Do you have a student teacher next semester?
In theory, having a student teacher is awesome, especially if you are in a single teacher program because you get another “ag teacher” to take on the countless “to-dos” involved in agriculture education.
But this can add stress and additional management more times than not if you do not start the student teacher off on the right path from day 1.
Here are techniques that worked for me when accepting a student teacher into my classroom:
PRE-PLANNING
If I had a new student teacher in my classroom during the spring semester, I sent them a Student Teacher Needs Assessment (Google Form) in December. This needs assessment included the following information:
EXPECTATIONS - Just like with our own students, setting expectations for a student teacher is extremely important to make sure everyone has a good experience. I also provided the student teacher with our FFA calendar and asked that they make themselves available to attend those events and activities.
TOPIC EXPERIENCE - In each of my courses, I informed the student teacher how many students were in the class, their demographics and the topics I had already taught. I then had them rate their experience level on the topics I had not taught yet in those courses. This would allow me to have an understanding of their strengths when determining what classes they were going to teach throughout the semester.
CDE EXPERIENCE - I also had them rate their experience in the second semester contests. This allowed me to understand where their strengths were as I planned for these CDEs and LDEs.
AWARD APP EXPERIENCE - Our chapter and students were very competitive in award applications with the chapter being ranked a top 10 chapter at National FFA Convention in the National Chapter Award three times and the top chapter in Ohio three times, as well as 10 national proficiency finalists in six years. For this reason, I wanted to know ahead of time the student teacher’s experience with FFA degrees, proficiency awards, the National Chapter Award and agriscience fair as we approached the evaluation season in Ohio.
OFFICER RETREAT AVAILABILITY - It was very important to me that the student teacher was present at our winter officer retreat during Christmas Break so they could understand how to plan and execute an officer retreat and so they could be involved in the planning of the events they would help implement. I used a doodle poll to determine this availability.
COMMENTS - This needs assessment also allowed the student teacher to voice questions and additional resources they needed from me as their cooperating educator.
After reviewing the information in this needs assessment, I would then sit down with the student teacher to determine the timeline for taking over each of my courses and the CDE or LDE they would coach. Together we would map out the whole semester so they could begin lesson planning and preparing for their student teaching experience.
DAILY REFLECTIONS:
Each day during the student teaching experience, we would spend 5-10 minutes reviewing how each day went and how it could have been improved. We would also run down the next day and determine what we were going to teach, plans for CDEs or LDEs, as well as FFA activities we needed to finish preparing for.
I found that by giving timely feedback, I was able to assist the student teacher with improving their teaching and classroom management before it became a problem.
CDE COACHING:
Student teachers were required to independently coach one CDE or LDE during their student teaching experience. This allowed them to understand how to prepare a team or FFA member. I used the results from their needs assessment to determine this selection.
FFA ACTIVITY:
I also required student teachers to independently supervise a FFA activity from start to finish. As a FFA advisor, they will have to do this when they have their own program so I want them to have experience with this portion of their future career.
These were just a few of the techniques I used to prepare a student teacher entering my classroom. I found these systems adequately prepared future agriculture educators and relieved the stress I had with giving another individual the reins of my program by scaffolding and supporting their student teaching experience.
Although, I do not have a link for the Google form I used for this Student Teacher Needs Assessment, you can reach out at info@owlsnestresources.com with any question on integrating student teachers into your classroom.