How to be a Great Student (& Supervising) Teacher

I had this student teacher once that wasn’t doing a great job. In front of class he was cold, mechanical. He taught like he had pre-rehearsed every word he would say (he did), and really struggled to connect with students on any kind of personal level.

So it was that I was working with a student on an essay, and I was quite happy to see this student teacher talking, laughing, smiling with two students in our class.

After class, we were walking down the stairs to lunch, and said, “looks like things were going well over there.”

“Yeah,” he said, “they asked me if I had ever been to any strip clubs and…”

So I had to tell my student teacher, a guy who had traveled all over the world and was also a fully grown adult and stuff, that it was entirely unacceptable to talk to students about the differences in strip clubs all over the world, as well as in different places in the city, because that’s exactly what the hell he was talking to them about.

This was the worst and dumbest thing this student teacher did, but was not the only thing. We spent a few months together, and nearly every one of those days involved an hour of direct coaching and co-planning and goal setting, but it was like rolling a ball up-hill. Every time I let go, he started sliding backwards, as if…