out why their child isn't doing well in class, but don't go about asking in the calmest way. What I didn't expect was the demand of answering emails, telephone calls, etc. on top of grading, prep upon prep, while staying late and coming in early so kids can get help one on one and catch up, and coming in even earlier and staying later than them to get ready and organized for the next days. By now, I understand that this is the job. It is not simply cookie cutter and easy, nor should it necessarily be this way. It is because it isn't this way that I appreciate the job and the work that goes into education that much more. I feel that I got a worthy first experience dealing with things that they don't necessarily teach you in college. It was a tough, challenging, full of insight, wonderful, exciting, stressful, humorous and all of the above all at once. And I only am getting a taste of it. But I know that I want more and I want to continue to be an art teacher. I know I'm going to miss it when it's gone, and can't wait until I find my own position as an art teacher.