Friday, July 15, 2011

Student-teacher or teacher-teacher?

As some of you may know, I am in a master's degree/certification program, meaning that at the end of this shindig, I will leave with full teaching credentials in my fields along with a master's degree. In my cohort, most of everyone is a career switcher and has never taught before in a classroom. There are a small handful of people already teaching on provisional credentials. And then there's me, never taught before but has a job for the fall. 

[For those who have read my previous posts, yes, I was a fellow at a charter, but riding a bike with training wheels is different from riding one without the training wheels. Just saying.]

I'm in the weird in-between space. The "non-teachers" will be student-teaching for the year, while the "teacher" will use their classroom as their "student-teaching" experience. Technically, I'm considered as the latter, yet I feel like I should be considered as the prior. As I was emailing a friend, I said something along the lines of "...you will be a great asset to your students, be it as a student-teacher or a teacher-teacher".

How ridiculous was that! What does that mean? While I'm getting more comfortable with the fact that, hey, I will have my own classroom in the few weeks, I still feel like I have much to learn about teaching, curriculum, instruction, and the list continues. I know that I can be at least a good teacher for my students this year, but I won't be the best, precisely because I am still a student of teaching, curriculum, instruction, etc. I don't know everything or even a lot, right now. 

Officially, we are teachers, bur aren't we all student-teachers? Don't we have to continue to learn about teaching and everything that it is loaded with it? Do "teacher-teachers" even exist? If so, can you contact me, because I've got some brain-picking to do?

 Update: I just found out that some schools call teachers in training "preservice" and practicing teachers "inservice". I like this delineation much better. 

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