Relief

Relief for me today is spelled p-l-a-c-e-m-e-n-t. As in, student teaching placement. You may already know, or have read in my profile, that I am a soon-to-be teacher. “Soon-to-be” means that I have completed all the requisite coursework (although I’m taking one class this summer, which may or may not be required—‘tis a little unclear—but I feel I need it, in any case). The last phase of the program is student teaching. After completing all other courses, you complete this requirement during your final semester. You’re not supposed to enroll in any other classes, or pursue any other employment, during the 16-week period of student teaching.

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If you’re not familiar with student teaching, it’s easiest to think of it as an internship—the worst kind of internship; the unpaid kind. Not only are you not compensated, you actually have to enroll for a 12-credit-hour course, and pay tuition and fees. What a deal, huh? There’s no way around it though. Student teaching doesn’t mean “teaching students.” What it means is that you are teaching, but you’re still a student. So you work with a cooperating teacher, who lets you take over his/her classroom and his/her students. You’re supposed to “phase in”—observe for the first two weeks, then take over one class, then another, until in weeks 8-10 you have all five (the usual load for a teacher), and then “phase out” again over the last six weeks. That’s how it’s supposed to work…

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Of course, in reality, many cooperating teachers take you to their classroom on the first day, say, “Here you go, see ya!” and proceed to disappear for the next four months.

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During student teaching, the student teacher has to complete something called the “Teacher Work Sample,” or as we prefer to call it, “Pain In My Ass.” This is a minutely-detailed description of ten consecutive days of instruction, which should comprise one cohesive unit. In Colorado, the student teacher’s successful completion of the TWS serves as demonstration of proficiency in all the Performance-Based Standards for Teachers. There are eight PBST’s, each of which has several sub-goals or “benchmarks,” so that in total, 47 standards have to be met.

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Candidates for student teaching in fall (August-December) of this year had to apply by February 19^th. I did so, frantically pulling together all the required paperwork and signatures, handed it in to the office, and waited. And waited. By early April I kept hearing of many of my classmates getting their placements confirmed, and I had still heard nothing. Finally, I went down to the office, and they called the school that was my first choice, and left a message. I told one of my professors—a former principal in one of the local high schools who has many contacts in the metro area—about my situation, and then she called the school. They actually called her back (not the office)—to say that I had been approved, but then it fell through at the last minute because they decided they had too many young teachers in the department and no one experienced enough who was willing or able to take on a student teacher.

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So Dr. Hilton (my professor) called put her networking into action, and called some other schools. She got a positive response from one high school, and I went there and met with the prospective cooperating teacher. She seemed gung-ho about the whole deal, and I allowed myself to get excited. I thought it was a done deal. That was on a Friday. On Monday, I went to the office with a new placement request, for this high school. By Wednesday, they had sent a reply:

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Denied.

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I still don’t know why. Obviously, the teacher approved, but it must have fell through in administration. Perhaps, since she already had a student teacher this semester, they didn’t want her to have another one in the fall. I was crestfallen, to put it mildly.

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So the secretary in the placement office said I should try a different district, where they let the college contact the schools directly, rather than having to go through the Human Resources department, as was required at the districts my other choices had been located in. We have a book for this particular district, which lists the names and schools of teachers who had indicated they were willing to have a student teacher. I saw that one middle school had two names in the book. It was kind of far, but closer than any of the other schools in the book, so I said to go ahead and contact them for my next shot.

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Exactly one week later, I got a call from the teacher I had listed. She wanted me to come in and interview for the placement. The idea of interviewing for an unpaid position still strikes me as odd, but I was in no position to question by that point. The interview was this morning. I was supposed to meet with both the teacher and the principal, which made me somewhat nervous, but at the same time, made me feel a little safer, since I knew I wouldn’t have another situation where the teacher approved and administration did not. As it turns out, the principal had an issue to deal with that took imminent priority (as principals often do—it’s a job I don’t envy), so it was just me and the teacher at the conference table. That made it less stressful, to be sure. The principal came back in for about the last 60 seconds, but didn’t ask any questions. It seemed to me that I had made a good impression, but how do you ever know for sure? The teacher took me on a quick tour around the school, which is huge for a building housing only two grades—but it’s in a rather affluent area, after all; only 3-4 miles away from Columbine High School, which you may have heard of, in fact, although it feeds into a different high school.

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So I left. I went to eat lunch, at Sweet Tomatoes (I love that place; I’ve become quite the salad bar fanatic in my old age), and then went shopping at Super Target, where I save 10% (always a good thing). While at the store, about four hours after leaving the school, the teacher called me and said, “I talked to my principal, and we would love to have you, if you’re still interested…”

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YES!!

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It wasn’t the district or the level I was aiming for—I really wanted high school, and I hesitated to tell her that when she asked me in the interview, but she said that’s OK because she had been the same way and didn’t think she’d ever want to teach middle school, but now she loves the kids. I’ll be teaching 7^th grade with her, which is familiar territory to me insofar as my oldest stepdaughter is 12 and about to finish 7^th grade (although she’ll probably repeat it next year, but that’s another story). �It’s a younger group that I am really prepared for; it will be a challenge for me to adjust my thinking to “their level,” and I regret that I can’t really teach novels, or anything with more mature themes. But, the fact remains that I AM placed now, and that, as dear Martha would say, is a very good thing.